Many community college students face a number of barriers that threaten their ability to meet academic goals, including work, competing obligations with family and friends, and bills that make paying for college difficult. Yet, with hope, they enroll at community colleges with a desire to change the trajectory of their lives, only to be met with policies that exacerbate the pressures they already face. Many times, the syllabus paints the class as one more problem they must overcome, lengthening the path to their success rather than providing a roadmap for its attainment. This webinar helps instructors recognize some of the barriers created by the tone and policies in the syllabus and provides strategies for using the syllabus as a tool to create a clearer path to students’ success.
Community college students in the U.S. experience housing insecurity at higher rates than students in four-year colleges. At the same time, homelessness is also a common topic in courses in sociology and other disciplines. This webinar introduces research exploring the pedagogic approaches community college faculty use to teach homelessness in settings where students may be struggling with housing and invites participants to build on these findings to imagine more inclusive, justice-oriented, and supportive pedagogy.
