Yesterday, I hosted a virtual workshop for the CANE Summer Institute. There were around 15 attendees who varied in location, teaching experience, and age. Before the workshop, I emailed the registrants an assignment to get them thinking about their positionality and how that might affect how they do community engagement. You can find the community engagement workshop resources from my slide deck below.
You can read the blurb for my workshop at this link.
The workshop had many exciting conversations; unfortunately, I had to cut it short due to timing constraints. I’m uploading the slide deck as a resource for anyone who wanted to attend but couldn’t or any attendees who wanted to take a closer look at the slides.
We discussed their racial and economic backgrounds, reflective practices, and strategies for engaging communities.
Please review the slide deck below, and let me know your thoughts! I’d love to hear any strategies you’ve implemented in your communities and how to provide opportunities for students to participate in a collaborative education model.
The following is a quote pulled from my presentation:
So what does an engagement plan look like? I’ve divided the work into chunks to make it easier: initial, planning, outreach, and data collection. Attending this workshop was the first introduction to your initial stage. There’s a lot of reflecting and engagement to determine if the community wants the program you’ve designed and if you’re even the right person to do it. Can you relate and engage with the population in a culturally sustaining and relevant way? Or is there a more appropriate person for the task who may have been underrepresented? Is this right for the community at all? Once you determine the answers to those questions, you can move on to the planning stage. Who are the people you are engaging? What needs do they have? What assets? What jobs do they work, and when would be the most accommodating time to meet with them? What methods will you use to reach this audience? This could mean anything from social media, flyers, and email campaigns to the basic pedagogical strategies you implement in your programming. And who else needs to be involved in this engagement? Are there other groups that you can uplift by calling them in? Other groups could include parent advocacy groups, administrators, local university Classics departments, and student clubs (definitely leverage your Latin club if you have one!!)
Let’s continue the conversation on my twitter @maialeechin!