“I could feel the heat in that class”:
Strategies for working with our students when things get difficult.
Presented by Cyndi Kernahan
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
10:00 – 11:30 a.m.
Virtual via Zoom
Given our politically polarized environment, teaching about almost anything right now can feel politicized and risky, pushing us to reconsider what we teach and how we teach it. In this session, we will discuss what we can do to set up our courses in ways that feel secure while still allowing for a full and honest treatment of our course material. We will also discuss how to handle the moments that pop up unexpectedly in response to outside events, challenging us to help our students make sense of things from a place of greater understanding and knowledge.
Humanizing Education: Developing Classroom Community Agreements
Presented by Dr. Jesica S. Fernandez
Thursday, August 15, 2024
4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Virtual via Zoom
Classroom community agreements strive to foster trust and mutual respect through collaboration, experiential learning and community care, which are essential to creating humanizing learning environments. As we begin a new academic year, this workshop will offer opportunities to reflect, dialogue and learn about the value of classroom community agreements. When integrated into the classroom, community agreements can foster opportunities to cultivate supportive student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions. We will engage in designing or developing an activity to support their creation or implementation to foster a humanizing education.
Strategies for Building Classroom Community:
A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation with
Pulitzer Prize-Winner Marcia Chatelain
Dr. Chatelain presents key ideas in the first 33 minutes followed by a Q&A with both pre-submitted and live questions facilitated by Syracuse University Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professors of Teaching Excellence Elisa Macedo Dekaney and Julie M. Hasenwinkel.
Recorded February 9, 2024 via Zoom
Teaching in the Face of Tragedy and Conflict
The Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence supports faculty in navigating these challenging times in their courses and interactions with students. We recognize the centrality of faculty in the daily lives of students and seek to equip them with tools for addressing tragedy and conflict in their teaching roles.
We encourage faculty to acknowledge the seriousness and complexity of recent events and to recognize that their students – like faculty – are affected in many different ways.
Teaching and Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
As artificial intelligence expands in exciting, challenging, and complex directions, CTLE and CLASS are collaborating with an informal faculty working group to support to Syracuse faculty and instructors in navigating this new teaching landscape.
We are excited to bring you our new series of captioned videos with companion audio files and transcripts, Peer-to-Peer Advice: A Timely Conversation with Faculty Colleagues.
We will continue to develop resources for responding to artificial intelligence technologies. We welcome your requests and suggestions. Please email CTLE@syr.edu to let us know how we can better support your teaching.
If you have concerns about academic integrity, please contact aio@syr.edu, the academic integrity office within CLASS. Individual course consultation is also available for faculty and instructors via the CTLE request form.
Discussion on Stress-Aware/Trauma-Informed Teaching
Panelists: Linda Stone Fish, Colleen Cameron, Rachel Razza, Faculty in Falk College of Sport & Human Dynamics.
Three SU faculty colleagues distinguish typical versus traumatic levels of stress, and discuss topics such as content warnings, hyper vigilance, and oversharing. They offer in-class practical resources for helping students to be present and feel emotionally safe in their courses. This outline provides minute markers for each topic.
The CTLE grounds its services in evidence-based practices. These include, but are not limited to the following: individual consultations; classroom observations and feedback sessions; syllabus reviews; the development of college, school, and department-specific workshops; assistance in reviewing and responding to student feedback; and knowledge co-creation related to general and specific teaching questions.