Decolonizing Online Courses for First Generation Students by Yolanda Santiago Venegas https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4 Yolanda Santiago Venegas • UC Irvine Composition Program en-us 2021-01-18 20:24:23 UTC 2023-01-20 04:12:57 UTC hello@padlet.com Decolonizing Educational Practitioners are Equity-minded: They are: • Willing to take personal and institutional responsibility for the success of their students and critically reassess their own practices • They monitor unequal outcomes (how did my first-generations students do in my major assignments compared to other students?) and turn the lens on themselves and their institutions in order to “make sense” of unequal outcomes •They are Race/Gender/Sexuality conscious and aware of the social and historical context of exclusionary practices in American higher education • While the graduation rate of first generation low-income students in the UC system is higher than the national average, Equityminded educational practitioners in the UC system are willing to assess and acknowledge that their practices may not be meeting the needs of first generation Students of Color as well as they could• Source: USC Center for Urban Education yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099034418 2021-01-18 20:33:44 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099034418 UC FIRST GEN FACT SHEET: •In 2019 more than half of UCIs graduating class were first generation students • According to data from UCOP Institutional Research and Academic Planning, about 42% of all UC undergraduates are first generation students • Given that the proportion of first generation undergraduates in the UC system has grown 6% from 36% in 2006 to 42% 2016, it is safe to assume that by 2026 about half of the undergraduates enrolled in the UC system will be first generation students • According to UCOP, UC’s first generation students are ethnically diverse; likely to come from immigrant families; and the majority come from low-income families with incomes of $50,000 or less yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099038726 Source:  UCOP Institutional Research and Academic Planning “First Generation Student Success at the University of California,” 2017.
 

]]> 2021-01-18 20:36:19 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099038726 First Gen Challenges • Economic pressures: Our first generation students report constant worry about how they will pay for the cost of college tuition and housing. They worry about how they will pay for technology, books, and other supplies required in their courses. They also worry about the financial well-being of their families at home • Integration into the University: Our first generation students often struggle as they learn to navigate the university and understand academia; they struggle to develop a sense of belonging in the university and often feel alienated from university culture and the academic tasks we ask them to engage in• Underprepared UC Campuses: Our first generation students often arrive to their UC campus less prepared than traditional students because of educational inequalities in their K-12 schooling and our UC campuses are often not prepared (with academic and other support programs) to meet the academic and other needs of the first generation students they accept • Self Efficacy: Many of our first generation students have doubts in their ability to succeed in college and struggle with a low sense of self-efficacy. When they have academic difficulty, they are often unable to separate their poor academic performance from their intellectual self worth because they have been schooled in deficit mindsets. •They experience a disproportionate amount of mental, emotional, and physical strain due to racial microaggressions and an unwelcoming campus/department/program climate (Yosso, et. al, 2009) • Major Anxiety: They experience heightened difficulty in deciding on a major and anxiety about the major they’ve chosen because they are the first in their family to attend college and their priority & purpose in obtaining a higher education is to ensure the financial security of their family: this is what is at stake for first generation students in your courses yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099041739 2021-01-18 20:38:02 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099041739 Exacerbated Challenges Due to Distance Learning During the Pandemic •Technology: they are not likely to have up-to-date laptops or computers at home with up-to-date software, cameras, and microphones working effectively as required for effective distance learning: the technology that is available is likely to be dated and shared by other family members. They also may not have access to the internet or have a slower low-cost internet service. They are more likely to use the Canvas app on their smartphones to view their course work. They are often unaware of free campus resources to help meet their technology needs • Quiet Space/Time: Many of our first generation students do not have a quiet space in their home to complete their course work or they have family obligations such a caring for siblings or sick relatives that trump school • Health: Because covid has disproportionately hit low-income communities of color, your first generation students are more likely to have or have had Covid themselves or in their immediate family and be suffering with the physical and mental health consequences of the pandemic • Work: Because the pandemic has brought many of our first generation students home where their families are struggling financially during the pandemic, they are likely to be working more hours per week to help alleviate the family’s economic hardship yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099042756 2021-01-18 20:38:39 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099042756 Questions to Ask Yourself as a decolonizing equity-minded educational practitioner• Is the diversity of students in my class reflected in my course theme, readings, and writing assignments?• Have I used the online environment to created a course aesthetic, where my first generations students can see themselves in course images, course readings and assignments? • Are the readings and writing assignments in my courses relevant to my first-generation students’ lived realities?• Is my course designed in a way that welcomes my first generation students into the university community or does it continue to exclude them? yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099043401 2021-01-18 20:39:08 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099043401 Recommendations • The online environment offers us unique opportunities to work towards designing a course aesthetic that legitimizes our first generation students’ histories, experiences, lived realities, and ways of being and knowing yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099052325 For example, you can add an image to your Canvas course shell and embed, images, music, art and other culturally sustaining artifacts to your Canvas pages

]]> 2021-01-18 20:44:35 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099052325 Recommendation • Design your online course in a way that is predictable from one week to the next. Establish a weekly routine of work with set deadlines (for example, assignments are due Th and Su), explain how your online course works on the syllabus, and include an instructional video that introduces and explains how the course is set up at the beginning of the class and ideally, an instructional video that explains the work for each week or Unit. yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099055164
 “not having a consistent set of deadlines [and a predictable routine of work] is like asking students to attend an onsite course in which they never know the meeting time until the class before” Warnock,  Teaching Writing Online (146). 

]]> 2021-01-18 20:46:29 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099055164 Recommendation • yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099058139 Shift your course policies and procedures from a rules orientation to a relationship of empathy (I understand your challenges) and authentic caring (Valenzuela Subtractive Schooling).  Some course requirements or policies are required by our program and have to be in our syllabus verbatim, yet most of the course policies about attendance, due dates, extensions, make-ups, revisions, are left up to individual instructors.  Review your course syllabus and Canvas website and delete rules & punitive oriented course policies: For example, “Because of the fast pace of this course I can not accept late work, No Late Essays. No Exceptions, Don’t Ask.”  or “After the third time you blank_____, I will blank_____.  These examples were in my own syllabus and in my view at the time, they were a form of self-preservation and a way for me to be explicit (up front) about course expectations from the get go, yet I’ve deleted all such policies from my syllabus after doing the CUE Syllabus Self Review and have found that it does not result in more late essays or more incomplete work.  A useful exercise is to review your syllabus and Canvas website for policies and procedures you’ve invented and ask yourself:  How will my first-generation students perceive this? Will this make my first generation students feel welcomed or unwelcomed in my course? Sometimes less is more...

Here is a link to a Syllabus Review Process Worksheet I developed using the resource below

]]> 2021-01-18 20:48:27 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099058139 Recommendation • Be explicit about your willingness to reach for your first generation students—wherever they may be—so they can achieve the course objectives. For example by offering students the opportunity to revise not-passing essays with the help of a tutor or after meeting with you. You can also include a statement that conveys your willingness to work with them in your Welcome Letter yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099059191 2021-01-18 20:49:12 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099059191 Recommendation • Practice intrusive Office Hours, use an online sign up sheet and ask students to sign up for REQUIRED conferences or check in meetings in Zoom, Google Meet, etc. When in conference, offer students aggressively directive feedback on their writing (Méndez-Newman, 30-31) yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099059741 Source: Beatrice Méndez Newman "Teaching Writing at Hispanic Serving Institutions"]]> 2021-01-18 20:49:35 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099059741 Recommendation • Work to explicitly develop student self-efficacy, their sense of Sí Se Puede. Teach students that academic success is a socially constructed practice not an inherent ability yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099082974 2021-01-18 21:05:52 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099082974 Final Thoughts • There is no such thing as an innocent, neutral, course theme, assigned reading, or writing assignment: The choices we make will either welcome our first generation students into our university community as critical conscientious thinkers who understand the transformative power of literacy or continue to exclude them • “There is no apolitical classroom. English language arts teachers must examine the ways that racism has personally shaped their beliefs and must examine existing biases that feed systems of oppression.” —NCTE There Is NO Apolitical Classroom yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099097002 2021-01-18 21:16:15 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099097002 Resources * USC Center for Urban Education 5 Part Webinar “Racial Equity in Online Environments” (Designed for CCC: relevant to all decolonizing educational practitioners) yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099097939 2021-01-18 21:17:02 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099097939 "When I say practitioners are missing, I am referring to the lack of scholarly and practical attention toward understanding how the practitioner-her knowledge, beliefs, education, sense of self-efficacy, etc.-affects how students experience their education." Bensimon "The Underestimated" (444) yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099138115 2021-01-18 21:47:05 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099138115 “I want to be able to provide for my family and let my mom know that her hard work over the time I’ve been alive was worth something and that I would not put that to waste. I want to graduate and get a job that will help provide for my family, so they don’t have to worry about anything financial”—UCI student, "Education Narrative" yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099252419 2021-01-18 23:39:28 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099252419 yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099258602 2021-01-18 23:46:24 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099258602 yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099260200 2021-01-18 23:47:50 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1099260200 Equityminded Course Theme yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112010789 Laura Rendón "From the Barrio to the Academy"]]> 2021-01-21 20:37:34 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112010789 Equityminded Course Theme yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112016429 You Tube: What It's Like to be a First Generation Student ]]> 2021-01-21 20:39:08 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112016429 The art on this wall is by the Chicanx muralist Juana Alicia yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112454887 Juanaalicia.com]]> 2021-01-21 23:58:26 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112454887 "Having a higher education means experiencing internal feelings of doubt and fear. As an only child, it also meant feeling that navigating this new atmosphere was incredibly isolating...Being a first generation college student means breaking the cycle of poverty. That means, as a first generation college student, I have to be successful in this new and unknown “world.” I have to be successful. Otherwise, I would feel bad for letting the sacrifices and support my family has given me go to waste."-UCI Student "What Does Higher Education Mean to You?" Narrative yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112640900 2021-01-22 02:02:50 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1112640900 Recommendation • Teach Outlawed Knowledge • Anzaldúa taught us to rethinking rhetoric • To use her threshold concepts to teach writing as openings, ‘aperturas’ for our students’ experiences and ways of being and knowing to change how we teach and construct knowledge¾for transformative pedagogies and epistemologies that set teachers-students on a path towards constructing our own visionary philosophies-our own outlawed knowledge yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115624041 2021-01-22 19:36:09 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115624041 The Coyolxauhqui Imperative yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115921307 2021-01-22 21:14:38 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115921307 yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115927064 2021-01-22 21:16:56 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115927064 Yolanda Santiago Venegas Teaching Portfolio yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115942023 2021-01-22 21:22:21 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115942023 White Profs at Hispanic Teaching Institutions: Radical Revolutionaries or Complicit Colonists? yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115943838 2021-01-22 21:23:09 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115943838 “all of us are on a path of empowerment. We have to empower the imagination to blur and transcend customary frameworks and conceptual categories reinforced by language and consensual reality. To explore the “cracks between the worlds,” (rendijas, rents in the world) we must see though the holes in reality- Gloria Anzaldúa “Flights of the Imagination" yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115972216 2021-01-22 21:36:25 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1115972216 Teaching Con el Corazón Con Razón • In this recording from the 2002 Practicing Transgressions Conference celebrating the republication of This Bridge Called My Back Gloria Anzaldúa talks to us about Corazón Con Razón yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1116111200 2021-01-22 23:00:59 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1116111200 "Whereas Freire was primarily concerned with the mind, Thich Nhat Hanh offered a way of thinking about pedagogy which emphasized wholeness, a union of mind, body, and spirit"- hooks "Engaged Pedagogy" yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1117519276 2021-01-23 21:26:33 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1117519276 Teaching as Healing Trabajos yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1124111432 2021-01-25 20:36:02 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1124111432 yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1128245693 2021-01-26 18:17:17 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1128245693 “In teaching writing we are tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student’s place and mode of operation in it” — James Berlin yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1129274814 2021-01-26 22:35:31 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1129274814 yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1129308356 2021-01-26 22:54:27 UTC https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1129308356 Equityminded education involves decolonizing forms of thought and action yvenegas21 https://padlet.com/yvenegas21/ufvhatg7xw6nv0q4/wish/1137735903
In this course students (you) will: 
1. Learn to use reading, writing, and speaking for personal and political decolonization 
2. Learn to use reading and writing as tools for critical intellectual inquiry in the process of decolonizing your mind 
3. Practice using reading, writing, and discussion to question frames of intelligibility and systems of knowledge as you begin to construct your own epistemologies, your own ‘theory in the flesh’ (Bridge, 23), your own visionary philosophy... 

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