A workshop and lunch discussion with Dr. Matt Ouellett
Workshop:
Thursday, October 8 – 3:30-5:15 p.m.
Belk Pavilion, Room 201
RSVP to catl@elon.edu by Oct 5
Lunch Discussion:*
Friday, October 9 – 12:15 to 1:30
Belk Pavilion, Room 200
*Lunch provided to those who RSVP by 12:00 noon Oct 5
to Barbara Guy (bguy@elon.edu)
About the Workshop
Teaching difficulty: Integrating intellectual and emotional engagement with controversial topics, a workshop with Dr. Matt Ouellett. Controversy, conflict, and emotion regularly appear in our classes. Sometimes these emerge from the content we teach (health care policy, climate change, evolution, ethnicity, or …) and sometimes they arise from the ways we teach (group assignments, immersive experiences in the community or the lab, or…). This workshop is designed to prompt careful thinking and effective teaching practice about controversial and emotionally-charged learning situations. How can we best help students, and ourselves, learn in, and navigate through, experiences that are interpersonally or emotionally difficult?
About the Luncheon Discussion
A discussion about teaching to students who have strongly held beliefs and opinions about a topic, but who also have little relevant content knowledge. The discussion will build on two articles that participants should read before lunch. One article focuses on teaching Islam, while the other article (a larger digital file that will be emailed to you when you RSVP) considers how student political beliefs affect teaching and learning.
This lunch is one in a series of conversations about Teaching Democratic Thinking. The discussion will be facilitated by Stephen Bloch-Schulman and Jessie Moore of Elon and with Matt Ouellett.
About Dr. Ouellett
Matt Ouellett, Ph.D., directs the Center for Teaching at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and teaches in education and social work at both UMass and Smith. He is the author of Teaching Inclusively (2005), and his research on these topics has been funded by grants from the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Studies.