This course will explore pedagogical, rhetorical, and psychological principles for effective action and civic engagement. We will practice skills in communication, purposeful leadership, and transformative pedagogy to engage with civic, social, and environmental issues. We will cross disciplinary boundaries and expand beyond the classroom into collegiate athletics, executive leadership, and community workshops as examples of in-the-world pedagogies for change.

Whether part of the official curriculum or not, young people learn about gender and sexuality at school. In this course, students will engage queer and trans theoretical perspectives to consider the ways in which K-12 formal education institutions have tended to reproduce power structures. Through these lenses students will begin to develop personal, political, and/or pedagogical processes for realizing the liberatory potential of spaces of learning for queer and trans students in the U.S.

This course begins analysis of how the U.S. education system is simultaneously a target and tool of settler colonialism. We will critically analyze the sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts that shape education policy and practice to preserve settler colonialization. Finally, centering the lived experiences of past and present Indigenous communities, we will explore ways to deliberately “unsettle” settler colonialism to disrupt systems of oppression toward the actualization of the relationship between learning and liberation.

This course is designed for students from any discipline(s) interested in learning the nuts and bolts of curriculum design. We begin with a critical analysis of popular curriculum theories. Next, students will create a curriculum from a context of their choice, ranging from traditional classrooms (early childhood- higher education), training programs, webinar series, and more. Participants may bring a curriculum-oriented idea to develop or choose from a community-based project provided. Class time will include hands-on opportunities to workshop projects.

In collaboration with CC Outdoor Education and Field Study, this course explores the history of outdoor education, the psychology of transformative experiences, and the “hard and soft skills” of outdoor leadership, including technical skills, risk management, planning, communication, and differentiation, with the goal of facilitating equitable, sustainable, and transformative experiences in the outdoors. Further, the course will examine outdoor recreation’s relationship to land, resources, and inequities (e.g., race, gender, income, dis/ability) that outdoor leaders should know and address. Outdoor field experiences as part of the course will help demonstrate the skills and topics covered.

This course is for students interested in exploring the role of teachers and students in international contexts worldwide. Centers critical analysis of the dispositions, knowledge, and skills of successful educators in diverse global classrooms. By being in southern Spain, a hub for various international educational initiatives, students will visit different schools, teaching and learning contexts, gaining firsthand experiences with how diverse cultures, languages, and communities inform responsive, critical, multicultural, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) practices. Students will develop an enhanced global mindset, cultivate dispositions for equity and inclusion in multicultural and multilingual contexts, and explore strategies for collaborating with diverse colleagues and effectively partnering with students and families from around the world.