Nurturing Change Agents: Teaching About Structural Inequality Through Service-Learning

Format

Individual Presentation

Presenters

Christen H. CloughertyFollow

First Presenter's Institution

Nobis Project

First Presenter’s Email Address

christen@nobisproject.org

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Christen Clougherty, Ph.D. is the Founder and Executive Director of the Nobis Project, a non-profit educational organization that focuses on developing educators’ capacity to foster reciprocal and meaningful community partnerships, build cultural responsive classrooms, and promote a social justice approach to service-learning. Clougherty has over twenty years of experience as an educator and administrator in community organizations, K-12 public, charter and independent schools, and colleges/universities. Christen received her Ph.D. in Quaker Studies from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom where she completed her doctoral research on the synthesis of experiential education, service-learning, creative-process theory, and global citizenship education.

Location

Session Eight Breakouts

Strand #1

Head: Academic Achievement & Leadership

Strand #2

Heart: Social & Emotional Skills

Relevance

Implementing meaningful service-learning projects requires that we prepare ourselves and our students to engage in critical conversations about equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice. This workshop explores the Nobis Big Ideas framework for teaching about social issues, including classroom examples and hands-on activities. As educators, we must first examine our personal experiences and understandings of power, history, and relationships to prepare ourselves, and then our students, to fully understand our shared fate and social responsibility.

Brief Program Description

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Explore L. Watson’s idea of interconnectedness as it relates to social justice. Leave with experiential activities to take back to your classroom and tools for engaging students in advocacy.

Summary

This workshop explores Lilla Watson’s famous saying, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” As educators, we must first examine our personal experiences and understandings of power, history, and relationships to prepare ourselves, and then our students, to fully understand our shared fate and social responsibility. The service-learning process often brings up conversations and dialogue within our schools, classrooms, and with community partners around social injustices and structural inequality. How do we use service-learning to better understand the interconnectedness of our lives and cultures?

During this interactive workshop participants hear stories from educators on how they fold the above ideas into their service-learning or classroom work using the Nobis Big Ideas Social Justice Framework. This presentation demonstrates tools for educators on how to support students in talking about race, class, equity and power. Participants explore the model through reflection, sharing practices, and brainstorming ways to change, or enhance their curriculum.

Participants will:

• Learn tools for fostering critical conversations about equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice in our schools and classrooms.
• Have conversations with other educators about how to foster reflective and active listening between students and community partners as well as between teacher and community partner.
• Experience activities that engage students in addressing global challenges in a way that honors and celebrates cultural differences.
• Receive a free copy of the Nobis Global Action Service-Learning ebook including lesson examples across K-12

Evidence

In our increasingly globalized society, young people need an education that prepares them to become informed, active, and responsible global citizens, both at home and abroad. Similarly, teachers struggle to have critical conversations about equity, inclusion, diversity and global justice in the classroom. In order to do this work, teacher need to know about the local, national, and global communities in which they live and work. As educators, we need to address the fundamental ‘why’ of teaching, the profound and transformative possibility that is education, and the moral imperative we have to effect such transformative classrooms. Andrew Delbanco argues that students “ . . . may still be deterred from sheer self-interest toward a life of enlarged sympathy and civic responsibility” (44). Educators need to make tangible students’ being “able to see the world through another’s eyes” (Delbanco). This session explores a service-learning model that builds educators’ skills and confidence in teaching and preparing students and teachers for these discussions.

The research-based and teacher-tested service-learning model presented in this session enables deep classroom discourse about poverty, race, class, power, and privilege through a global lens. What is unique about this presentation is its introduction to a process that fosters conversations and dialogue within our schools and classrooms around global citizenship. We recognize that you cannot talk about our global interconnectedness, our shared fate and our social responsibility without first looking at our personal experiences and understandings of power, history, and relationships. The approach shared in this session is beneficial for students, but also for educators and schools seeking to become more culturally responsive to their students as well as to their wider community. By using this method of self-discovery we challenge traditional ways of viewing the world and look for sustainable changes that benefit humanity.

The Nobis Global Action Model and the Nobis Big Ideas framework were collaboratively developed by educators, scholars, and community partners. These models and accompanying lesson plans are freely available to all and widely used by educators teaching pre-kindergarten through higher education throughout the United States.

Delbanco, Andrew. College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be. Princton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Learning Objective 1

Learn tools for fostering critical conversations about equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice in our schools and classrooms.

Learning Objective 2

Have conversations with other educators about how to foster reflective and active listening between students and community partners as well as between teacher and community partner.

Learning Objective 3

Engage students in addressing global challenges in a way that honors and celebrates cultural differences.

Keyword Descriptors

Structural inequality, race, power, privilege, social justice, service-learning, civic engagement

Presentation Year

2022

Start Date

3-9-2022 9:45 AM

End Date

3-9-2022 11:00 AM

Recommended Citation

Clougherty, Christen H., "Nurturing Change Agents: Teaching About Structural Inequality Through Service-Learning" (2022). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 76.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2022/2022/76