Study Group Courses

This continuing education graduate-level course examines approaches for incorporating The PLN frameworks of Reading, Writing, Talking, Listening and Thinking about race and racism. Participants are also expected to reflect on their classroom practices and their connection to the readings through reflective journals. While participants are provided the space to investigate and reflect on their own identities through an intersectional lens, participants also discuss and investigate the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of social inequality and discrimination.

Participants look closely at the impact of a variety of strategies and approaches that can be implemented in the classroom with their students when reading, discussing, and writing about race and racial injustice. These strategies can also be used to build competency as well when discussing the intersecting areas of discrimination such as gender bias, religious, or anti-LGBTQ. Participants are encouraged to utilize the strategies from this course to engage in a life-long transformative process of reflection and action.

Participants are required to read Everyday Anti-Racism, edited by Mica Pollock. PLN provides an E-book of The Plainer Truths of Teaching, Learning, and Literacy by Dr. Morton Botel and Lara Paparo (2016) as a mentor text or participants are asked to bring their own copy of The Plainer Truths from a former PLN course. Participants self-select a second course text related to the topic of racial injustice. Participants take practical applications and suggested materials to use in their own classrooms.