Click here to learn more about our annual Social Justice in Education Conference
In the fall of 2021, the education deans of the CSU system crafted collectively a public-facing letter that asserts our collective dedication to standing “with our faculty, students, and alumni who engage culturally sustaining, equity-driven, and justice-focused pedagogical practices in order to improve learning opportunities for all.”
This page is dedicated to illuminating how we in the CI School of Education strive to prepare educators to uplift, inspire, and engage all students, families, and communities with whom they work. The links below will take you to the activities, assignments, assessments invoked in our courses that embody our work to advance issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and teaching/educating for justice. It is work central to our purpose, mission, and ways of being in the world.
Read CSU Education Deans' Statement in Support of Culturally Sustaining, Equity Driven, and Justice Focused Pedagogies Statement in full. (PDF, 36.8KB)
Explore How we teach and enact Culturally Sustaining, Equity Driven, and Justice Focused Pedagogies:
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ECS 101: Introduction to Early Childhood Education
Course Assignment: Group Article Presentation and Extension Activities/Discussion
Students and instructors explore the latest research regarding early childhood education focused on equity, diversity and inclusion (Black Lives Matter in early childhood education, refugees, immigrants, etc.). We create a repository of this scholarship on our learning management system and use these articles across the semester to inform presentations and course reflections. Students present in groups one article from this repository or another article they select- comparing research, data, findings, conclusion, and implications for practice. Following the presentations, all students read the additional articles chosen by their peers to collectively deepen our understanding of this scholarship.
ECS 150: Foundations of Child and Adolescent Development
Course Assignment- Child and Development Observations
Students conduct virtual observations of diverse children -infants, toddlers and preschool aged children- to understand better the diversity of human development in the early years. To be fully prepared to meet inclusively and equitably the needs of the diversity of children in the communities they will serve and the stakeholders with whom they will work, CI students must be able to recognize, articulate and connect the learning from the course. They must be able to connect the developmental theories they will read about, analyze, and reflect across the duration of the course to their work with students and their lived-lives to find real-world application for relevant scholarship.
ECS 221: Child, Family, and Community in California in the 21st Century
Course Assignment: Children's Literature Annotated Bibliography
To complete this assignment, students explore, select, and create an annotated bibliography of 10 children’s books that offer diverse perspectives, represent diverse voices, and highlight the work of diverse authors. The selections will be justified in the annotations and must be appropriate for children 3-8 years. The books must depict and/or represent diversity in terms of at least one of the following aspects: culture, gender, familial structure, socioeconomic status, or linguistic backgrounds. The annotated bibliography provides detailed citations (so fellow students can locate the books), provide a summary of the book, and explain how diversity is depicted and/or represented by the book.
ECS 310: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math in Early Childhood
Course Assignment: Diversity and STEM
CI students utilize the Handbook of Research on STEM Education specifically Chapter 3-Moving Toward an Equity-based Approach for STEM Literacy-that addresses gender, SES, and minoritized populations to engage in discussions that address the lack of pathways to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers for the populations mentioned. Handbook of Research on STEM Education represents a groundbreaking and comprehensive synthesis of research and presentation of policy within the realm of STEM education with a focus on diversity and equity. The book speaks to these issues and the students in the course read, discuss, analyze and reflect on the implications for early years education.
ECS 320: Teaching and Learning Programs for Early Care and Development
Course Assessment: Cultural Autobiography
This assessment, and its two parts, asks that students reflect on their identities to understand how they can effectively work with diverse students, families, and colleagues.Part I has students explore their identities, while Part II asks them to explore the impact of those identities on their interactions with young children, families, communities, and colleagues. To complete the assessment, students have prompts to guide their reflection: With which identities do you identify and how do they intersect to impact your lived experience? How will understanding yourself aid in your teaching relationships? Will you be more aware of certain students? Will you use a specific approach to understand your students?
ECS 322: Early Childhood Program Administration
Course Activity: Examining the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s (NAEYC) Ethical Code of Conduct
Students examine NAEYC’s Ethical Code of Conduct and gain information about specific core values that include respecting diversity in children, families and colleagues and recognize that children are best understood and supported in the context of family, culture, community and society. CI students discuss and reflect on the Code and the commitment to not participate in practices that discriminate against children by denying benefits, giving special advantages, or excluding them from programs or activities based on their sex, race, national origin, immigration status, preferred home language, religious beliefs, medical condition, disability, or the marital status/family structure, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs or other affiliations of their families.
ECS 325: Typical and Atypical Development: Birth- Age 8
Course Assignment: Case Study of a Young Child
For this assignment, CI students create a profile of a typically developing child or a child with special needs to discover strengths and offer ways to provide for instructional equity to meet the needs of this their selected child. CI Students observe the child during all school activities. The result is a case study wherein students use observations to document a child’s present skills in multiple developmental areas, with specific examples of activities the child participated in or completed. CI students then use these data to project the child’s future skill development and propose activities and instructional opportunities to support current skills/knowledge/competencies and develop new ones.
ECS 456: Family and Community Engagement
Course Assignment: Family Video
CI students create a 3-5-minute video to introduce their family and their family tree. The video should provide responses to this prompt: Tell us who your family is, identify the culture, ethnicity, language, religion, abilities, special needs, funds of knowledge, socioeconomic background, education, and structure. The class is then divided into groups, with each group sharing and discussing their peers’ videos. How we view families from cultures different from our own deeply affects how we work with the diversity of families. All families have had different sets of experiences. We must help students learn that family experiences are neither better nor worse than others, but simply different.
ECS 460: Infant/Toddler Educaring: Learning and Assessment
Course Activity: “When Concerns Arise”
Students engage in an activity called “When Concerns Arise” focused on the diversity of cultural variations in child rearing practices and the implications of those differences for classroom expectations, instructional practices, and student learning/engagement. Students learn a three-step process called “acknowledge, ask and adapt” to help them learn to understand the differences in families and simultaneously practice how to become reflective practitioners who continually seek to be more culturally aware and responsive. Students encounter different scenarios, work in small groups to practice the three-step process and co-construct the practical implications of what they have learned.
ECS 462: Supporting Dual Language Learners: Contexts and Approaches
Course Assignment: Virtual Circle Time
CI Students will select a book for an appropriate age group – Infant/Toddler/Preschool/ Kinder-from the culturally diverse and responsive children’s books in the course-specific annotated bibliography. Upon reading and analyzing the texts, students develop a video for each book. For the video, students record the reading of the text as they would read it to dual language learners. They may read the book in a language other than English (see “How to Use Bilingual Books”) Students share the videos and collectively reflect on components they would include when working with children who are dual language learners.
ECS 463: Creating and Supporting Reciprocal Family and Community Networks
Course Assignment: My Stories Assignment
The “My Stories” assignment in this course fosters CI students' sense of belonging, provides opportunities for them to share their funds of knowledge. These “funds” are historically/culturally developed knowledge that empower individuals to function in specific contexts, knowledge students embody that can directly connect with classroom learning. Students write a "story" about their identities utilizing a storytelling format. They focus on lived experiences, important aspects of their identities, and significant events that have influenced their development and shaped the person they are today. The My Stories assignment supports diversity, inclusion, where students are honored and valued.
ECS 468: Early Language Literacy and Math Development Ages 3-8: Multicultural and Multilingual
Course Assignment: Asset Artifacts and Analysis Assignment
For this assignment, students will examine a child’s language and literacy skills from a strengths/assets-based perspective. The purpose of this assignment is to appreciate the child-as-a-teacher and understand that what students bring to the classroom are resources that we, as educators, can learn from and build to create inclusive and equitable language and literacy communities in/out of our classrooms. ECS students choose a student from their site placement (Preschool/Primary Student Teaching) and collect artifacts to analyze their child’s language and literacy assets and strengths. Students will use California state standards and course readings to support their strength assessments.
ECS 470: Teaching and Learning in Preschool/Primary: Integrated Curriculum and Assessment
Course Activity: Social Justice Readings
Students have a variety of readings that pertain to frameworks and standards around social justice, dual language learners, and anti-bias/anti-racism education. These readings inform the work they do on developing, sustaining and actively protecting a CI class culture where respect is shown to everyone to facilitate and encourage the expression, testing, understanding and creation of a variety of ideas and opinions. Students work individually and collaboratively to create an atmosphere that is safe, valuing one another, and open to diverse perspectives. Students then engage in reflections about the readings, the course culture, and the combined implications for their future classrooms.
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EDUC 101: Introduction to Elementary Schooling
Course Activity: Collaborating with Parents-Considerations
In this course, a significant seminar topic is caregiver/family engagement, specifically the need to include multiple, significant, and diverse stakeholders in efforts to improve the educative experiences of all students. Instructor and CI students discuss and brainstorm effective and ineffective methods of communication including email, phone, letters home, and shared documents. In discussion, we examine assumptions that can inhibit meaningful engagement-e.g., assuming all families have reliable internet, internet access, cell phones, private phone, etc. Students examine materials for parent engagement and note pros and cons of each as they consider how best to engage all families/caregivers.
LS 110: Computer Literacy for Educators
Course Activity: Universal Design for Learning Module
For these learning modules, students gain knowledge of a variety of tools to pedagogically present information in ways that include and involve all students through the conceptual lens and applied practice of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is a set of principles for inclusive and differentiated curriculum development that gives every student the opportunity to access content and express understanding. Students explore various media presentations-via YouTube and CAST) on UDL concepts and practices- including: The Myth of Average, UDL Guidelines, UDL at a Glance, and UDL Principles and Practice. Reflective and threaded discussions follow each of the modules/presentations.
LS 220: Developing Literacy in Diverse Classrooms
Course Activity: Involving Students in Self-Assessment and Goal Setting
This activity engages CI students in discovering how k-12 students’ self-assessment can illuminate where students are academically and facilitate differentiated/inclusive forms of instruction for the success of all students, including English language learners and dysfluent readers/writers. CI students watch videos on middle school student conferences, kindergarten student conferences, and reading student conferences. Students then discuss these prompts: How do students demonstrate their understanding of where they are in the process of learning? How can self-assessment conferences strengthen the relationship between school & home and provide for each individual student’s success?
LS 322: Health Issues in Education
Course Activity: All Are Included
One of the ways to ensure safe and positive learning environments is to make sure ALL students are welcomed and included in classrooms without exception. For this activity, students watch a classroom read-aloud: All Are Welcome By: Alexandra Penfold & Suzanne Kaufman, which follows a group of children through a day in their school, where everyone is welcomed, no matter their race, religion, or background. CI students then read one article (provided by the professor) focusing on including authentically students with disabilities, LGBTQ students, and students of color. Whole group discussions follow-centering on implications for the classroom and the students and families with whom teachers work.
LS 490: Capstone
Course Assignment: Philosophy of Leadership
From the course materials and activities (e.g., readings, assignments, discussions, leadership research, exemplars of leadership success), students use this assignment to delineate their understandings and assert their aspirations for themselves as an educational leader. Using a pyramid graphic organizer, they develop their leadership characteristics, traits, style, innovative inclusion of diversity, equity, social justice. gender, and global perspectives. Finally, using the self-realization process, students conduct an inventory of the leadership skills they currently have, the competencies they intend to work on, and the societal challenges of our diverse world that most engage them.
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EDMS 410: Child Growth and Development During the Elementary School Years
Course Activity: Cultural factors impacting children’s development
In this activity, students explore the impact and relationship between biology, early experiences, environment, family culture and first and second language acquisition on child growth, development, and learning. To consider the best ways to create an inclusive classroom culture and context, students use knowledge of these factors to identify strategies that support the development and the learning patterns of all children from diverse familial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Students will learn to recognize children’s learning modalities and explore the difference between learning styles and multiple intelligences.
EDUC 412: Equity, Diversity, and Foundations of Schooling
Course Assessment: Signature Assignment-Equity and Social Justice Framework
In this course, CI students explore how to make public schools more inclusive. We investigate equity and diversity and imagine the ways in which we can make our schools safer places where all students feel valued and nurtured. Toward this goal, at course end, CI students craft a reflection paper in response to this essential question: What is your "Teaching for Equity & Justice Framework"? The paper requires CI students to consider question such as, “What theories about teaching and learning do they see themselves using to explain your pedagogical decisions and actions in teaching for equity and justice?” The goal is for students to leave the course with a clear vision of the kind of classroom and the Teaching for Equity & Justice Frameworks they hope are operationalized for the children in our community.
EDMS 422: Creating and Managing Effective Elementary School Learning Environments
Course Assignment: Teaching Philosophy
The Teaching Philosophy Statement requires students to think about the type of teacher they aspire to be in today’s diverse public schools. Students write about their own experiences in diverse classrooms, the importance of home culture, how they plan to work with diverse families. CI teacher candidates then connect philosophy and practice by considering the concepts of equity and equitable instruction, their significance, and how they plan to make these concepts come alive in their future classrooms. This assignment is a component of the signature assignment which is an inclusive/accessible Google site CI teacher candidates create for their future and prospective k-12 classrooms and students.
EDUC 475: Language in Social Context
Course Assignment: Sociolinguistic Language & Literacy History/Introspection
Marilyn Cochran-Smith wrote, “In order to teach in a society that is increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse, prospective teachers...need opportunities to examine…the tightly braided relationships of language, culture, and the power in schools and schooling.’ This sociolinguistic assignment focuses on the diversity of students’ language and literacy experiences and asks CI students to reflect on their literacy experiences at home, in the community and within k-12 classrooms. Ultimately, the assignment requires CI students to consider critically how they will address issues of language and literacy for English Learner/Emergent Bilingual students in their own future classrooms.
EDMS 522: Literacy 1: Multicultural/Multilingual
Course Activity: Analyzing Books for Racism and Sexism
This activity asks CI students to think and analyze critically how to select books for their future classrooms with positive depictions of the diverse nature of our communities and society. Students analyze children’s books utilizing “10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children’s Books for Racism and Sexism”, created by the Council for Interracial Books for Children. Using the framework, students respond to prompts such as: “How are minority roles depicted?” and “Is there sexist language that excludes or diminishes women?” Students reflect and discuss findings in small group discussion and a whole-class debrief. Students use the texts to share both “positive” and “negative” examples of framework elements.
EDMS 523: Literacy 2: Multicultural/Multilingual
Course Assignment: Home Connection Literacy Letter/Newsletter
Students draft a one-page letter written for the parents/guardians of students in their k-12 class. In the letter, they describe how diverse families and stakeholders can support students’ home literacy development. The letter focuses on a literacy skill (comprehension strategies, vocabulary strategies). Students explain the skill in terms understandable for the audience, detail why it is important, and illustrate how the skill can be practiced/supported at home. The letters must also provide parents with bilingual resources (websites, video links) related to the literacy skill. CI students use the letter to encourage and invite families to share examples of their own cultural literacy practices.
EDMS 525: Modern Methods in Mathematics Teaching to Grades K-3
Course Assessment: Signature Assignment-Building on Funds of Knowledge and Ways of Thinking
CI teacher candidates interview a student to explore interests and funds of knowledge. These “funds” are historically/culturally developed knowledge that empower individuals to function in specific contexts, knowledge students embody that can directly connect with classroom learning to create more equitable and inclusive learning spaces. In the interviews, the teacher candidates use what they learn about student thinking and their funds of knowledge to plan differentiated instruction and to initiate two-way conversations with the student’s family and/or caregivers about mathematics. The teacher candidates then use learning trajectories to pose mathematical tasks to their interviewee.
EDMS 526: Modern Methods in Mathematics Teaching to Grades 4-6
Course Activity: Water is Our Right; Water is Our Responsibility!
This activity begins with reading the children’s book We are Water Protectors. Inspired by Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption―a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade. Post reading, CI candidates then estimate their water usage, are given data on water usage, and then calculate their actual water usage. Students create and share plans for how they can be Water Protectors. This soon-to-be-published environmental justice activity aligns with the social justice standards and was co-written by a CI alum and professor.
EDMS 527: History, Social Studies and Integrated Arts
Course Assignment: Storytelling for Social Change
For this assignment, CI teacher candidates teach a mini-lesson to their peers. A mini lesson is a short lesson with a narrow focus that provides instruction in a skill or concept that relates either to lessons or an instructional unit that follows. Candidates choose a children’s book they can use to teach a social studies concept (in history, geography, civics, economics, culture and diversity, etc.) and that connects with ideas of social change/justice and representations of diversity. It could be a book that represents a dominant narrative, or a book that challenges a dominant narrative. Students then lead their peers through activities that either challenge or reinforce the concepts in the chosen text.
EDMS 529: Science, Health and Physical Education
Course Activity/Assignment-Advancing Social Justice using Local Phenomenon to Drive Instruction
Engagement is at its core both an access and equity concept. Students who do not have access to the material or instructional practices in ways that makes sense and are relevant to them are disadvantaged. For this assignment, CI candidates design and implement a Next Generation Science Standards-based unit centered on a local phenomenon. Selecting phenomena students find engaging, interesting, relevant, and consequential helps support engagement. A good phenomenon builds on everyday or family experiences: who students are, what they do, where they came from. Using local phenomena highlights how science helps to explain real world contexts that matter to students, their communities, and society.
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EDSS 415: Adolescent Development for Secondary Educators
Course Assignment: How does racial identity play a role inside the classroom
CI education students examine various articles focused on diverse racial identities, including William Cross’s, “African American Racial Identity Development” and Janet Halems’s, “White Racial Identity Development Theory,” and readings from the course text Understanding Youth. Upon completing these readings, each student drafts a response essay describing how/why these theories will help them get a better understanding of the diversity of students in their classroom. Students then have class discussions regarding their reflections on these various racial identity theories and how they will inform their future classroom. Subsequent readings focus on ethnic and sexual identity theories.
EDSS 424: Creating and Managing Effective Secondary School Learning Environments
Course Assignment: Teaching Philosophy
The Teaching Philosophy Statement requires students to think about the type of teacher they aspire to be in today’s diverse public schools. Students write about their own experiences in diverse classrooms, the importance of home culture, and how they plan to work with diverse families. CI teacher candidates then connect philosophy and practice by considering the concepts of equity and equitable instruction, their significance, and how they plan to make these concepts come alive in their future classrooms. This assignment is a component of the signature assignment which is an inclusive/accessible Google site CI teacher candidates create for their future and prospective k-12 classrooms and students.
EDSS 530: General Secondary School Methods
Course Assignments: Universal Design for Learning
This course focuses on secondary lesson plan writing, assessment, teaching strategies and student engagement. Embedded across those components are the concepts and practices of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that facilitate meaningful and equitable instructional practices. The UDL assignments in the course ask CI students to review Multiple Means for Learning and to consider the spectrum of all types of learners. CI students then develop lessons that include accommodations that make the content accessible and that provide various means for secondary students to express understanding of class content. This includes considerations of students’ mental, emotional and physical well-being.
EDSS 540: Literacy in The Content Areas
Course Assessment: Text Accessibility
There are four parts to this assessment that requires CI students to design a text-accessibility plan that will allow all students equitable access to course content. Students will: Identify the demands of the text in terms of genre, structure, vocabulary and Lexile/reading level; Document student needs in terms of context, culture and/or background knowledge; Select appropriate strategies, instructional approaches, methods, and/or activities to use prior to and during reading, considering potential problem areas within the text; Determine ways to extend or reinforce students’ knowledge of content and/or skills after reading is completed, incorporating key strategies in the future.
EDSS 550: Access to Learning: English Language Learners
Course Assignment: EL Interview/Observation
CI candidates investigate various methods of helping students grow academically, linguistically, and personally. In field placements candidates conduct an intentional observation of an English Learner (in their content area). They observe the student and discover/explore: the student’s interests, what the student seems to understand and do well, and what the student is working on, and what strategies teachers might try with this student and why. Candidates hold an informal interview with the student to learn about him/her/them as people and learners. The goal is to situate the secondary student as a teacher who enables the teacher candidate to learn to include and educate diverse learners.
EDSS 560: Access to Learning: A Focus on Individual Differences
Course Assessment: Inclusive Education Project
For this Signature Assignment, CI Students incorporate knowledge of students’ needs and their cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic experiences to create inclusive instructional materials in Google Classroom. Activities and lessons embody Universal Design for Learning and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support concepts and use various technologies to ensure accessibility for all learners. Students must address the needs of students whose first language is not English and those with IEP goals through accessible materials and by using appropriate assistive technologies. Students reflect/discuss lessons learned through the collaborative process of creating these instructional materials.
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EDSS 531: Teaching Mathematics in Middle Schools
Course Activity: Mathematics Literacy for All
One of the primary and recurring themes in the course is the importance of equitably and inclusively developing mathematical literacy for all students - reading, writing and speaking the language of mathematics. CI students experience and discuss numerous background readings on the topic and watch the video "California Students Have Big Dreams" to collectively and individually reflect on ways of making mathematics accessible for all students, including English Learners and students with learning disabilities. During class, students are introduced to Integrated English Language Development (ELD) as a responsibility of all teachers, and they begin creating resources for developing vocabulary.
EDSS 541: Teaching Mathematics in High Schools
Course Assignment: Reading Reflections
CI students reflect on course readings to help shift mindsets away from traditional mathematics instruction toward more inclusive and differentiated approaches that embrace struggle and creative problem solving. Students compare the 2013 CA Math Framework with different approaches to math instruction. Students further compare different models from the literature to their own math education. Students answer reflection questions such as: “How do the traditional mathematics classroom norms contribute to the problem?” “How might you use the research on productive struggle to convince students and parents that in mathematics mistakes are valuable, and that struggle is an inherent part of learning?”
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EDSS 532: Teaching Science in Middle Schools
Course Activity: Nature of Science and the Underrepresented
A crucial component of implementing disciplinary norms and routines is how science and scientists are introduced to students, including what is presented as valued and who is most often chosen to “represent” the discipline. In this course activity, CI students explore the importance of being intentional about incorporating opportunities for middle school students to routinely experience the diversity of scientists and scientific contributors in inclusive, just, and meaningful ways. Course discussions center on how science instruction can perpetuate or subvert the norms and routines that exclude the accomplishments, histories, and ways of knowing of non-dominant or underrepresented groups.
EDSS 542: Teaching Science in High Schools
Course assignment - Stories of Scientific Discoveries
CI teacher candidates connect the stories of scientific discovery to classroom teaching while highlighting the process of science and scientists from non-dominant or underrepresented groups. Candidates draft two stories of scientific discovery based on standard form the Next Generation Science Standards framework. One story will address scientific content that is no longer accepted with an explanation of how and why this knowledge changed, focusing on the scientist, the discovery, and the issues that led to its (de) legitimacy. The other story will focus on a new (within the past five years) discovery of science from a content area, again focusing on the scientists, the discovery and their significance.
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EDSS 533: Teaching English in Middle Schools
Course Assessment - Signature Assignment; Unit Plan
The Signature Assignment for Teaching English in Middle Schools is the creation of an individual Unit Plan. For the plan, teacher candidates create a series of lessons that build on students’ identities, their prior knowledge and their community cultural wealth. For the plan, teacher candidates also write a rationale in which they explain how the chosen literary text(s) and assignments offer “windows,” “mirrors,” or “sliding glass doors” to the students in their care. Texts allow students to see their experiences reflected, to see others’ experiences, and to “walk” into the diverse experiences created by authors. Candidates create the units based on the Social Justice Standards from Learning for Justice.
EDSS 543: Teaching English in High Schools
Course Assignments (s): Lesson Demonstrations and Assessment
The lesson demonstration requires CI students to construct multiple ways of accessing lesson content and to demonstrate these for their peers so that all candidates benefit from collective ideas about inclusive and engaging instruction for all students. The CI course becomes a high school classroom, and we capitalize on our own diversity to respond to the presentations. The Assessment assignment requires students to design assessments that show the variety of learning styles, address learning levels and cultural diversity, provide rationales for choices made, and explain how students of all types can develop skills to be successful in the academic ELA tasks of reading, writing, speaking and listening.
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EDSS 534: Teaching Social Studies in Middle Schools
Course Assignment: Developing Curriculum and Celebrating Classroom Diversity
CI education students draft a middle school social studies assignment that deals with curriculum and representing diversity/diverse perspectives inside the classroom using the California Department of Education’s History-Social Science framework/curriculum guide. The assignment must look at both equity and fairness within a diverse classroom. Students then analyze the draft assignment using prompts such as: "Does the assignment favor one group over another?" and "Does the assignment create a shared learning environment for all students?" Each CI student will present their draft and analysis to their peers to deepen the critical analysis of their inclusion diversity/diverse perspectives.
EDSS 544: Teaching Social Studies in High School
Course Assignment: Digital Community Archive
The purpose of this assignment is to equip students to be active agents in doing history, using historical archives to connect themselves to the diversity and diverse experiences of the larger community. Students draft an inquiry to an organization or cultural institution asking to collaborate on a community archives project that will illuminate the rich history of diverse local experiences and perspectives. Students examine the usage of digital archives to pursue this project. The key prompt guiding this work: How can digital community archives empower individuals and their communities to feel like their lived lives-stories, material artifacts, and objects-are valuable to the historical record?
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SPED 345: Individuals with Disabilities in Society
Course Assignment: Collaborative Group Research Project
Students have a variety of readings that pertain to frameworks and standards around social justice, dual language learners, and anti-bias/anti-racism education. These readings inform the work they do on developing, sustaining and actively protecting a CI class culture where respect is shown to everyone to facilitate and encourage the expression, testing, understanding and creation of a variety of ideas and opinions. Students work individually and collaboratively to create an atmosphere that is safe, valuing one another, and open to diverse perspectives. Students then engage in reflections about the readings, the course culture, and the combined implications for their future classrooms.
SPED 410: Typical and Atypical Development
Course Assignment: Eligibility Presentation
Throughout the semester, students investigate one disability eligibility category (IDEA) that would qualify a school-aged student for services including those related to an IEP or 504 plan. Through careful investigation, students create a presentation including a summary of the eligibility category (e.g., criteria for eligibility, assessment requirements, common medical diagnoses, common characteristics impacting education, and developmental domains that can require educational intervention and planning) and evidence-based educational practices proven to be effective in equitably addressing needs of students to optimize educational outcomes in the Least Restrictive Environment.
EDUC 538: K-12 Literacy: Multicultural and Multilingual
Course Assignment: Literacy Assessment and Instruction Case Study
This assignment provides teacher candidates an opportunity to apply course content related to literacy assessment and instruction and to enable them to refine their understanding of the concepts, skills and tools. Specific to the issues of Explicit Direct Instruction, candidates develop strategies to support student learning through Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create meaningful and inclusive literacy practices. Candidates develop adaptations and accommodations, including, as appropriate, assistive technologies, that support student learning needs beyond the UDL supports, and finally ensures that the learning activities are multi-culturally and multilingually responsive.
SPED 541: Foundations of Special Education
Course Activity: Ella Lynda Case Study
In this activity, students review characteristics of English Learners as compared to students with learning and language disabilities to conceptualize how to create equitable instructional practices for all students. Using a case study approach, CI students focus on a k-12 students and apply course concepts in to consider whether the case-student student is an English Learner or an EL who may have a disability. There are many reasons why EL students may struggle academically, including language, culture, socio-economic background, and/or a learning disability. Students use the case study to begin considering myriad factors important in understanding wholistically EL students’ strengths and needs.
SPED 542: Managing Learning Environments
Course Assignment: Functional Behavior Assessment, Report and Support Plan
Across this course, CSUCI students in the Educational Specialist Credential program gain an understanding of how to practice and demonstrate creating equitably supports for students with disabilities that present behavioral challenges. CI students learn how to select, implement, and analyze data from multiple means of behavioral assessment. They then complete a functional behavior report based on the data they obtained and the resulting analyses they crafted. This report must include behavioral and social skills support plans that the students create to demonstrate knowledge of how to best aid and allow for a “case-study” child to be equitably and inclusively supported in the classroom.
SPED 543: Curriculum and Instruction for Special Education
Course Activity: Exploring Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in Mathematics
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in mathematics runs throughout this course as CI students develop strategies for equitably making math accessible to all special needs students through the applied practices of UDL. Students explore various media presentations-via YouTube and CAST on UDL concepts and practices- including: The Myth of Average. Students also lead discussions on UDL-related readings, including: "Fluency Without Fear", "Concrete-Representational-Abstract Approach", and "The Magic is in the Margins”. Across the course, CI students, themselves, begin to develop a growth, rather than fixed, mindsets toward math and learn strategies for improving accessibility for students.
SPED 544: Curriculum and Instruction for Special Education II
Course Activity: Equitable Interventions
Over the course of the semester, students complete a project aimed at bringing equitable teaching practices to a classroom of diverse learners. Students design a universal screener and determine a group of 2-5 students who would benefit from an academic intervention. Students design a literacy-related intervention and provide no less than 10 sessions of the intervention to the target group of students. Students craft and deliver curriculum-based assessments to the intervention group to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. Findings inform a report detailing the results from the screener, analysis of curriculum-based assessments findings, and next steps for supporting students.
SPED 545: Assessment of Students with Disabilities
Course Assessment: Signature Assignment- Assessing Students with Disabilities
Students learn to administer the Woodcock-Johnson and Woodcock-Munoz assessments to equitably meet the needs of all students with suspected disabilities. They use the assessments (former in English and latter in Spanish) to compare findings to determine if a suspected disability is accurate or inaccurate, due to language acquisition. This is preparation for preventing misdiagnosis and procuring support for students based on actual needs. There are many reasons why students who are English Learners may have academic challenges, including an undiagnosed disability. Class discussion and related assignments compare English and Spanish score reports to appropriately identify disability or needs.
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EDUC 605: Education in a Diverse Society
Course Assignment: Scholarly Personal Narrative-Identity and Leadership/Activism and Performance
In this assignment, MA students undertake a scholarly personal narrative, also known as an autoethnography that is introduced with this prompt: Please tell the story of your educational journey from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective. In other words, write the story of you being in school as a human being—whatever that means to you as a student who has experienced p-20 education. Over the course of the semester, students will each take a turn telling some part of their story through the medium of their choosing: performing a song, poetry, speech, or video. In addition, students are invited to work in any language, beyond English, to which they have access, to communicate their personal narrative.
EDUC 615: Principles of Educational Research
Course Assignment: Article Analysis
During this course, MA students analyze critically peer reviewed research to comprehend different concepts related to educational scholarship. The course focuses on research that centers around serving multicultural, diverse, and underserved public-school communities. The topics/foci of the research articles include (dis)abilities, minority representations, students of color, homeless youth, immigrant youth, English Language Learners, LGBTQ populations and others. MA students use the articles to begin developing research questions around an education-related problem of practice for which they will conduct a literature search, write a literature review, and propose a study.
EDUC 623: Understanding and Influencing Organizations in Diverse Communities
Course Assignment: Case Study
The class begins with these focusing questions: “What is social justice in organizations? What does it look like?” The questions guide the course and are revisited as MA students progress through the course. The signature assignment is an analysis of a case study organization’s problem of practice, using structural, human resource (psychological), political and cultural frames. The underlying premise for the analysis is to examine the case study issue from broader macro social justice perspectives in dimensions such as equity, access, diversity, political voice, inclusion. Students develop a plan and goals to help the case study organization move closer to social justice in the four frames.
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EDCI 600: Curriculum: History and Analysis
Course Assignment: Historical overview/personal pedagogical autobiography
For this assignment, MA students construct an historical overview of their personal pedagogy by answering questions such as: Where have you been in terms of your development as a practitioner? What influenced your decision to become an educator or other type of practitioner? Were there specific incidents that influenced this decision? MA students are asked to connect to influences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language, culture, religion, and/or ability, explicitly incorporating issues of access, equity, and opportunity in their narrative. They craft the story of their experiences in school as a human being becoming an educator in and for today’s classrooms and schools.
EDCI 605: Assessment in the Classroom
Course Policies: Creating a Higher Education Classroom Climate of Respect and Inclusion
In this course, the lived lives of MA students connect with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in course policies that specifically address the various life circumstances and events in students' lives that might impede with or impact their studies. One example is the policy on quality work, wherein students self-reflect on the competency of their completed assignments. This policy recognizes that not all learning and understanding takes place by specific dates. To allow students to truly present their best work, the policy builds flexibility in the presentation of their work by enabling them to negotiate collectively or individually the timing and/or dates for turning in their best work.
EDCI 610: Research on Teaching
Course Assignment: Research Summary: Social and Cultural Contexts
In this course, MA students choose one article from a suggested reading list and find another of their own related to the topics of Social and Cultural Contexts and Schooling. Learning is a social activity, involving individuals’ shared language, tools, norms and practices in interaction within a social context. The social context is often culturally embedded, as individuals develop in culturally specific educational contexts. MA students draft a 5–8-page summary that compares and analyzes the salient points and connections across the two readings regarding these contexts, utilizing diversity, equity, and inclusion frames/perspectives.
SPED 641: Advanced Perspectives in Disability Studies
Course Assignment: Signature Assignment-Executive Summary
For this project, MA students examine disability legislation, case law, and policies from a theoretical/conceptual framework and analyze the values and assumptions that underlie different policy designs. Students explore critically how institutions have responded to demands for access and participation from individuals with different types of disabilities, including persons with diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, sexual orientation, and gender backgrounds. In crafting the paper, students consider how the policy is framed and how its framing has changed. They apply at least one framework to analyze the policy and its impact on people with disabilities and interrogate how ideas become policy.
SPED 690: Advanced Topics in Disability Studies
Course Assignment: Article Analysis
In this course, students analyze current topics in disability studies to evaluate best practices/policies for teachers, students, schools, families, and agencies and advocates working to educate people with disabilities inclusively and equitably. For this assignment, students conduct a comprehensive literature review and analyze a current topic in disability studies from two or more different perspectives. Students choose a topic from class, or another topic related to disability studies and consider impacts, pros, and cons they find in these varied perspectives. Students present their comparative analyses to the class to engage peers in discussions of their arguments, theses, and claims.
EDCI 645, 650, 655: Elective Courses
Course Activity: Creating a Higher Education Classroom Respectful of Diversity
In these courses, MA students work on developing, sustaining and actively protecting class environments where respect is shown to everyone to facilitate and encourage the expression, testing, understanding and creation of a variety of ideas and opinions. Students work individually and collaboratively to create an atmosphere that is safe, valuing one another, and open to diverse perspectives. Together, instructor and CI students continuously work to improve how to show courtesy, civility, and respect for one another, and to feel safe in recognizing/addressing intentional and unintentional comments that degrade or ridicule another, whether based on individual or cultural difference.
Educational Leadership Specialization
EDPL 610: Assessment and Accountability
Course Assignment: Equity Gap Analysis
Future school administrators are responsible for working with teacher leaders to ensure systems are equitable. In this course, MA students identify potential causal factors of inequity (institutional and/or structural), draft a problem statement, and define a specific area of educational need related to equity. The goal is to develop potential strategies for equitable school improvement based on the problem statement. Students gather feedback from a key stakeholder(s) about the feasibility proposed strategies, reflect on their leadership capacity to analyze multiple sources of data, conduct an equity gap analysis, and craft proposals to inform school improvement around equity for all students.
EDPL 620: Assessment and Accountability Leadership
Course Activity: Creating a Classroom Respectful of Diversity
In this course, MA students explore and practice what it means to collaborate with all constituents to clearly articulate standards-aligned and equity-based academic, civic, and social-emotional outcomes for all students. MA students implement effective and equitable data systems that attend to the emotional impact of data on the stakeholders-staff, students, and community members- with whom they interact. MA students conduct an educational program evaluation that focuses on the equitable provision of educational services and results in stakeholder-shared expectations of learning outcomes for the academic success of all learners.
EDPL 626: Introduction to Higher Education
Course Activity: Creating a Higher Education Classroom Climate of Respect and Inclusion
In this course, MA students focus on historically inequitable policies, programs, practices, and human experiences in higher education. Mainstream institutions of higher education have a distinctive moral responsibility to promote corrective racial justice. This course traces this moral responsibility to the fact that these institutions have historically been complacent actors in the perpetuation of racial injustice. This course critically deconstructs this history through a power-centered examination of foundational legislation, as well as discussions guided by critical readings about Hispanic-serving Institutions. Students are invited to include work in any language to which they have access.
EDPL 627: Elective: The American College Student
Course Assignment: Emergent Student Development Theories
In this course, MA students write a paper centered on emergent student development theories that contextualize inclusive/equitable student development in the larger social, political and economic contexts of educational institutions and beyond. This paper requires that they identify a community of university students whose experiences are of interest. Students in the course use one of two qualitative methodologies to collect data about that community. They may conduct an interview or write a scholarly personal narrative about their own experiences as a student member of the diverse communities at university. Students are invited to include work in any language to which they have access.
EDPL 633: The Social, Political, Economic and Legal Context of Schooling
Course Activity: Diversity and Equity Legislation
In this course, MA students read, discuss, and analyze major US legislation regarding access, diversity, and equity in schools across the p-20 continuum. MA students explore the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural contexts in which schools function and the important role education policy plays in shaping the learning experiences of students, staff, families, and the larger school community. The important role that administrators play as spokespersons for the schools accomplishments and needs is explored as MA students craft reflective papers on past and current experiences in public school contexts.
EDPL 634: Management of Resources and Learning Environments
Course Activities: Equity and Budgets
This course focuses on managing school organizations that embody safe, productive, and equitable learning/working environments. Equity and social justice principles are embedded in across the course by focusing on reducing relative positional power among employees. In the Fiscal Resources section of the course, CI students examine methods for equitable budget allocation and complete a discussion board on these practices. In the human resources sections, students engage with the principles of positive psychology, conflict resolution, restorative justice, and staff coaching then respond to discussion prompts and a performance assessment to determine acquisition of these concepts and skills.
EDPL 635: Change and Coherence Leadership
Course Assignment: Change and Coherence Case Study Report and Presentation
MA students observe and/or participate in a change and coherence effort going on in an organization and conduct a case study of the effort to improve processes and outcomes within an equity lens/frame. They analyze and report on the change effort and their case study analysis identifies the coherence progression of the change effort employed, identifying the focusing direction, the cultivation of a collaborative culture, the deepening of learning, and the securing of accountability efforts by change leaders. Their written report and oral/visual presentation describe the change and coherence effort, analyze the factors specified above, and provide recommendations for improvement.
EDPL 636: Leadership Presence, Attitude, Identity, and Relationships
Course Assignment: Written Introduction
In this course, students are given this scenario: You are seeking a position as an assistant principal or principal in a diverse school. Write a letter of introduction to the selection committee, school staff, and community members. In the letter, the MA students must describe their core values, vision, beliefs, identity, emotional intelligence, interpersonal strengths, areas of growth, and working style; how they intend to lead a diverse school, including navigating power and privilege to include integrating conversations about race, class, and equity in the school culture; and how they intend to form and deepen personal and productive relationships with staff members, students, and families.
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EDML 416: Foundations of Bilingual Education
Course Activity: Where I’m from
At the beginning of the semester, to illustrate the diversity (mutuality and difference) in our community and as an analogy to the larger society, I model an activity titled “Where I’m From” derived from George Ella Lyon. We all have our own story to tell. This poem helps zoom in on the specifics of that story and allows exploration of background, home, childhood, upbringing and family culture. Subsequently, the CI students create their own version using the poem as the prompt to describe their unique lives, i.e., families, cultural traditions, socio-emotional activities, and favorite things (sports, foods, films). Each week, two students share their projects to reveal the diversity in our shared space.
EDML 417: The Socio-Cultural Context of Bilingual Schooling
Course Assignment: Linguistic landscape de mi comunidad
For this assignment, CI students explore the diverse linguistic and communicative practices of their local communities. As they craft this project, they consider these two primary questions: What is the linguistic landscape of your community? How are the communicative practices of the comunidad represented visually throughout your neighborhood (e.g., shops, signs, schools, other spaces)? Students walk their communities and observe the sounds and visual representations of the linguistic landscape. They share their observations and learnings through a medium of their choice and the presentations must include the community's demographics, reflections and learnings, and implications for teaching.
EDUC 445: Chicano Child and Adolescent
Course Assignment: Middle School Book Club
In the course, CI students facilitate a middle school book club with participating students in a local school, a service-learning project that promotes the literacy growth, critical thinking, and mentorship of middle school students. The community-based experience and assignment provides CI students with interesting, timely and culturally relevant interactions in our diverse Latino communities. These community interactions provide opportunity for CI students to explore the issues, cultural practices, and social experiences of Latinx communities and to better understand the themes of the course: La Inmigración; La Familia; La Religion; La Educación; La Salud; Las Celebraciones; and La Cosecha.
EDML 563: Primary Language Schooling in the US, Grades K-12 I
Course Assignment: Biliteracy
For this signature assignment, students create a literacy unit composed of three lessons for developing biliteracy skills with special attention to skills involved in the transferability to English. This unit will focus on a specific skill set called Bridging, bringing the two languages together, guiding students to engage in contrastive analysis of the two languages, and to transfer the academic content they have learned from one language to the other language. In this assignment, primary language usage is recognized and affirmed to increase equity among the development of students’ literacy skills and multilingual practices.
EDML 564: Primary Language Schooling in the US, Grades K-12 II
Course Assignment: Autobiographical Literacy, Language, & Culture Story
Early in the semester, students are asked to reflect on their language/literacy development and connections to their diverse identities and cultures. Students create a presentation of their personal history and relationship with language, literacy, and culture. Presentations take a variety of artistic forms, including spoken word poetry, monologues, and narrated videos. Some questions students consider are: Where do you come from in a sociocultural linguistic sense? What have been your experiences with language and literacy in school/home? In this assignment, students use metacognition to understand the value and impact of their cultural communities and primary language in developing their own literacy identities.