Community-based teaching is pedagogical approach that connects students and faculty with activities that address community-identified goals through mutually beneficial partnerships that deepen students’ academic and civic learning.
As each faculty member endeavors into community identified goals, Equity Center staff is able to support in the following ways:
- •Logistics and Operations
- Coordinate calendars
- Provide zoom logistics or access to Equity Center meeting space
- •Identification of Community goals
- Faculty who teach these courses will most likely already have strong partnerships but given the EC is immersed in this work full time it might be helpful to connect different community initiatives or goals
- •Program Evaluation or Report Writing
- Provide reports to stakeholders (Provost, College, community groups, etc) on the impact/progress of each
- •Fellowship and Cohort Building
- Help to facilitate the meetings between faculty who are engaged in this work
- •Working with youth
- Work with youth orgs and/or schools to coordinate the logistical aspects of working with students to include volunteer protocols, background checks, etc
- Help with coordinating trips with schools
- •Capstone Projects
- Help students and faculty identify community partners for any final projects
- •Communication
- Host work on the EC website
- Help to get course descriptions out to students who want to do this work
- Highlight work of the co-designed work of students, faculty, and community partners through social media.
- •Thought Partners and Strategic Planners
- Coordinate guest speakers for classes and ensuring they are paid an honorarium for their time
- Help in seeking funding to support more classes and faculty
- The Multilingual Tutors' Project: Local schools reached out to The Equity Center for assistance in supporting emergent bilingual youth—particularly in the secondary content areas (e.g., math, science, etc.). This project aims to provide emergent bilinguals enrolled in content subject classes with linguistic and instructional support allowing the content to be as accessible as possible. The Equity Center’s program manager, Lucy Montalvo, and doctoral fellow for the Youth Pipeline, Isabel Vargas, provide both tutors and teachers support on serving emergent bilingual students best using instructional strategies that provide appropriate scaffolds for language acquisition. As a result, this team created Earth Science, Math Cognate, and Algebra Vocabulary slide decks.
