Overview
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to help you apply your knowledge and understanding of the course content in a creative manner. It provides you with the opportunity to take initiative in your learning and experiment with ways of “owning your learning” in a motivating and stimulating way. It allows for alternative forms of engaging with the course material, while still exploring educational inequalities.
Skills
This assignment will help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in your academic and professional life:
- Accessing and collecting information from appropriate primary (i.e. interviews, pictures) and secondary (i.e. academic articles) sources
- Synthesizing information to develop an informed exploration of an educational topic
- Reporting on your work through a video or audio narration of the process and the product of your work
Task
You are asked to take up the role of the Editor of the monthly newsletter of a non-profit organization and create a digital newsletter (as a form of activism) that explores and promotes awareness on a phenomenon of educational inequality that you personally care about.
Criteria for Success
- Given that this is a form of activism, it is important first to consider the overall message of your newsletter, as well as your target audience. Think that this is not an assignment intended for your instructor or your TA but for a specific audience; this will give a purpose to your work. So, the first thing to consider is what is the organization that you represent? Think of an educational issue that is close to your heart? What change do you wish to see most in educational institutions (elementary or middle/high schools or college)? And finally, What purpose do you want to give to your message or why are you creating this newsletter (other than the fact that you are required to do this to pass this class!)? Is it just informative or a call for action? What are your goals? What do you hope to accomplish for your readers?
- Both the content and format (the details of the presentation of the material) of the newsletter will mostly be decided by you. You are encouraged to use primarily your inquisitiveness, sensibility and creativity for this assignment.
- Your newsletter must incorporate visuals and text. The text has to grapple with ideas, concepts and terms that were introduced in the course material. This is a creative assignment, but it's also a scholarly one.
- Your overarching goal is to present a phenomenon related to educational inequality that you care about and that you identify(ied) in your daily life as a student (in your past or present experiences). You are therefore asked to make use of the course content in order to critically evaluate the aspects of educational institutions that produce/contribute to this form of inequality.
My hope is that you will use your own curiosity and interest in your choice and explore your inner creative self and trust your own “funds of knowledge” to make learning personally meaningful for you.
Possible Topics
- Educational or resource disparities with respect to first-generation or transfer students, students of color, or LGBTQIA+ students
- School funding discrepancies
- Sexual harassment on campus
- Discipline gap
- Housing inequalities
- Food insecurity
- Mental health disparities
- Achievement gap
- Campus climate with respect to students of color, LGBTQIA+ experiences
- Racial/ethnic/gender inequalities
- Tracking/Testing