Conference Theme: 
Navigating the Ever-Changing Classroom Landscape

The Ramapo College FRC and IDC are co-sponsoring the 3rd Annual Faculty Teach & Share Conference to be held virtually on Monday, May 16, and the morning of Tuesday, May 17. We will collectively share what we have learned this year as we experienced yet another version of the teaching environment. We will share best practices, create a space for dialogue and discuss relevant issues in effective teaching and learning. Join us to be part of this important conversation. Please register below with your Ramapo email address.

Register for Day 1

Day 1 Schedule – May 16

Moderators: Tammi Redd, FRC Director; and Michael Bitz, IDC Director

1-1:30 p.m.

Creative Use of Breakout Rooms to Maximize Student Online Engagement

Engaging students in discussion can be challenging when we are live and in-person in the classroom. Facilitating online conversation and participation can be even more difficult. This session will explore a number of breakout room techniques for maximizing student contributions to the online classroom, improving student confidence, and fostering a more connected and engaged online community.

Presenter: Colleen Martinez (SSHS)

1:30-2 p.m.

Precarious Pedagogy: Teaching Critical Pedagogy as Anti-CRT Movements Attempt to Shape Education

Embedded within the Ramapo College General Education curriculum is EDUC 211: Student Literacy Corps. As stated in the course catalog, “This urban education course is designed to explore issues of social justice in education with particular emphasis on urban education. Issues of empowerment through education are linked to Paulo Freire’s philosophy and pedagogy.” This course is open to all undergraduates and, also, post-baccalaureate students in Teacher Education. Although this course has been required within Teacher Education since the late 1990’s, only recently has its content come under attack. The anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement questions the inclusion of such words as, “diversity,” and “critical.” Thus, the teaching of this course has become politicized within mainstream discourses.

In this course, as part of one assignment, “Urban School Studies Critical Reflection and Discussion,” students facilitate learning groups around Critical Pedagogical texts in a classroom activity similar to a Jigsaw. In this session, I will discuss both the activity as one that is promising for post-pandemic pedagogies and, also, its implications as students navigate public discourses around the teaching and learning of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversities. I will share the assignment outline and text excerpts utilized in the assignment. As the session facilitator, I will engage participants in a discussion around the precariousness of teaching “anti-CRT” pedagogies in 2022.

Presenter: Sharon Leathers (SSHS)

2-2:30 p.m.

A Unique Approach to Learning in Teams

Team projects help students develop collaborative skills. Groups have the ability to tackle more complex problems than individuals and group presentations help other students learn new things from each other. However team projects in the classroom are known to have problems such as Poor communication, Unequal contribution and conflicts in the group. This results in faculty adopting arbitrary measures such as different grades for each member of the team based on their contribution. Faculty however do not have visibility in the team dynamics and have to rely on inputs from team members which creates an environment of distrust and conflict in the team. The presentation will discuss an approach to team presentation and report that brings in more transparency for individual contribution. A new model for a simulation of classroom presentation will also be discussed.

Presenter: Nikhil Varma (ASB)

2:30-3 p.m.

Creating Safe Environments for Delicate Topics

Training, managers, and business leaders, to strategize in extreme scenarios in ethical and socially responsible ways has become a fascinating yet challenging field of study. This makes it even more critical to educate our current and future workforce to understand and apply these models appropriately by designing classroom environments that are non-judgmental and safe for them to voice all their ideas freely so that they can begin course-correcting without judgement. Three short exercises will be presented to show how we could introduce the idea of unconscious biases and a need for shared meaning to build constructive strategies that will have higher probabilities of working.

Presenter: Malavika Sundararajan (ASB)

Please register with your Ramapo email address.

Register for Day 1