VCU news

By Brian McNeill

During the week of Sept. 19, each class in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education will explore questions of race and ethnicity. The weeklong initiative is part of an effort to see race and ethnicity as lived realities in schools and society, rather than abstract ideas.

“We hope students, staff and faculty will find new opportunities to explore the ways race and ethnicity work in education,” said Ross Collin, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. “Rather than ask each instructor to make the same general points about race and ethnicity, we want to explore race and ethnicity from different standpoints offered by different courses. In this way, we can see the richness and complexity of diverse groups and we can consider how, and with what consequences, schools value certain groups over others. With this knowledge, we can work to transform schools and help students of different backgrounds learn from and with one another.”

During the School of Education’s teach-in, “Race, Ethnicity and Education,” classes will tackle such questions as: What can educators, policymakers and parents learn by focusing on race and ethnicity? And how can we improve education by paying attention to these issues?

“In the School of Education and across the university, students, staff and faculty have been talking about race and ethnicity for some time,” Collin said. “So, in one way, we in the School of Education simply want to continue and deepen long-running, important conversations. At the same time, students, staff and faculty in the School of Education are inspired by the leadership of movements such as BlackVCUSpeaks and scholars such as VCU’s Dr. Ravi Perry who emphasize the importance of attending to current problems and possibilities around race and ethnicity in schools.”

The teach-in will feature a public talk, “Untangling Biological Diversity from the Social Construction of Race,” by Leslie Sandra Jones, Ph.D., associate professor of biology at Valdosta State University in Georgia. Her talk will be held Monday, Sept. 19, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in room 1160 of the T. Edward Temple Building, 901 W. Main St.

Jones, who describes herself as a passionate biologist who studied equine reproductive physiology before developing an interest in science education while working at Ohio State University, teaches Evolution and the Diversity of Life for non-majors, freshman and senior seminars for biology majors, and required content courses for education majors such as Integrated Science, Exploring Our Ecosystem, and Natural History of Georgia.

Jones also created an integrated religion and science course, The Historical Basis of the Evolution/Creation Controversy, as a response to the distrust of science among religious students in her region. Most recently, she undertook an effort to use an antiracist, evolutionary approach to an existing human biology course as the application of her current research on ways biology can become antiracist pedagogy.

The weeklong teach-in will also feature workshops for teachers on topics such as “Replacing Genetic Nonsense with Culturally-Relevant Biology Lessons” and “How and When Do We Start Teaching Children about Diversity?”

For more details, visit: http://www.soe.vcu.edu/newsroom/teachin.php