Scott Myers-Lipton, Director of the Teaching Social Action Initiative, is offering 2-day, in-person, training for faculty and staff who want to use social action in their courses or workshop series. The expectation for the 2-day training is that there is minimum of five faculty and staff committed to teach a course or workshop series using social action in the next 18 months.
Furthermore, in this social action model, teachers devote about one-half of the time of the course directly to the students' policy campaigns to explore such topics as issue development, building power, tactics, and campaign implementation.
This means that if it is an existing course, some of the material will have to be excluded. Also, the readings are reduced a bit so that the 1.5 hours per week of "policy campaign work" is not too burdensome.
Here is the short version of what you need to do to host an Institute:
- Reserve a large room with moveable chairs.
- Raise a minimum of $4,000 to cover the cost of food for 5 meals on Saturday and Sunday for 20-30 attendees, as well as pay for Scott’s flight and hotel.
- Recruit faculty (and staff who can teach) from the region, which Scott will be glad to help with.
Long Version
First, we need to choose a date. Are you thinking about fall or spring? During the school year, it is best to do Institutes on Saturday and Sunday, or Friday and Saturday, but in the summer or winter, we can hold them on weekdays as well. If we do it on the weekend, we will do Sessions 1-4 on Saturday from 8:45 am-6:15 pm, and Session 5-6 on Sunday from 8:45 am am-1 pm. Here is the general format for the Institute:
Second, you need to identify a room for 20-40 participants that has moveable chairs and tables.
Third, you need to raise a minimum of $4,000 from your institution or community to cover the cost for food for the 20-40 faculty and staff, as well as airfare and 3 nights at a hotel for me. The food cost is about $2K to $2,500, and the cost of flight and hotel is around $1K to -$1,500 depending on the location. Scott Myers-Lipton’s flight, hotel and food; an honorarium is appreciated, but not required.
Fourth,the host (YOU!) welcomes all the participants to start the Institute, and to explain why you wanted to do an Institute.Then, you will teach two short sections at the Institute: (1) in Session 2, on the development of a social action syllabus in Session 2; and (2) in Session 5, how you took the Institutes learning and developed your syllabus for your own social action class and what you are learning or have learned from teaching it. Our hope is that you might consider hosting an Institute in following year, where you would facilitate about a bit more of the Institute, and then take on more of the Institute in the coming years, where at some point, you could teach it yourself.
Fifth, we will develop a team of folks from regional campuses to help recruit.
Sixth, Bobby and I will set up a link where the participants can apply, just as we do for all the upcoming Institutes. The application process makes them aware of our expectations, and gets them into our system on Notions, where we can track their progress with social action. If they agree to our expectations, we accept them into the Institute.