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Northern Illinois University plans sparked workshops for staff on ‘white fatigue’, ‘anti-racism’, ‘decolonization in the classroom’
- The Academy’s Faculty of Cultural Equity and Competence will focus on access, equity and inclusion
- Participants ‘will undergo critical self-reflection of internalized messages and biases’
- They will also gain a better understanding of the “historical and social context of issues related to social injustice, inequality, and oppression.”
Northern Illinois University (NIU) is set to host a series of sessions for faculty and instructors on topics such as decolonizing teaching and learning and understanding and reframing resistance for equity in the classroom.
The Faculty of the Academy of Cultural Competence and Equity (FACCE) will focus on access, equity and inclusion.
Participants will be able to join a series of monthly workshops during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters or a week-long summer institute in the summer of 2023.
NIU faculty experts will talk about making classrooms and teaching more inclusive.
The College of Cultural Equity and Competence Academy at Northern Illinois University (pictured) will focus on access, equity, and inclusion, giving educators the opportunity to explore topics such as culturally relevant leadership skills and antiracism.
Pictured: Northern Illinois University President Lisa C. Freeman (center) and colleagues
The first session of the 2023 academic year will take place on January 27 and will explore forms of resistance that can arise in classrooms, such as white guilt, white fragility, and white fatigue.
Workshop titles include The Act of Decolonizing: Examining Classroom Spaces and Curricula Through a Lens of Justice, Anti-Racism: Tracing the Roots, Persistence and Countering a Racial Hierarchy, and Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality in our teaching and learning contexts.
Another workshop focuses on ‘Working through and with our implicit biases’.
The NIU web page for the academy curriculum includes detailed learning objectives.
Those who participate will gain a better understanding of the ‘historical and social context of issues related to social injustice, inequality and oppression’.
They will also ‘undertake critical self-reflection of internalized messages and biases’ and ‘apply anti-racism and decolonization as frameworks for pedagogical practice and curriculum development’.
The first session of the 2023 academic year will take place on January 27 and will explore forms of resistance that can arise in classrooms, such as white guilt, white fragility, and white fatigue.
NIU faculty experts will talk about making classrooms and teaching more inclusive
The NIU web page for the academy curriculum includes detailed learning objectives
A FACCE Monthly Series Certificate of Completion is awarded to participants who attend seven of the fall and spring semester sessions, or who successfully complete the 2023 Summer Academy.
At least 236 colleges or universities have some form of required training of students in courses on ideas related to critical race theory (CRT), according to a database with information from more than 500 institutions.
Among them are 149 institutions that have some form of mandatory training for staff or faculty, with 138 mandatory school-wide curricular requirements.
In December, the student government at the University of Oregon made a proposal that would require anyone earning a bachelor’s degree to take a course in Critical Race Theory.
The school, which serves 18,604 college students and receives an endowment of $912.5 billion from taxpayers, requires courses that teach inequality or global perspectives, but this would be the first requirement directly related to CRT.
Isaiah Boyd, a political science student and president of the Associated Students at the University of Oregon, presented the plan at the university’s board of trustees meeting.
Northern Illinois University has been contacted for comment.