Deep Dive Communities (DDC) are intensive mini-learning communities to deep dive into specific topics in support of our commitment to all of Pratt’s pillars, but with a specific focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. These communities typically meet 3-4 times over the course of a month (sometimes two, or over the semester) to explore a particular topic in depth and collaborate to generate and answer questions. No previous experience is required to join any upcoming Deep Dive Communities. We hope to see you soon!
Spring 2022 Deep Dive Communities
Click here for more information, and to apply by 3/28/2022!
Applications for the Spring 2022 Gradeless Assessment Deep Dive Community are open now!
In conjunction with the CTL, full-time Foundation faculty Deborah Johnson, James Lipovac, and Gloria Fan Duan, have organized a late spring Gradeless Assessment Deep Dive Community. Professors and are invited to come together and explore tactical ways to implement gradeless assessments (or “ungrading practices”) in their classes. This 3 part series takes aim at the following:
- Assessing equity gaps in our classrooms and discussing how we developing culturally inclusive and responsive practices
- Examining existing scholarship on gradeless assessment
- Sharing prior classroom experiences or pitfalls with both grading and ungrading
- Walking away with new assessment approaches to incorporate in our classrooms, and the possibility to opt in to a Fall Gradeless Pilot.
Dates and Times:
Sessions will run from 12:30 – 2:30 PM with the following ‘themes’:
- Session 1) April 4 – Reflection: Examining Key Questions
- Session 2) April 11 – Research and Development: Game-Based Breakout Rooms (in conversation with Bethany Ides ‘Writing the Possible’) with faculty from different departments
- Session 3) April 25 – Action Plan: Form Interdepartmental Committees to implement Fall Action Plans
Participatory Education – Spring 2022
Click here for more information
Registration for this DDC is closed. Please check back at the beginning of the Spring 2022 semester for more information about our next DDC.
Participatory education is the non-extractive process of developing curriculum with students and community partners, where an educator can decenter themselves as arbiter of the class and everyone can feel empowered to bring their life experience into a collective knowledge bank. But how do we teach participation? How do we empower engagement? How do we democratize our teaching processes when, too often, conversations in academia focus on what we are teaching rather than how we are teaching it?
Dates and Times
Kick Off/Visioning Session : December 13, 2021, 11am (1.5 hours)
SP 22 Sessions: Last Monday of each month at 11am on: 1/31, 2/28, 3/28, 4/25 (1.5 hours each)
Past Deep Dive Communities
The Hero’s Journey – Fall 2021
Our current Deep Dive frames our experiences (shared and individual) throughout the pandemic using the model of the Hero’s Journey, exploring topics of loss, renewal, and rebuilding. We are sharing our stories of separation and return and reflect together on how we might rebuild our practices, pedagogies, and our classrooms in order to serve all our students better.
In the past 18 months, we all have collectively taken part in an arduous rite of passage:
- The Separation – We’ve been unwillingly distanced from the old ways of doing things, from our communities we’ve loved and relied on, and from the known and the usual that provided a sense of comfort and stability;
- The Ordeal – We’ve been challenged, some of us more than others, and we’ve suffered and were often disoriented. We’ve experienced uncertainty and faced trials of all kinds, and even faced the ‘brush of death’;
- The Return – As we return, we need a community to welcome all of us back, with a recognition that we must share what was lost and celebrate together what was gained
We reference the Hero’s Journey as a strategy to discuss our varied experiences over the course of the pandemic. For more information about the Hero’s Journey DDC, click here.
Feminist Pedagogies – Fall 2020
We understand feminist pedagogy as a perspective on teaching that is anti-sexist and anti-hierarchical that stresses individual experiences, intersectional identities, and moving away from the idea of education as a means to gain power to an understanding of education as a tool for organizing social action.
During this Deep Dive Community, we connect with faculty that are interested in exploring these themes further through close readings of texts, discussions, sharing practices and building a community of educators who center their work around these tenets of feminist pedagogy. For more information on the Feminist Pedagogies DDC, click here.
Click here to view the community bibliography from the FemPed DDC.
Teachwell – Fall 2020
A significant number of college-age students have experienced some type of trauma in their lives, ranging from family conflict to abuse, neglect, displacement, and violence. The current transition to varied learning formats (including face-to-face, hybrid, and online) as well as the current socio-political climate, represents additional traumas. This is not dissimilar to how faculty often feel as they hold space for learning and inhabit their own transitional difficulties. Teaching strategies that take into account the role of trauma have the potential to foster connection, increase emotional balance, and improve flourishing for all within our classrooms.
During this Deep Dive Community, we hope to connect with faculty that are interested in exploring these themes further through close readings of texts, discussions, sharing practices and building a community of educators who center their work around these tenets of wellbeing pedagogy.
For more information on the Teachwell DDC, click here.
Inspired in part by the conversations had and resources gathered in the Teachwell DDC, we have opened an online community space for continued community building and resource sharing on the subjects of educator and student wellness. We invite you to join our teach.well online community.