Imagining America @ UF

This interactive pedagogical workshop provided an introduction to culturally relevant pedagogy in the university classroom. Participants collaborated to examine their assumptions about effective teaching for diverse student populations. Participants learned culturally relevant teaching strategies to build relationships and engage diverse learners. Together, this workshop served as an orientation to a pedagogical stance that honors racial and cultural diversity and positions educators as agents of change.

What should you bring?

Participants were not required to bring any teaching or curriculum materials. However, participants were invited to bring specific problems of practice to share in the dialogue.

Please bring a pen, pencil, or a suitable method of taking notes (including laptops).

What will you get out of this?

Introductory information about culturally relevant pedagogy.

Strategies and techniques for building community in your classroom.

An opportunity to build a community of practice for ongoing critical reflection of your teaching practice and to establish relationships with other TAs an faculty interested in collaborating to advocate for social justice issues.

Lead Facilitator

Natalie Hagler: IA Working Group Graduate Coordinator (College of Education)

Natalie Hagler is a second year PhD student in the University of Florida, College of Education. She currently serves as an Instructional Coach for pre-service teachers enrolled in the SITE program at UF and is the Graduate Student At-Large Director for FATE (Florida Association of Teacher Educators). Her current research interests are preservice teacher preparation in culturally relevant pedagogy, the transfer of novice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge from theory to practice, and the examination of teacher behaviors that traumatize traditionally minoritized students in K-12 settings. As a K-12 educator for over a decade, Natalie has served as a brick-and-mortar and virtual school teacher, Reading Coach, teacher mentor, and Department Chair.

Facilitators

Jungyoung Park: PhD student (College of Education).

Jungyoung Park is a second-year Ph.D. student at the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida College of Education. Prior to attending UF, she served as a  secondary school teacher in Korea for eight years. Under her Graduate School Fellowship, she has been active in investigating critical literacy instruction in secondary English classroom. Her current research includes content area literacy development from a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective. Her recent publications include ESP/EAP writing for publication purposes.

Orisatalabi Efunbumi:  PhD student, McKnight Doctoral Fellow (College of Health & Human Performance)

Orisatalabi (Talabi) Efunbumi is a third-year Ph.D. student in Health Education and Behavior with an interest in community-based participatory research and using eHealth and mHealth tools to address health disparities in under-served populations. In addition to serving as a UF online (UFO) TA in Health Education and Behavior, Talabi’s teaching experience includes serving as an adult education specialist and Prep-Math Instruction at Santa Fe College.  She earned both her Bachelor’s degree in Material Science and Engineering and Master’s in Health Education and Behavior, from the University of Florida.

This event shared several classroom activities for incubating inclusive and culturally-sensitive dialogue, including:

• The Paseo or Circles of Identity (PDF)
• Chalk Talk (PDF)
• Forming Ground Rules (PDF)
• Think Pair Share (PDF)

This event was organized by the UF Imagining America Working Group with co-sponsorship from the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere.