Overarching Goals:
Deepen teachers’ understanding of how students’ and their own cultural, educational, and personal trajectories intersect and shape their learning experiences, identities, and classroom interactions.
Equip teachers with concrete strategies to apply humanizing pedagogy that not only respects but actively leverages students’ cultural and linguistic assets.
Provide teachers with tools to develop critical consciousness among students, particularly those from higher SES backgrounds, by facilitating learning experiences that question power structures and privilege.
Multidimensional development goals:
Cognitive Goals: Teachers will learn to identify and integrate students’ Funds of Knowledge into their lessons, using narrative inquiry and community mapping to ground academic content in lived experiences, making learning more relevant and accessible.
Affective Goals: Through Ubuntu-inspired peer-coaching and storytelling workshops, teachers will cultivate empathy and shared learning, creating a classroom culture where students feel valued and heard, regardless of their background.
Process Goals: Teachers will practice structured critical dialogue, using Freire’s problem-posing method to facilitate student-led discussions on real-world issues, fostering active participation and critical thinking.
Skill Goals: Teachers will develop targeted skills in conducting student interviews, facilitating reflective dialogue, and designing critical inquiry projects that challenge students to analyze their social positions and consider broader systemic inequities.