I remember how it was -- JR
Northern Illinois University plans woke staff workshops on ‘White Fatigue’, ‘Anti-racism’, ‘De-colonization in the classroom’
Northern Illinois University (NIU) is set to host a number of sessions for faculty and instructors on topics such as decolonizing teaching and learning and understanding and rethinking resistance for equity in the classroom.
The Faculty of Academy of Cultural Competence and Equity (FACCE) will focus on access, equity, and inclusion.
Participants will be able to join either a monthly workshop series during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters or a weeklong summer institute in summer 2023.
NIU faculty experts will speak on how to make classrooms and teaching more inclusive.
The first session for the 2023 academic year will be held 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 of a Racial Hierarchy, and Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality In Our Teaching and Learning Contexts.
Another workshop concentrates on 'Working Through And With Our Implicit Biases'.
The University said in a statement: 'Northern Illinois University’s Faculty Academy for Cultural Competence and Equity is a natural outgrowth of our commitment to equity and inclusion.
'The academy, which is voluntary, provides interested faculty with the opportunity to develop cultural competencies and hone their teaching practices so that they can connect with students from all backgrounds.
'Doing so improves the learning experience for all NIU students and prepares them to succeed on campus and beyond.'
The NIU webpage for the academy curriculum includes outlined learning objectives.
Those who partake will gain a better understanding of the 'historical and societal context of issues related to social injustice, inequity, and oppression'.
They will also 'undergo critical self-reflection of internalized messaging and biases' and 'apply anti-racism and decolonialization as frameworks for pedagogical practice and curriculum development'.
A Certificate of Completion for the monthly FACCE series is handed out to participants who attend seven of the Fall and Spring semester sessions, or successfully complete the 2023 Summer Academy.
At least 236 colleges or universities have some type of compulsory student training of coursework on ideas related to critical race theory (CRT), according to a database with information from more than 500 institutions.
Among those are 149 institutions that have some form of mandatory staff or faculty training, with 138 mandating school-wide curricular requirements.
In December, the University of Oregon's student government made a proposal that would require anyone getting a bachelor's degree to take a course in Critical Race Theory.
The school, which serves 18,604 undergrads and receives a $912.5billion endowment from the 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 major and the president of the Associated Students of the University of Oregon, laid out the plan at the university board of trustees meeting.
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Britain: Schools told they can use volunteers to stay open as teachers vote for 7 days of strike action
Teachers across England and Wales have voted to strike over the next two months amid fears walkouts will lead to a return to online lessons and Covid-style classes.
Nine out of 10 members of the National Education Union (NEU) voted for the action and the union passed the 50 per cent ballot turnout required by law.
The NEU announced there would be seven days of walkouts between now and mid-March, but said any individual school will be affected only on four days.
The Department for Education (DfE) has issued updated guidance for schools. The guidance calls on headteachers to “take all reasonable steps to keep the school open for as many pupils as possible”.
While the decision to open, restrict attendance or close academy schools lies with the academy trust, the DfE said it is usually delegated to the principal, and the decision for maintained schools rests with the headteacher.
The latest guidance stated: “It is best practice for headteachers to consult governors, parents and the local authority, academy trust or diocesan representative (where appropriate) before deciding whether to close.”
Headteachers are entitled to ask staff whether they intend to strike, the DfE added.
The first day of strikes will be on February 1, when more than 23,000 schools in England and Wales are expected to be affected, the NEU said.
The date is the same day as a “national day of action” that will see rallies across the country and a strike by 100,000 civil servants.
The union is also to target the Budget, on March 15, in a bid to send a message to ministers. Teachers will also hold a rally in Westminster that day, it said.
As well as strike action the union asked all its members to write to their MP - and visit their surgeries - to make the case for an inflation-proof pay rise.
Downing Street had called on the unions to call off any strike. No 10 said that teachers should not strike and inflict "substantial damage" to children's education, especially after so many missed out on schooling during the pandemic.
Earlier, Mary Bousted, the leader of the NEU predicted her members would vote to strike, but said it was "highly unlikely" action would take place during exams.
Making the announcement, Ms Bousted and her colleague Kevin Courtney said: “We have continually raised our concerns with successive education secretaries about teacher and support staff pay, and its funding in schools and colleges, but instead of seeking to resolve the issue they have sat on their hands.
“It is disappointing that the Government prefers to talk about yet more draconian anti-strike legislation, rather than work with us to address the causes of strike action.”
Ahead of the strike ballot results, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "We would continue to call on teachers not to strike given we know what substantial damage was caused to children's education during the pandemic and it's certainly not something we want to see repeated.
"We would hope they would continue to discuss with us their concerns rather than withdraw education from children."
Last week, a ballot of members of members of another union, the NASUWT teachers' union, failed to reach the required 50 per cent turnout threshold, although nine in 10 of those who did vote backed strikes.
Teachers are the latest public sector workers to vote to strike, as the government battles a wave of industrial action which has swept the country for months.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England will this week walk off wards on Wednesday and Thursday. But the union has warned that if progress is not made in negotiations by the end of January the next set of strikes will include all eligible members in England for the first time.
Mr Sunak has instead that the pay claims of unions are unaffordable and that they will tick to wage rises recommended by pay review bodies.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/teachers-england-vote-wales-strike-b2263201.html ?
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Racist "equity"
Over the past decade, some of the most destructive and un-American policies pushed on our children in state-run schools have been justified in the insidious name of equity.
Voters, taxpayers and suburban soccer moms who aren't paying attention would be forgiven for happily going along with the equity agenda because they erroneously mistook the intentions of left-wing social engineers as striving for equality.
However, equity and equality couldn't be more different. Of course, this is why the left employs the term equity. The word is meant to confuse and mislead. This is the only way socialists ever get their agendas passed in this country.
For example, Americans instinctively do not want government-run health care but are tricked into supporting ideas like Medicare For All or half measures described as the Affordable Care Act. The left knows what they're doing when they market and brand a bad idea that most Americans are repelled by.
The push for equity in our school systems falls into this deceptive and destructive category.
Equity, as it is employed in our state-run schools, is little more than social engineering to force the desired outcome of an elite, socialist class at the expense of hardworking, innocent children.
The latest example of equity in public education may seem trivial and even benign on its face, but when you peel it back to its core, you realize that these school administrators refusing to award excellence is the closest our nation has actually come to a full-blown communist regime.
Seventeen-year-old children who made all the right choices in school, worked their tails off, studied as their classmates played Xbox and partied, and focused on achieving at the highest academic level so that they could have a better opportunity to attend a superior college or university so that they could have a leg up on a fulfilling and prosperous career, were purposely overlooked and ignored when all of their hard work received the dividend of a national merit recognition.
Fairfax County Public Schools, a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC, likes to spend most of its public relations money on bragging to the rest of the country about its superior school systems. Of course, it's not school administrators with multiple doctorates in education who helped the school system achieve such academic accolades. It was the children, along with their parents.
But the school board and school system, now dominated by left-wing ideologues, have made it a policy to not acknowledge the very children who make them look so good with their test scores and grade point averages; lest the children who do not receive academic awards feel bad.
These national merit awards aid greatly in the college application process and help students win grants and scholarships so they can afford the astronomical cost of higher education. But the people who run our finest school systems in this country took it upon themselves to deny these children the recognition they work so hard to earn because it would be inequitable to single out anyone for their academic achievement.
There is something basic and fundamentally human about wanting the appropriate recognition and rewards for the hard work we engage in.
If we are shortchanged by our employer for a hard day's work, we recoil in indignant anger.
If our favorite team is robbed of victory because of a blind umpire or a feckless, lazy referee, we scream in righteous fury.
And if our child, after years of studying and sacrifice, is denied their moment of recognition by a professional educator so as to spare the feelings of the child's peers, we are properly upset on our child's behalf.
The same schools that hold endless pep rallies for their football teams choose to ignore the kids who get great grades and test scores... it's almost like these left-wing ideologues hold different values than we do.
There's also a level of unfathomable arrogance at play here.
Imagine the hubris required to inject oneself into this basic and fundamental work/reward process. Imagine knowing better for another person's child and rejecting this fundamental moment of recognition, all in the name of equity.
It takes real chutzpah to believe that your values are so superior to the parents who've raised this over-achieving child. To stand between a child's years of hard work and diligent study and their deserved, meritorious reward because you know what's best in the long run for all the children involved.
But, throughout history, the left has never lacked an arrogant, all-knowing superiority of what's best for humanity, no matter who gets hurt in the process of building Utopia. This latest example of the arrogance of equity falls right in place with Stalin's 5-Year Plan and Mao's Great Leap Forward.
Remember that the next time your local school board tries to pedal equity your way. Equity is not equality; equity is Marxism.
https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2023/01/17/the-arrogance-of-equity-n2618379
***********************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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