Category: Teaching
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Teaching Racial Justice in the face of white supremacy
Watching white supremacists and extremists breach Capitol Hill on Wednesday, January 6,2021, I wavered between disbelief and feeling like all of this was so predictable. After all, 4 years of a regime that leaned into racism, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, violence and fascism, emboldened white extremists. Even the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump flagged…
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Summer 2020: Final Project Round Up
I endeavor to create a class for my students that will inspire and motivate them to create projects that extend the life of the sociology we learn in class, to the world beyond our class. Whether that class is in a physical room or online (because The ‘Rona), I have tried my very best to…
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Beyond Final Papers, Beyond the Classroom
In the past few years, I’ve invested in assigning creative final projects for my upper division classes. Across the three institutions I’ve taught at as a tenure-track professor, the risk is high (because students loathe group work so they’re always giving me side-eye for assigning a group project as a requirement and sometimes it ends…
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What do you write after a 2-year blog silence?
I haven’t published anything on this blog for a while now. And mostly, it’s kinda like when you had beef with your friend in high school and then you just don’t talk for a long time and then it becomes real awkward to even think about talking and then the distance just grows so you…
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The Presentation of Dave in Everyday Life
Two nights ago, R and I, along with some friends in Portland, went to go see Dave Chappelle on his new comedy tour. It was my first time seeing a comedy show live. I’d followed Dave’s career from The Chappelle Show and was always inspired by the way he kept it real about race…
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C. Wright Mills and The Wu Tang Clan
The Wu Tang Clan C. Wright Mills In the first week of my Intro to SOC class, I assigned students an essay called, “Society’s Impact On You” to help them apply what C. Wright Mills calls, “The Sociological Imagination.” Before I set them off to write this biographical exercise in the sociological imagination (teacher note:…
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Class Discussion on Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Lesson objectives: Identify the main points and critiques of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill Analyze the logics and critiques of the bill Explore the sociological links between immigration and race in the current contemporary political debate Resources: Students will have watched the film, “Lost in Detention” and read the below articles outlining the CIR bill…
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Learning Online
In some respects as an Instructional Technology Fellow, I really understand what its like to improve classes with technology both for undergraduates and for professors. I see how taking advantage of young people’s dexterity with the internet and their “gadgets” can actually be helpful for learning. But I am totally uneasy with the the intimacy…
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Analog Girl in a Digital World
On the front page of the NYTimes is an article about the role of technology and student learning/teacher’s teaching. The article has an alarming affect, I was nervous about my use of the nets and computer devices as soon as I reached the bottom of page one. And then I continued. The author, Matt Ritchel,…
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