Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Culturally Affirming Classroom
A Teaching Innovation Conference
January 7, 2022, 10 a.m. - 3 .p.m
The Winter '22 Teaching Innovation Conference is now open for registration! Get your seat now by filling out the registration form.
How can we design culturally affirming learning spaces that celebrate students' lived experiences? How can we challenge students to grow into the selves they want to be without contributing to white supremacist, colonizing practices?
Join us for the Winter 2022 Teaching Innovation Conference where we'll learn from Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez and other PSU faculty who are creating culturally affirming classrooms through an interdisciplinary lens. The full schedule for the day is below.
Free and Open to All
The Teaching Innovation Conference is for future faculty and all those who want to continue evolving their teaching.
Practical Teaching Skills
Leave with new tools and skills you can apply to your teaching and add to your resume immediately.
Inspired Conversations with Real-World Innovators
The Teaching Innovation Mini-Conference brings speakers from a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines to speak on their experience relevant to the current innovations and challenges in higher education.
Community & Mentorship
Make new connections outside of your field. People come away from the Teaching Innovation Mini-Conferences with a new sense of community at PSU.
Conference Schedule
10:00am -12:00pm
Challenging Cultural Deficit Teaching and Creating Identity-affirming Classrooms
Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez: Featured Facilitator
In this workshop, Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez will challenge cultural deficit teaching approaches and offer an asset-based framework to create identity-affirming classroom environments. Attendees will be prompted to reflect on their positionalities and think critically about how systems of oppression impact student engagement and learning. Please come ready to participate meaningfully.
1:00pm - 3:00pm
Culturally Affirming Classrooms through an Interdisciplinary Lens: A Faculty Conversation
Speakers: Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez, Dr. Cristina Herrera, Dr. Kali Simmons, and Dr. Courtney Terry
About Our Facilitators
Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez
Martín Alberto Gonzalez, a first-generation Xicano from the predominantly Latinx community of Oxnard, California, comes to Portland State as an assistant professor of Chicano/Latino Studies. The youngest of seven and the only one in his family to go to college, he graduated from California State University, Northridge, majoring in sociology and minoring in psychology. He earned his Ph.D. in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University with an emphasis on structural racism in educational settings. In his research, Gonzalez uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit), along with collaborative qualitative research methods, to examine how racism (and other systems of oppression like white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, etc.) negatively shapes the experiences of Latinx students across all educational settings. He uses concepts such as community cultural wealth and counter-storytelling to highlight asset-based explanations for Latinx student success.
Dr. Cristina Herrera
Dr. Cristina Herrera holds a PhD in English from Claremont Graduate University and grew up in Oxnard, California. Cristina is Professor and Director of Chicano/Latino Studies at PSU. Her latest manuscript, ChicaNerds in Chicana Young Adult Literature: Brown and Nerdy (Routledge, 2020) explored representations of Chicana adolescents she dubs “ChicaNerds” for their displays of Chicana feminist consciousness and “nerdy” traits of intellectual curiosity. Her co-authored book, Latinx Teens: US Popular Culture on the Page, Stage, and Screen is due out in spring 2022 with University of Arizona Press.
Dr. Molly Benitez
Dr. Molly Benitez is a queer, non-binary, bi-racial (Korean/Mexican), educator, organizer, former welder, and assistant professor at Portland State University. Their research analyzes the intersections of gender/sexuality, race, and labor with a focus on queer, gender diverse, and trans people in the trades. Molly works in race and gender equity with a specific focus on labor fields. Molly has designed and facilitated several workshops, and trainings, has spoken on panels, and is involved in grassroots organizing focused on the themes of race and gender equity, labor, and LGBTQ issues.
Dr. Kali Simmons
Dr. Kali Simmons is a descendant of the Oglala Lakota tribe of Pine Ridge South Dakota and an assistant professor in Portland State’s Indigenous Nations Studies department. An Indigenous feminist scholar, her research examines genre works by Indigenous peoples (primarily horror, speculative fiction, and documentary). She is currently at work on a project which examines representations of Indigenous peoples in modern American horror films. Her work has been published in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, and on Vulture.com.
Dr. Courtney Terry
Courtney Terry earned a PhD in Humanities with concentrations African American Studies and English Literature from Clark Atlanta University (HBCU). Her doctoral research focused on African and African American trickster traditions and their manifestations in contemporary Hip-Hop culture and Rap music genre. Currently, Dr. Terry is an associate professor in the Black Studies Department at Portland State University.