Throughout this academic year, I will be using this Initiatives column to share parts of the college’s strategic plan. My goal is to help you understand the goals and how we aim to reach them, and to help you see yourself in the plan as someone who can not only help to implement it, but also can benefit from it.

This week’s initiatives column will focus on the third action item of goal 2 (transforming educational professionals), objective 2 (strategically balance curricular offerings) in our strategic plan for 2021-25. You can read the full plan on our website.

This objective calls on us to engage in the process of revising and developing our curricular offerings to prepare our students to understand and serve the needs of all learners including: those residing in urban and rural settings and poverty contexts; those with disabilities; English language learners; multilingual students; people of color; LGBTQ+ individuals; and linguistically and culturally diverse populations, with specific attention on addressing systemic inequities, essential literacies, mental health and well-being.

The third action item calls on us to expand the contexts within which our curricular offerings are implemented to better afford a diverse set of experiences from which students can build.

There are six implementation tasks associated with this action item:

• Identify and support the development and implementation of internship experiences that include diverse student populations and a variety of educational experiences threaded across the curriculum with a specific focus on systemic inequities and injustices.
• Develop new school district partnerships to expand contexts where curriculum and instructional activities and internships can take place.
• Increase remote opportunities for students to engage virtually with diverse students (for example, online tutoring for EC-12 students who are struggling academically or are in need of English as second language skills, and support for schools in need of counseling services).
• Provide instructional and practical experiences that empower students to effectively advocate for and enact change.
• Create support networks for current students and graduates engaged in efforts to address systemic inequities, mental health and well-being.
• Enable students to provide educational solutions using technology to the community and community partners. 

A few months ago a friend of mine had hardwood flooring installed in her kitchen and dining room. The installer, upon arriving at the house, recognized that he had installed the existing flooring just five years earlier, and was somewhat distraught that he had to rip out the fruits of his previous hard work. But, while what he had done in 2016 worked well then, it no longer worked for my friend in 2021 and had to be updated.

It's the same thing with our curricular offerings. When we developed our curricula, they worked well for our students in the context of that moment in time. But what worked well five years ago likely is not serving our students now as well as it did back then because our world has changed. We may not need to rip out everything and start from scratch, but we do need to update our courses and programs to be more relevant to the times, to - as the document says - better afford a diverse set of experiences from which students can build.

Coming up

The next Initiatives column will include a look at goal 3, objective 1.