Linda Hasunuma, Ph.D.
Assistant Director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching
We pivoted to emergency remote teaching three months after I joined the team at the CAT, and now that it has been a year, I have a moment to reflect on what I learned about our Center and Temple’s campus community. Our collective time and energy were focused on online learning because that was what was needed at the moment, but the effects of the ongoing pandemic on communities of color, and the tragic deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor brought to the fore our country’s deep struggle for racial equality and justice, and the role educators have in addressing systemic racism. With increasing disinformation, misinformation, and political polarization in our country, we were also dealing with threats to our society, economy, and democracy. Faculty had to pivot in multiple ways and the CAT had to be one step ahead.
While the CAT has always engaged faculty in important discussions about equity and inclusion in our classrooms, especially in partnership with IDEAL through our Can We Really Talk? Series, our team received requests from departments and schools for custom workshops on inclusive and equitable teaching, managing challenging discussions and hot moments, and student and faculty mental health.
As a new CAT member, I saw that we are at the heart of teaching at Temple because across disciplines, colleges, and schools-from teaching assistants to Chairs- people were looking to us for support in making their courses more representative and inclusive of the diversity in our society and world.
As we wanted to provide resources for inclusive teaching beyond crises, we developed new permanent resources as well, including an Equity and Justice Blog Series. We are also developing a Teaching for Equity Institute to help faculty reflect on their own teaching practice and create more equitable and inclusive learning experiences.
In our roles at the CAT, we are constantly learning, growing, and creating every day as we respond to the world around us–just as faculty have been doing. That openness and flexibility are what prepared us as a team and university to effectively respond to all these challenges. Our Center, under the leadership of our director, Stephanie Fiore, helped thousands of Temple faculty make the pivot to online learning and learn ways to develop more equitable learning experiences for students. We were a vital space for human connection, community, and support across disciplines through these crises.
The pandemic, our summer of protests for social and racial justice, and the upheaval in our democracy, challenged our community in immeasurable ways. For many educators, it also renewed our sense of purpose and gave us an opportunity to reflect on our teaching practices. The past year reminded us even more about the importance of our connections to one another in and out of the classroom, and how to contextualize world and national events with our students. We hope you will join us at the Center so that we can continue our work together and support one another not only through times of crises, but at any time. We welcome your input and look forward to creating more resources and programs with and for our faculty.