 Okay, so we have lots of great introductions happening in the chat. If you haven't opened the chat, that is definitely worth scrolling through. Great turnout. Thank you all. This is the first webinar for the 2021 school year for CCC OER and we are really fortunate to have a great panel that's going to be talking about decolonizing the course. So a great topic, great panel to start off this school year. The plan for today's session is to, we'll do a quick bit of introductions first, then we'll introduce what we mean by decolonizing the course. Then we'll hear from our three speakers, and we'll have a little bit of Q&A time between each speaker and as well at the end if we have time to do that. In the interim, if you put questions in the chat, I will take notes of those and bring them to our speakers when there's time to answer them. So chat is a great place to ask questions. Could you please make this record? Yes, we will be recording this and it'll be posted on the website as well. Thank you so much. Okay, our speakers for today. Justine Hope Blau has been teaching a memoir writing workshop at Lehman College in the Bronx with 2015. In 2020 she published an anthology of her students compelling memoir vignettes, My Slipper Floated Away, which is available for free on the CUNY academic comments. Justine has sold an option screenplays and has written three non-fiction books, including her memoir Scattered Hand Whistle Press 2012. Her writing has been published in Rolling Stone, Oprah Magazine, CBSnews.com, and The Huffington Post. She holds an MSA in screenwriting from Columbia Film School, has raised two kids, now grown, and is obsessed with saving our democracy. Heather Blau as of August has become the coordinator of library services for two campuses at Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Virginia. Before arriving at Reynolds, Heather spent six years in positions focusing on online learning and OER. Recent highlights of her work include working on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at Southern New Hampshire University and developing an embedded library program for a large distance learning population at Northern Virginia Community College. Heather has presented locally and nationally on the topics of OER and distance librarianship and is the 2017 recipient of ACRL's Distance Learning Librarieship Award. Most recently, Heather was selected to be a curriculum designer and presenter for ACRL's OER and Affordability Roadshow. Joe Brinkard is a math teacher and former instructional coach at Front Range Community College, the largest community college in Colorado. This campuses spread from North Denver metro area up to Northern Colorado. Joe works with a group of math teachers across the state on a grant through the Colorado Community College system and the Center for Urban Education to explore achievement gaps for racial and ethnic minorities and math classes. When he's not focused on his class and students, Joe keeps busy with two kids, a tween, and almost tween and keeps them from killing each other, which is always a task, I'm sure. So welcome everybody. Thank you all for joining us. A little bit of background about CCC OER, which is the group that puts on these monthly webinars. The Community College Consortium for OER is a community of practice dedicated to promoting the adoption and development of open educational resources to enhance teaching and learning. We are founded to support the Community College mission of open access through creating awareness and development of openly licensed low cost educational materials to make college more affordable and accessible for all students. We provide regularly scheduled online and face to face workshops for faculty and staff who are engaged in OER projects. CCC OER has 93 members across 36 states, and we would like to welcome our newest members, Angelina College in Texas. So thank you. Before we jump into our presentations, we just want to spend just a little bit of time discussing what we mean when we say decolonizing the course. And what this is really focused on is undoing the legacy of colonialism that has brought us to where we are today. So a little bit about colonialism, right? It is based on assumptions of a cultural hierarchy. The assumption being that some cultures are superior to others and that is why colonialism is a valid approach. And it's also the foundation of our current culture. And while we have moved away from some of these assumptions and our educational systems have evolved, many of the assumptions of colonialism have remained in our curriculum. Some hidden, some less hidden, but a lot of them are there and we may not even see them. And so the idea of decolonizing our course is that we are agreeing to take on an active and ongoing process that requires a few different components. One is we as educators are dedicated to identifying and unlearning the assumptions that we have picked up as we went through our educational process. Because those hidden assumptions are things that we absorbed as we went through our education. We are also dedicated to seeking and hearing marginalized voices. So those voices that we may not have heard in the past or those that are generally not heard, many have heard with a capital H, voices that are generally not heard. Not only listen, but we also seek them out. And more broadly and more holistically agreeing to dismantle systems of oppression as we find them and can do something about them. So let's just a little bit about the concept that started us down this path of decolonizing the course. Okay, and with that, justine, it's all you. Hi, I teach memoir workshops at Lehman College in the Bronx. And I'm here because I published this collection of my student memoir collection, memoir essays on the CUNY Academic Commons. It's called My Slipper Floated Away, New American Memoirs. When I started teaching five years ago, I realized that my students didn't always appreciate how compelling their own stories were. They wrote about growing up hearing gunshots and sirens at night, playing basketball using fire escapes as their hoops. And many of my students are Dominican and they would talk about dancing at Thanksgiving. It's just a concept I never thought of. One student wrote about how he and his brother fended for themselves when they were only 11 and 14 years old after their father was deported. At first, I thought my students needed to read classic memoirs, so they'd have mainstream cultural references and show how educated they were. And so I put The Ribers Club on the syllabus by Mary Carr, This Boy's Life. But quickly I saw how much they appreciated reading memoirs whose lives they could relate to. Tana Hisikotas' memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, is one of those. So my students love that he is a journalist and author. He won MacArthur Grant, but he also wrote the first Black Panther comic book. When we would parse his language, they would see how he combines scholarly reading with ghetto phrasing. And that excited them. It showed them that their own stories have a place in American culture. And that opened them up to the pleasure of using literary techniques to create artful narratives. Please read an excerpt from Charles Blow's memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. He grew up poor in rural Louisiana. His mother worked in chicken farms while going to school and becoming a teacher. He is a distinguished New York Times journalist who has bravely written in his memoir about bisexuality and is always a warrior against white supremacy. He is such a relevant memoirs for my students to be reading. One of my students told me that she even got all her friends to follow him on Twitter. And I just think that's very powerful. Here's an anecdote from last year. I learned two of my Muslim students would politely excuse themselves in the middle class to go pray, and they missed a lot of class time. So I wanted to handle the situation sensitively. So I talked to a Muslim chaplain. I'm in a darwish. She explained that Muslim students had to go to another building to pray in a safe place. So I asked the English department if my students could use the copy room on the same floor as our classroom to pray and they readily agreed. It cut down on their time away from class. And the chaplain also gave me two travel-sized prayer rugs to give to my students. They were so appreciative of this gesture and it really helped to establish trust in the class. Decolonization is about taking power back and I interpret that broadly. In the Bronx there's a shortage of mental health providers. So I always encourage my students to take advantage of free counseling at college and I tell them this may be their only chance to get free therapy. And everyone should have it. Trauma comes up a lot with my students. Some students left behind trauma in other countries when they moved here, only to face staggering difficulties in America. Barriers to unemployment, drug laws that target non-white people. Some of my students, many of them, grew up with parents who worked long hours in menial jobs and had long commutes to work. So in every class my students bonded over their efforts to transcend trauma, especially through the power of storytelling. So this summer after two years of work, I published the anthology. My slipper floated away. New American memoirs. The manifold platform. That's a platform used by CUNY. And during the process I had a librarian come and do a session with my students to teach them about copyright. She explained all the possibilities to them. They listened carefully, took it very seriously, and they agreed to allow open access for non-commercial use. So just to clarify, my students had agency over how their life stories would be distributed. The process of publishing on the Academic Commons was arduous. I thought it would be as simple as posting a PDF on the Academic Commons. It was not. It was a lot of formatting, filtering. And I know a lot of librarians are in the audience today and I just wanted to say I think it would be great to establish a system of paying maybe computer science students to help people who want to publish on the Academic Commons. I would actually gladly have paid out of pocket to get some help. But the librarian at Lehman, Stacey Katz, was extremely helpful to me. My students can now cite that they've been published on the Academic Commons in their CVs, on their grad school applications, and for job applications. So they're very proud of it and I'm proud of that. Please feel free to use these stories. If you know ESL teachers, they can use these stories as reading material for free. They're fresh perspectives and we think millions of people will enjoy reading them. Thank you so much. Thank you, Justine. Yeah, it is a beautiful book. Thank you for sharing that with us. I have a few moments if anyone has questions, feel free to unmute or we can save them for the end. But while folks are processing, I did want to give you a chance to ask questions. Well, we will have time at the end as well. So Heather, I think I am going to turn it over to you, but there is one quick question. Can I have the link he pasted in the chat. Absolutely. I will do that as as we turn this over. Okay. Actually, Laila, I see your hand is up. Sorry, Heather, not to. Did you have a question, Laila? Actually, yes, I'm sorry. Not to interrupt, but I didn't have a question for Justine about the age range of her students and how the colonization, is it addressed within some of the essays as well? So those are just a couple of questions. My students range from 18 to 40s, mostly 20s and 30s. I'm thinking about your question. Can you ask that again, how is decolonization addressed in their essays? Yes, because some students may be coming from colonized countries. Does that factor into how they interpreted their situations? Either way, they sound fascinating. I was just curious. Sure. It's so varied. I have students who in their home countries may have had servants, and then they come here and it's such an adjustment to be at the bottom of the hierarchy in America. I have students who grew up here, but just don't realize all the resources available to them. The whole Black Lives Matter movement is very much on their minds, and I tell them that we're in the middle of a golden age of African American intellectualism, and I want them to be aware of it. Also, you know, all kinds of writing people of color. It's a very exciting time. At the same time, they, my own students are just becoming, many of them are only just becoming aware of their power. It does. Thank you. It sounds great. It sounds like it'd be a good model for inspiring our own students. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, everyone can see my screen. My name is Heather Glicker, and I'm the coordinator of library services at Reynolds Community College in Brickinburg again. And basically, I'm here to talk about, well, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna jump right into it. Opportunity. I like to start with a standard plan to include librarians in your OER initiatives. And I was so grateful to hear Justine talk about how she included her librarian in in her initiative, because that's what that's what we're here for. And I think one of the most important roles of a librarian is being a link between resources and the people building courses. So don't forget about your librarians include them. We would love that. Equity is about the money. Your institution probably has a video similar to this one that I created for Northern Virginia Community College a couple of years ago. And, you know, in these videos, you talk to students and you find out, you know, the extraordinary amount of money that they spend on textbooks. And the point of these videos that you see all over the internet is that OER will make the cost of college equal for all students by eliminating the cost of textbooks and thus eliminating hardship. We use these videos to market OER initiatives to the institution. The financial aspect of equity was and is one of the strongest reasons OER has become a powerful movement in higher ed. We're eliminating or extremely reducing the costs associated with taking college courses. And we don't want the financial costs of textbooks to negatively impact student success because they can't afford a textbook. And then they end up, you know, relying on using a library copy or borrowing a classmates copy or deciding not to take a course at all. But equity isn't just about the money. In this sense, equity means treating each individual according to their needs. It's about meeting the individual needs of students so that everyone can attain the same. We're looking beyond the financial aspect of equity and we're thinking about intentional design. We're moving into the territory of diversity, equity and inclusion. It's not an easy one size fits all fix and working with teaching faculty and teams and instructional designers over the years. I think the challenges can be overwhelming to tackle all at once when you're building a course, you know, there are deadlines and daily responsibilities that you're dealing with. And so, you know, often working as a support to these groups, I would hear firsthand the frustrations in trying to produce a course with equitable equitable content and still meet all of those deadlines. I started seeing with the same stock photos being used over and over again, and they weren't representative of the student population. Though unintentional, no matter where your institution is, one would hope images used within courses represent some kind of diversity, whether that be race, gender, ability or size. So I say start small. And if you can't do anything else, start with images so that when a student opens their online class for the first time, they don't see the same stock photos that stereotype who students are and what they're meant to look like. This is a short activity that was actually presented during the CCC OER webinar in November of 2017 by Dr. Daphne Sikri. And I've made sure to link to the webinar here so you can go back and see how she presents it. And what I'd like you to do, if not now, is at some point open a new tab or use a mobile device and go to Google and then type hug or hugging and then click images to filter out everything else and see what results you get. Our searches may all yield different results, but what what I see are attractive people, some of diverse backgrounds, but mostly Caucasian. Now when we go to an open access image repository like Pixabay and many, many others out there and type in the same search, what results do you get? Again, I see attractive people, mostly Caucasian, maybe even less diversity than in the Google search. And this is when I decided to reach out to the CCC OER advisory email group and ask if anyone had come across image repositories focused on representing people of diversity to add to my running list that I was keeping. And while there are numerous content-built sites with filtering capabilities to assist in narrowing the search, I wanted to find more dedicated sites. And I've linked to the resulting blog post with a list of the links here, as well as I've got all the links in a separate slide later. These are some of my favorite repositories. The gender spectrum collection features images of trans and non-binary models that are authentic and you'll hear this word come up over and over and go beyond the cliches of putting on makeup or holding trans flags. This collection aims to help media outlets better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities, but people with careers, relationships, talents, home lives. They also have a very thorough and thoughtful guidelines section on how to avoid implicit bias, which I think should be recommended reading for anybody building courses and using images. Another one is the Disabled and Here website, and it talks about media portrayals of disability being one-dimensional and framed either through the lens of pity or inspiration form. The creators want to reclaim how they're depicted and feature disabled people with different diagnoses or lack of different body types, sexual orientations and gender identities who all reside in the Pacific Northwest. And it's also categorized. So we have LGBTQ plus themes, lifestyle, social and work. And although plus sides has a similar focus to present those authentic images. One to replace as people are quote doing normal things and existing, although makes a compelling plea that even though the attribution isn't required to use the photos. They ask that you give credit whenever possible so that others may find the collections. And this is something that I've started doing consistently, hoping that these clicks will need to continue content creation. You know, no matter what open access image repository I'm using I link back to it, and I use the title of the of the page. And that way I can very easily let people know where these images are coming from and show my support to the creators. And this is the slide with all of the DEI focused image repositories that I found thus far. And of course, they're always changing. There are always new ones out there that I that I'm being made aware of. And then unfortunately there are ones that disappear all of the list because they decide to start charging for the images, or they just disappear because of lack of support. So, as I started my presence in my part of the presentation. I would just like to say thank you for everyone who includes librarians because we really do want to be a part of these initiatives, and we want to be there to support everyone for courses, and this is one way that we can do that. Thank you very much. Thanks Heather, there were some really great comments about people trying out their search in the chat, and some of the results that they were getting. Yeah, it's kind of interesting so different people are getting different results I think part of that has to do with previous searches. Those are questions that I'm missing. If you have a question you can retype it or raise your hand about the image search. And there were a few more links to resources in the chat that were pretty cool. Yeah, and I encourage everybody if you're not a member of the CCC OER advisory group email to join them, because the more that we share these the better, right. You know, I don't want to be the keeper of the list. You know, so if we all if we all share these these image repositories, they will catch on and get support, and you know more people will know about them. And I believe we're going to be sharing these slides right so that everyone can have access to the links. Absolutely. Those will be posted within 24 hours on our website. Yep, and I think other than just kudos for the list and I agree with everyone that was saying that this is my go to when I look for pictures is otherwise it's hard to find images that represent our students so yeah thank you Heather for starting us on this discussion and creating that list. Okay, so Joe I think it is. All right, thank you so much Suzanne. Hi everybody. My name is Joe Brankert, and I'm a math teacher I almost feel like I'm like intruding in here on all of these literary discussions. But really I'm here to talk about my experiences working with the Center for Urban Education out of the University of Southern California. So I was fortunate enough to be a part of a grant that that we had with through the community college the Colorado Community College system to really evaluate our achievement gaps in our math classes throughout the state and and so when we first met with the representatives from Q, not the letter Q but CUE it took me a while to kind of recognize that but when we first met with them one of the first things they talked about was our syllabus. And I found that a little interesting because I had not really given my syllabus much thought. I've been teaching at the Community College for 12 years, you know it's been increasingly more of a of an administrative document something I have to do it's been mandated and and really standardized almost throughout the whole state. And just with very kind of formal language and and something that that most students didn't really read it used more as a reference document to you know find particular information. And I mean at this point it's it's now gotten to the point where it's 10 to 11 pages long with all of the necessary verbiage for for all of the class and if you look here on this slide. I've got an example of the start of my one of my syllabi for one of my classes this semester over here on the left. In talking with Q, I realized that really I mean the syllabus is one of the first documents it's one of the first things that we talk about in our semester and the important first first impressions are and realizing that if I'm using this document and I'm speaking with this that that very formal document is saying an awful lot about my views of our class and kind of setting a tone that really I a I hope I did not continue throughout this semester and be not really one that's very welcoming, especially of people who who are maybe first generation people who who do not or are not used to the trappings of formal education and and you know kind of that type of environment. I realized that I can't change the syllabus I have to have one of those. And I have to I, but I don't have to pass it out I don't have to really highlight it for my classes. And so my kind of haha was recognizing that you know what I need to have that on my learning management system and I need to point that out to my students that that is a reference for them to be able to see that if they have questions, but in the majority of cases there's really only a few things that my students need to reference in there regularly throughout the semester, and I compare all of that down and really make it much more of a much more nearer document as opposed to a window document so write it in a way and and bring images in in a way so that students are seeing themselves in it as opposed to further kind of enforcing that idea that you know that that maybe they don't belong maybe this isn't for them and so what you see on the right is is one of my welcome what I call welcome documents right I feel like there's a big difference between syllabus and welcome and that's what I label this document on the right is it is my welcome document and this is one side and then on the backside is our schedule of classes and that's it you know that's kind of how we start off our class you can see you've got one of those stock photos there in there but it does represent different you know people of different backgrounds and and and one of the biggest sections if you notice is that quote down on the bottom right and and I know a lot of you in the chat we're talking about the difficulty in finding images that reflect our student populations. It's very difficult as well to find quotes like people about math that are not from like old white Greek guys. And so if you if you see down here actually this class attracts a lot of unfortunate number of Latina students and so in this case I use a quote from Dr. Ellen Ochoa. Sorry, Ochoa who was the first Latina to go into space. So you know really kind of wanting to start our class off on that right foot and welcome students right away. But then recognizing that we have we have 15 week semesters that you know it's it's great to make that first impression, but really needing to continue with that throughout the semester and that's where kind of looking at the overall structure of what we're doing in the class throughout the semester and making sure that that mirrors my beliefs and sorry about that. But you know mirrors my my thoughts with wanting to decolonize this course and and give that power back to the students create this environment where we are constructing this knowledge together that it is not an authoritarian I am the sole dispenser of of knowledge but that we are as a community really building what we're talking about here and that can one of the powerful ways that I've kind of looked at this is creating almost a semester long list of all of the assignments everything that I'm asking my students to be writing out and doing including all of the assessments and and looking at each and every one of my students and how they are progressing in those assignments to see if there are any sort of patterns with traditionally minoritized students and how they are responding in these assignments and in these assessments. Also looking at what types of assessments not just going back to, well, when I was going through school right I had to take these tests and they you know had to be this particular way. So before looking at, you know, kind of this test has to be, you know, is is what your grade is and it tells you what, you know, kind of what your level of knowledge is, but no recognizing that that if that if we truly feel like we want to instill a growth mindset in our students and encourage them to work harder and to learn from their mistakes and really grow that having a test on September 16, where that grade can have an outsized impact on your grade at the end of the semester on December 14, and have that say your level of knowledge on these learning outcomes can be very detrimental and actually almost reinforce the idea of a fixed mindset and that and, you know, kind of without even a feel like Suzanne's definition of decolonizing a course at the beginning, you know, really kind of put that into perspective of, you know, kind of that, you know, just kind of implicit way that education can bring those biases in and and really kind of us as instructors making it incumbent on us to make intentional choices that will that will really help our minoritized students become part of this atmosphere and really thrive in that community. And so if we look at that community, kind of looking at it, not from that entire semester but now bringing it down into the classroom and what that classroom looks like. This next slide actually shows an example of a classroom observation that a few of us math teachers at our community college did some observations of our classrooms and rather than the more typical observation forms that really focus almost like a checklist on you know what did the teacher do this did the teacher do that really this observation worksheet is designed for the observer to really be focused on the students. So if you look each circle over here, this is basically a layout of the classroom and each circle represents one student and where they are sitting within the classroom. And if you notice at the top of the circle it says R dash or race or race or ethnicity, then gender and age and all of these are perceptions it's our, you know, perceived how the observer is perceiving these, which, which is how, you know, in, in many ways, our society might be perceiving these students right. And so, being able to look at not just where our students in the class, but what are the patterns with certain race and ethnicities and genders and ages, as far as where they're sitting within the classroom. And then if you notice also there are, there's a little kind of legend up here in the right of the asterisks are basically meaning when a student is raising their hand when they are engaging in the whole class discussion with the instructor. And, and I mean, invariably what ends up happening is those asterisks are all clustered right here, right in the middle if you notice the instructor is over here on the left. So these right here are in the front center right in front of the instructor. A lot of times the instructors that I've worked with, especially, especially new new instructors which for our community college we end up having a lot of turnover with instructors and and so working with new instructors. If you've got a bunch of hands that are right in front of you that are coming up. That's what you're going to focus on that's natural and you're going to feel like you're really reaching everyone because oh my gosh look at all these hands that are coming right up right in front of me. But what you're not going to see is the people in the back necessarily who as patterns kind of layout. In fact, I was working with one instructor who who had kind of two different the computer the instructor computer to move their slides was in the corner of the room and there were whiteboards on on the two walls that hit that corner. And so this instructor was really really proud because they were hitting both of those walls and going back and forth and really feeling like they were all around that classroom. But then when I did an observation like this and I showed them that the opposite corner the one corner where they never made it to that was the one area where they had a cluster of minoritized students and and that instructor was getting nowhere near them and recognizing that that though we might not. We as instructors at the front might not recognize the impact there that students will very much realize this recognize this and draw conclusions based on it. Conclusions that might not necessarily be true from the intention of the instructor, but is true from their experience in that corner of the room that is not. You know, kind of that is not proximal to the instructor so really recognizing you know using an observation tool similar to this that can really help and highlight for a teacher what the pattern is one more thing I wanted to mention about this. I don't know if you notice right here in the front of the room there's a bunch of kind of dashed lines back and forth. That's almost like if any of you are familiar with family circus cartoons every once in a while they have kind of the dotted lines the dashed lines of where the kids kind of roamed throughout the house in the neighborhood. This is how on this that we can designate where the instructor was in the kind of how they moved throughout the class and so where they were and and where they weren't. You know, kind of during during the time there so this can be a really helpful tool when talking with other teachers and when other teachers are visiting your class and they can show you. You know, kind of how how your patterns are because it's really hard to, you know, while you're focused on the class to, you know, kind of step out of yourself and see where you're going. And all of this is really important, but in the end when we're talking about trying to transfer the power in the classroom. Really what it comes down to is the student contributions and how how the students are engaged in the class and recognizing this idea that that it is incumbent on the teacher the teacher just naturally has the power in the classroom and so it is incumbent on them to do that. To create opportunities and recognizing that that merely pausing for 10 seconds to ask, are there any questions and then moving on is not a. It's not an authentic opportunity for for a lot of students to. To participate and to and to call as we saw in the observations and as you can see once you start noticing these kinds of things in many cases there are students who will take advantage of that opportunity, but they are. In vastly majority, the majority race and majority gender is is is really what's going to happen more often than not. I put this bullet structure here really thinking about and I had one experience where I was observing a college algebra class which is one of the lowest pass it has one of the lowest pass rates in the state. For us and and and quite possibly in the country it's it's kind of the the you know kind of math requirements for a lot of students. And so I was visiting this class and I noticed that the teacher was starting out with a whole group and had three or four. I think there I think it was like two females and two male white students right in the front who were just answering every single question raising their hand all the time and that in the back corner. There was a group of four Latin males Latinos who who were really disinterested. I mean they're leaning back in their chair. They're really not engaging at all. And then after the 10 minutes the teacher broke them up into groups and had them working on problems throughout the room moving throughout the room and working on different problems. It was amazing. It was a complete 180. Now all of a sudden that group of seemingly disinterested students in the back corner were now all about it. I mean they were other groups. There was maybe one or two students who were like leading the group and other students who were just kind of watching. I mean that group. Everyone was participating. Everyone was moving around. Everyone was working and and and I mean they were getting it right. So that teacher right like and when I talked to new teachers that you know one of the thoughts is well if I want to give students an opportunity and if you know they're not raising their hand to ask questions themselves. Maybe I should call on them. Maybe I can you know kind of maybe I can pull them in that way and and and there's definitely danger in that in you know kind of putting people on the spot and putting people in a very uncomfortable situation and that can really strain our relationship with our students. And so so how can we find an alternative structure right how can we provide an opportunity that's more authentic and that teacher had it down. She looked at you know she she made sure that she gave her students who were comfortable in a whole group setting. The opportunity to ask questions and contribute that way but then students who maybe were not comfortable in that situation. They could still engage in in the very next activity and and get that there and and I know a lot of teachers certainly at at universities and in some community colleges might have larger classrooms might have you know auditorium seating where it's difficult to kind of move around and to have grouping. But I it is possible and you can you know kind of move still move throughout an auditorium and require students to you know to interact with each other and get those kind of those group discussions really going. And then finally making sure and recognizing from the teachers perspective. You know how we reinforce our students with our feedback and the questions that we ask afterwards and the ways that we react when students contribute and bring in and so I wanted to kind of end this section with a quote from Dr Estella Ben Simone who is the founding director of the Center for Urban Education and I really likes that this was one of the aspects of working with Q that I really appreciated and and I am taking with me for the rest of my career my teaching career and this quote basically I wanted to transform racial equity from an ideal that was embraced in the abstract to something that was actionable and measurable. And so looking at these tools looking at the syllabus looking at the structure of your course looking at these opposite this observation tool that those are measurable tools that can then provide teachers with with an idea of actions to try in their classroom to really work on bringing all of their students into the environment and and and shortening up and basically eliminating those achievement gaps. I put just really quickly the general website for the Center for Urban Education if you go to that website the cu e dot usc dot edu that the kind of main area right there it says racial equity tools and that's where you'll see a lot of you'll see that observation layout you know there are a lot of tools that they have there that are really really great for for encouraging this kind of action and an inquiry from instructors. So thank you very much for for the time for allowing me to share. Thank you. Okay so I think we have time for a few questions so let me share my screen here. And I know there were some really great comments in the chat that I would like to just acknowledge as well so there was a few comments about the land that we are all residing on and I put a link in the chat about how to find who's land we are on and to acknowledge that and I did fail to do that when we started so I would like to do that now because I am currently occupying the mighty land in northern California and I just want to thank them for for what they have brought to to those of us that have occupied it and so thank you for for that reminder. There were also some really great questions about making a syllabus that is both visually appealing and accessible and there are there are resources for that there's some really great places to find how to make things visual and accessible and it depends on what platform you're using. And so that is something to definitely look for it does take some doing and some undoing of the normal ways that we're used to creating visuals but it certainly can be done. And there was a question not a question but a comment that I just wanted to underline about calling office hours student hours somebody said they changed the name to student hours which I thought was such a nice way to reframe because indeed the hours are not about being in the office but about being with the students. So let's see there was one other question about assigning assigning seats at random or or choosing their own seats so I think we have just we'll get to that but I want to make sure there was a lot happening in the chat and I want to make sure I didn't miss anyone questions were there questions earlier that I missed before we get to that one. And then actually there was. So let's do this one. Justine are the essays in your book from multiple years of students or was this the activity of a single group of students. I'm just in your sorry you're muted. Justine you're muted. I sorry. I chose 25 essays out of hundreds but there's really so much more great material. So but to answer your question there from five years of students but lots of other fantastic essays that I didn't put in this particular anthology. And I'm sure we could have many books from the stories that your students tell I but the ones that you chose were so moving. So thank you for that. And Michelle you have your hand if you want to ask a question. I was interested in that classroom observation worksheet and like how how you would I would get that or something similar or the instructions or whatever. Sure. Michelle. Um, if you if you go to cues website so I think it was in the chat earlier but yeah there's been a whole bunch of chats kind of going through. Um, it's it's basically cu.usc.edu. So it's the Center for Urban Education at USC.edu. Um, they have a list of the different two of a lot of different tools and if you they have actually a big long document that has a bunch of ideas for observation that has that kind of worksheet but then also has kind of ways to to log the type of language that's happening in the class and you know kind of what types of responses does the instructor have to student comments. You know, are they asking more questions of the students are they reinforcing, you know, kind of what the students said, or are they, you know, kind of bluntly, you know, kind of cutting down any additional discussion. Right. Like, and so they're really, they're really interesting methods that I certainly hadn't seen before of, you know, kind of ways to to really get discussion going with, you know, between the observer and the observer and the observer and having those, you know, kind of teach you those pedagogical philosophical discussions, you know, kind of really making those rich and robust and getting, you know, kind of getting your head in that and Q likes to call it equity mindedness, right, having that kind of habit of mind of going to, you know, always thinking, oh wait, what is this what impact is this going to have on my, my students of color minority students. Yeah, the Q website has lots of really great stuff definitely worth, worth checking out. And we have just a few more minutes so I wanted to make sure to invite you to our future webinars. We have one every month. The next one would be on culture shifts and academic freedom and navigating the virtual open ed conference, which will be very exciting and tracking key program integrators for OER program so lots of really great webinars coming up. Thank you for attending this one. There was a lot of great stuff happening in the chat so I'm hoping we can have a few more of these topics to discuss as well. Also the OE global 2020 is is happening soon in November. So there's a link here if you want to log in or register for it. There's going to be a lot of presentations from all over the world. And I think one of the really nice things about the conference this year is that it is online which means we can attend for those of us where travel is difficult so definitely worth checking out. And as far as CCC OER if you want to stay in the loop with us, do we have a website you can join our community email list which was mentioned a few times earlier that's how I got the wonderful list of Heather's resources and that would that actually started with a question right you posed a question where you can find images and that's where we got started on that part of the discussion. So definitely a great email group to be a part of. We have our EDI blog, and we're hoping we can convince Justin to share a blog post with us as well shortly sorry I'm just going to put that out there. So lots of great stuff on the website. If you have questions, Una and Liz are really great contacts to have as well as Lisa Young and Sue. So with that, I want to thank everyone for for joining us today and have a great rest of your day.