BEING NON-JUDGMENTAL IN A JUDGMENTAL WORLD: APPROACHING CONTROVERSIAL HEALTHCARE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES BY UTILIZING STUDENT EXPERIENCES
Often LaGuardia students encounter situations in their career and education where judgments become obstacles. These range from dealing with a cancer patient who refuses treatment to encountering a client with a violent history. This workshop will provide educators with tools for guiding student reflection on their own feelings about controversial issues and pre-conceived notions. Using scenarios to assist in this reflective process will support those in the real world who encounter controversial issues to navigate in an objective and productive manner.
Presenters: Philip Gimber and Arlene Spinner (Natural and Applied Sciences)
Room: E-252CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND THE ePORTFOLIO
Learn how faculty are using ePortfolios to help students develop career and educational plans and to synthesize connections between workplace experiences and college coursework. The Cooperative Education Department faculty has incorporated the development of professional ePortfolios into curricula that includes looking at diversity issues at the workplace, including age, ethnicity, gender, educational background, parental status and religious beliefs. The inclusion of these concepts into a career preparation course, in conjunction with the reflection assignments placed on their ePortfolio, allows students to learn more about diversity in the workplace and maximizes the potential for students to be conscious of these issues as they prepare for a professional world full of diverse people.
Presenters: Diane Ducat and Marie Sacino (Cooperative Education)
Room: E-255CONFRONTING GENDER VIOLENCE: STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES FOR EDUCATION AND ACTIVISM IN A CULTURALLY DIVERSE ENVIRONMENT
This workshop will explore how gender violence, especially violence perpetrated against women, can be openly addressed in the college environment in ways that involve faculty, students and staff, so as to lead to enlightenment, empowerment and social and political activism. This presenter will describe the range of efforts that the Student Center for Women has undertaken to engage all members of the LaGuardia community to highlight this critical issue impacting many of our students. Through a discussion that addresses the many manifestations of violence and abuse against women, and by highlighting some of the accomplishments of the Center (which includes support of the student production of the Vagina Monologues, and the creation of Voices, an exchange for men and women to speak out), we will explore the myriad concerns voiced by our students and discuss ways to creatively address an often somber topic that many people avoid speaking of altogether. Lastly, the workshop will address how such forums can cultivate a model for activism among our students so that they may become advocates in the fight to end gender violence.
Presenters: Vanessa Bing (Social Science) and student leaders from the Women's Center
Room: E-260DRAMA: AN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING TOOL FOR PROMOTING HEALTHY DIALOGUE ABOUT EMOTIONALLY CHARGED ISSUES
Drama is a powerful tool for understanding why conflict occurs, and how it can be transformed into a learning situation for all stakeholders. This interactive workshop will explore how drama and other performing arts can be used as an experiential learning tool to spark dialogue about difficult issues. We will discuss and practice techniques to make a learning environment safe to talk about these issues when the situation is emotionally charged. Having a difficult dialogue is very challenging. However, the rewards for being able to get past the emotions and begin to understand other points of view are immeasurable. This workshop will focus on how to discuss controversial issues in a classroom and other places.
Presenters: Ruth Antoinette Foy and Steven R. Hitt (Performing Arts Center Theater)
Room: E-251GLOBALIZATION, IMMIGRATION AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: COMMUNITY-BASED STUDENT LEARNING, (GIS) MAPPING TECHNOLOGY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIALLY USEFUL KNOWLEDGE AT LAGUARDIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
This workshop will address how student engagement in a funded college/community research collaboration, that utilized state-of-the-art digital technologies in mapping immigrant businesses within Jackson Heights, Queens, brought to the foreground a range of overarching issues that highlight a set of inequalities associated with the on-going globalization of the New York City economy. These issues, framed within the context of the current flows of immigration, include the following: 1) the growing polarization of income distribution; 2) the racialization, genderization, and stratification of family-based immigrant entrepreneurship patterns; 3) the restructuring of formal labor markets and increasing levels of undocumented immigrant workers; and 4) a public policy debate that demonizes immigrants and calls for the passage of restrictive immigration legislation. Students, via their directed research, unpack these specific issues and jointly construct critical empirical datasets, digital maps, and socially useful analysis supporting immigrant entrepreneurship, migrant socio-economic incorporation, and alternative narratives that factor notions of social justice into the current debate on immigration. In turn, this applied research, student-based knowledge production, critical pedagogies, and reflective/engaged scholarship informs the on-going substantive construction of an urban-based social science curriculum that builds upon LaGuardia's initiative to expand college/community collaborations, fosters sustainable economic development strategies, and supports immigrant civic engagement at the local and global scales.
Presenter: Arturo Ignacio Sánchez (Social Science)
Room: E-265IN THE ROOM AND ON THE SCREEN: TELLING DIGITAL STORIES
Using images and narrative, a digital storyteller creates a story that can range from sharing personal experience, to researching community issues, to assuming the persona of a historical or literary figure. A dynamic way for students to practice a range of skills, digital storytelling involves writing, editing, speaking, visual communication, and research. When students develop and show their stories in class they are contributing ripe opportunities to navigate issues that affect us all personally, socially and culturally-for example, the emotional impact of our identities such as class, race, gender, religion, physical ability and sexuality. Join us in a unique opportunity to see and discuss a wide range of digital stories by students and faculty from LaGuardia and beyond. We'll see how the stories can incorporate autobiography, research projects, and group collaboration while offering students a dynamic way to explore material in a variety of disciplines. Together we'll explore the many ways that digital storytelling projects may be used as tools for inviting students to bring their own experiences to the classroom, and to serve as a springboard for exploring controversial issues in an educational environment.
Presenters: Liz Iannotti (The English Language Center, ACE), Carolyn Henner-Stanchina (College Now), Erika Heppner (Humanities), Nya Naikyemi Odedefaa Manyansa (Workforce Education Center, ACE), Ros Orgel (Center for Teaching and Learning), Elizabeth Riker (Center for Immigrant Education and Training, ACE), and Priscilla Stadler (Center for Teaching and Learning)
Room: E-234MUSIC AS A CATALYST FOR CHALLENGING FEMALE IMAGES IN POP CULTURE
This presentation will demonstrate ways students' passion for music can inform alternate representations of the female image in pop culture. The presenter will demonstrate how music can motivate students' critical evaluation of sexism in pop culture. In consideration of the contested view of young women in music videos, the genre of music can be used as a catalyst for meaningful discussion and changes in the way women are portrayed in the public space of entertainment. Use of carefully selected music videos can serve as the impetus for discussions of sexism currently visible in our society. This presentation aims to share ways to engage students in a critical assessment of sexism rampant in the entertainment sector of pop culture today.
Presenter: Carolyn Sterling-Deer (Education and Language Acquisition)
Room: E-250PREPARING FOR DIFFICULT DIALOGUES: UNDERSTANDING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE MODEL AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION STYLES
This presentation aims to introduce Intercultural Competence Model(s) and intercultural simulation activities to our fellow professors in order to prepare students for controversial topics, such as race or religion, discussed in the classrooms. Through understanding Intercultural Competence Model(s) and engaging in intercultural simulation activities, students will be able to build their intercultural empathy and embrace cultural diversity in a respectful manner. The presentation will focus on Intercultural Competence Model(s); intercultural simulation activities; Eastern vs. Western communication styles; and case studies in intercultural sensitivity.
Presenters: Pei-Wen Lee and Patricia Sokolski (Humanities)
Room: E-262THE "R" WORD: TALKING ABOUT RELIGION IN AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
The Difficult Dialogues Project has three components: a year-long faculty seminar, a digital story-telling component, and a round of campus/community dialogues on religious diversity. In this workshop presenters will lead a small "study circle" discussion on religious diversity, designed to allow participants to experience the model for dialogue that will be used on campus and in the community this year. The study circles will be part of the College's Difficult Dialogues Initiative, which was funded by the Ford Foundation. Presenters will model the opening session of a study circle in which participants talk about why the issue of religious diversity and academic freedom is important to them, how they first learned about faith, spirituality or religion, their own backgrounds and experiences and how issues of faith and religious diversity impact their lives and their work at LaGuardia. Presenters will provide information about the project and describe how faculty, staff and students can become involved in the year ahead.
Presenters: Robert Kahn (Grants Development Office) and Rosemary A. Talmadge (Office of the President)
Room: E-147TALKING ABOUT CLASS IN THE CLASSROOM
Explicit discussions of class can be a useful pedagogical tool in a course focused on critical thinking. Engaging questions about how class works on multiple levels forces all of us to think critically about the world in which we live; it forces us to evaluate the assumptions and power dynamics that shape our relationships to our experiences and identities. This session is designed to address effective strategies to talk about class in the classroom. Each presentation will examine how to have productive conversations with students and each other about the complicated and layered meanings of class.
Moderator: Karen Miller (Social Science)
Presenters: Nancy Berke (English), Evelyn Burg (Communication Skills), Steven Lang (Social Science), John F. Shean (Social Science) and Sigmund Shen (English)
Room: E-144TEACHING IN A TIME OF WAR
This workshop will explore the challenge of using student experiential, cultural, and social knowledge as a starting point for discussion and examination of the foreign and domestic consequences of the Bush Administration's "War on Terrorism." Pedagogical strategies designed to challenge pre-conceptions; stimulate critical and reflective thinking; encourage exploration of alternative perspectives; and increase activism will be elucidated. The panel will demonstrate how the rich international and cultural diversity of LaGuardia students can be utilized as an entry point for examination of the consequences of the "War on Terrorism" for not only the American people, but for the peoples of the world. The necessity of linking academic study to the real world of conflict, its causes, and the possibility of just solutions, is the challenge this panel will address.
Presenters: Timothy Coogan (Social Science), Terence Julien (Social Science), Donald Monaco (Social Science) and Leonard Vogt (English)
Room: E-258WHO'S ASIAN AMERICAN ANYWAY? AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN IN AMERICA?
A panel of faculty, staff and students of Asian heritage will provide insights into their experiences of straddling two cultures either because of the internal or externally assigned identity of "Asian-American." The presenters will discuss what the term "Asian American" means to them; how they perceive themselves versus how American society seems to perceive them; how living in two cultures impacts different aspects of their lives at school, work, or home, and in terms of religion and community concerns. This panel discussion will showcase the tremendous diversity within the group that the American culture labels as "Asian," and the breadth of the experiences encountered by this diverse group. It will provide an understanding for faculty, staff and students of the issues of identity, expectations and stereotypes that "Asian Americans" deal with at home and the outside world. It is hoped that these insights will allow students, not just those of Asian heritage, to understand their own plight, as well as enhance faculty and staff understanding of issues faced by students and colleagues.
Presenters: Joyce O. Moy (Office Of Economic Development, ACE) and Kyoko Toyama (College Discovery/Counseling)
Room: E-146