Meeting Facilitators: Dr. Ryuko Kubota and Ashley Moore
This term, we will use antiracist and decolonial perspectives to deconstruct and reimagine the concept of “excellence” within (i) scholarship, (ii) teaching and (iii) service.
In this second meeting of the series, we will focus on the construct of “excellence” in teaching. Below you’ll find three short texts that we hope you’ll read before the meeting, the Zoom link, and the questions we’ll be using to stimulate our discussions.
Stimulus Texts
We hope you’ll find 20 minutes to engage with these two stimulus texts before the meeting on the 17th. Our first discussion question will ask participants to share ideas that resonated with them from these (or other) texts that examine the intersections of race with teaching practice.
- This 14-minute video featuring faculty from Queen’s University discussing their approaches to decoloniality in teaching*
- A 5-minute report on a study that shows how having an Asian-sounding last name affected the scores students gave their university teachers on the website Rate My Professors. The study, published in Language and Society, is by Nic Subtirelu, now a faculty member at Georgetown University.
Further Texts
- What I Learned in Class Today, a 20-minute video in which Indigenous students at UBC candidly share some of their classroom experiences with teachers and peers. Made in 2007, this resource is still extremely relevant to today’s classrooms.
- This 18-minute video in which students at Queen’s University discuss what decoloniality means to them in terms of the courses they take*
* These videos are from the excellent Inclusive Teaching course put together by the UBC Equity & Inclusion Office. There are five modules that you can engage with at your own pace: (1) Power, privilege and bias; (2) Conversations on decolonization; (3) Introduction to inclusive teaching practice; (4) Universal design for learning; (5) Navigating difficult conversations. If you haven’t already, we hope you’ll explore the resources!