Hello, my name is Kelsey Ford and I teach English Composition. For my OFAR action plan I focused on beginning to revise slides and other exercises to include anti-racist examples and images. In addition, I explored open pedagogy and non-disposable assignments, since those concepts were relatively new to me.
As I participated in the OFAR course during Fall 2023, I was also teaching my own classes. And it became glaringly apparent to me that my lecture slides and other exercises could do a much better job of including examples and excerpts from readings and images which are more explicitly anti racist. Therefore, one of my goals during Spring 2024 was to begin reviewing and taking notes on which slides and exercises would benefit most from some revisions.
As I move forward with this work, I will be making the changes that I noted last semester. The following resource from OFAR has been invaluable for providing images:
: A collection of stock photos featuring plus-size office workers.
: Positive and realistic images of older people.
: Photo collection featuring disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color.
: Disability-inclusive stock photography.
: Photographs of families, their homes, and how they live around the world.
: Stock photos of trans and non-binary people.
: Images featuring people with disabilities.
: Images of women’s lives and work.
: High-resolution photos of black and brown people.
: Hand-drawn, mix-and-match illustration library.
: Stock photo library of diverse multi-racial images.
: Photoset of queer and gender-nonconforming (GNC) people in technology.
I attempted to engage students in a new way by having them create a semester-long research project website related to education, racism, and/or stereotyping. My hope is that students would be excited about creating something that combines both visual and written work in a website form that they can share with others within our classroom and beyond.
Below I have embedded my assignment which I have openly licensed as OER. If you would like to access a version that can be copied, you may do so through this link: English Composition Research Portfolio
Here is a sample of a completed site: Infant Mortality as the Result of Systemic Racism
This project focused around the disparity in infant mortality rates between Black and white women. On the Homepage we see the overall claim for the research project as well as some background on the issue. Each of the subsequent pages develops a particular segment of the research project. On the Why It Matters page there are three evidence-based premises about why this issue is important, on the Attempted Solutions page the student discusses how the current approaches to this issue are falling short, and on the My Solution page the student offers a possible proposal for how to address the issue. Lastly, on the Sources page the student provides her annotated bibliography, a works cited section, and a summary and response essay based on one of her sources. In addition, the About Me section showcases the students interests and her literacy narrative essay from the beginning of the semester. Such a project has allowed students to share their research with the rest of the class, resulting in class discussions about anti-racist issues that the students care about.