During the 2021-2022 school year, Dr. Williams facilitated a 7-week PhD teacher-intervention study, where he coached teachers and adminstrators through designing culturally meaningful activities in 5 steps using the LEARN framework.
During the 7-week intervention study, practitioners described the following problems that prevented them from designing culturally meaningful practices.
“I don’t have a solid definition of culturally responsive teaching.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“I don’t have the proper tools to design culturally responsive activities.“
“I don’t have any models to guide me through the design process.”
“I don’t know when I’m being culturally responsive and when I am not.“
“I have never seen it done. I need to see examples of what it looks like.”
“I have never been trained on culturally responsive frameworks.”
“I don’t know how to gather data on my students’ cultural values.”
“I just need your help, Dwayne!”
The LEARN Boot Camp
Designing culturally meaningful activities in 5 steps!
In this course, Dr. Williams is running it back! He employs the design method, activities, and tools used during his PhD teacher intervention study to coach you through designing culturally meaningful activities in 5 steps using practical tools.
The LEARN Boot Camp is a Tier 2 intervention for stakeholders who have read popular books and attended training on culturally responsive teaching yet cannot design culturally meaningful activities in their areas of work. By the end of this course, all learners, no matter their background, will design culturally meaningful practices using the LEARN framework as a guiding tool.
This course is not prescriptive, instructor-centered, or “curriculum-centered.” Instead, it is “learner-centered,” exploring and transforming problems you experience that prevent you from designing culturally meaningful practices in your work area. From this perspective, personal barriers that prevent you from designing culturally meaningful activities might vary from your colleagues’ barriers.
In close collaboration with Dr. Williams, you will identify and employ specific tools based on the problems you identify that prevent you from designing activities in culturally meaningful ways. Finally, Dr. Williams and his team will coach you on using culturally meaningful tools to transform problems and develop activities in culturally meaningful ways.
By the end of the intervention, you will know how to do the following:
Design culturally meaningful activities at the tier 1 level,
Design culturally meaningful activities using practical tools,
Apply LEARN’s five design principles to redesign current lessons,
Articulate why your designed activities are culturally meaningful,
Coach colleagues on designing culturally meaningful practices – and more!
All educators who enroll in this course will produce a “culturally meaningful design map” (CMDM) as their final project by the end of the course. CMDMs are prototype sketch designs of culturally meaningful activities. CMDMs illustrate your knowledge and ability to design culturally meaningful lessons.
The LEARN Boot Camp draws from Dr. Williams’ PhD intervention study. After successfully completing this course and constructing your CMDM, you will receive a LEARN Framework certification, illustrating that you are capable of designing culturally meaningful practices using LEARN’s five design principles. The certification also confirms that you are competent in coaching colleagues in employing LEARN’s 5 action step principles to design and redesign their work in culturally meaningul ways.
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