Summer 22 Inclusive Syllabus Portfolio | Mathew Espinosa
EDLL 206: Leadership in Literacy Education
Course Description
Catalog Description:
Students will examine a school’s reading and language arts practices in context and write a response. They will engage in field experiences and applying them to their theoretical understandings about contemporary schooling policies. Provides candidates with opportunities to incorporate understandings about literacy and the context of literacy cultures to field actions related to their professional development. Students will apply strategies useful in assessing, evaluating, and making recommendations for sustaining or improving literacy teaching, learning, and assessment at a school.
My Description:
In other words, we are going to develop our language and literacy leadership skills together so you can be amazing changemakers for instructional, professional learning, and programmatic improvement.
Logistics:
Graduate course in 2nd year of MA in Language and Literacy Education; class size typically 15.
Before:
After taking the first course on inclusive syllabi, I wanted to focus on revising to be more student-centered and antiracist. I wanted my syllabus to reflect a social justice orientation.
Motivation for Redesign of your Syllabi
The previous version had enhanced clarity in course expectations and was revised to be ADA accessible, but lacked a clear orientation of social justice throughout and was not framed with communication with students at the center. It was written more generically, not to spark dialogue or relationship building with the intended audience.
Example 1.1: Limited information about the course (just the institution's description and SLOs).
Example 1.2: More generic and deficit-oriented language.
Example 1.3: Analysis shows evidence of language that is unwelcoming, invalidating, and/or mystifying. Much of this language is from departmental or institutional language/requirements.
Example 1.4: Some areas that were more under my control had examples of welcoming, validating, and/or demystifying language. I wanted to keep this and build upon it.
After:
For areas where I had control of the language, I made sure to edit the language to be clearer about my antiracist orientation and use welcoming, validating, and demystifying language. For areas where I had limited control of institutional or departmental requirements, I added a blurb to speak directly to students in my own words.
Evidence of Accessibility or Language Choice Changes
Example 2.1: I decided to include an explicit quote about being antiracist from Ibram X. Kendi. I also added information on how students are welcome to address me, a personal invitation to reach out and contact me, and my own blurb about what we will do in this class to accompany the more technical (and out-dated) course description.
Example 2.2: Instead of just having a list of outcomes, I described how these outcomes are connected to the course and the program and added an introductory welcome/overview for each unit.
Example 2.3: Even for some of the departmental and institutional language, I made small edits to be more validating of the students.
Techniques Incorporated Into Redesign
- Explicit references to antiracism
- Use of second person pronoun, "you"
- Revisions for language to be welcoming, validating, and demystifying
- Addition of "blurbs" that summarize or contextualize required sections
- Inclusion of purpose for each unit of study
Assessment of Syllabus Redesign
The current version balances institutional and departmental needs with my own philosophy of teaching and creating a welcoming, antiracist environment.
Reflection: Challenges and Lessons Learned
The exercise of analyzing the syllabus for welcoming, validating, and demystifying language was very helpful and something I can share with my department. I am certain my syllabus now looks quite different from my colleagues and I would like to share it as an example to spark conversation. My question is how the students receive the new syllabus and how it influences their experience in the course.
Faculty Biography
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Dr. Mathew Espinosa Dr. Espinosa teaches in the MA for Language and Literacy Education program in the College of Education as a part-time lecturer where he teaches a course in language and literacy educational leadership and advises students in completing their thesis research. He works full-time as the Director for Equity, Achievement, and Belonging at Berkeley Unified School District. Additionally, he works part-time as a lecturer at San Francisco State University and as a consultant for STAR Language Education. His areas of research include educational leadership for social justice, language development and multilingual education, educational equity, and immigrant education. |
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