Area Studies Centers Summer Global Teacher Seminars

Overview

The Summer Global Teacher Seminars are week-long seminars that aim to inform teachers about global issues and provide pedagogical training to help teachers incorporate new content into their curricula. Seminar themes are selected to align with Ohio education content standards. Seminars deepen teachers’ understanding of an issue by going through detailed case studies from around the world, specifically Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Please visit the Global Teacher Seminars website for more information on seminars, and to find resource guides and lesson plans that have been created for them.

Benefits

Participating teachers receive:

• Continuing Education Units (typically at least two)
• Participation stipend
• Resource guides
• Curriculum materials
• Pedagogical support

2021 Seminar

Global Protests and Social Justice Activism 

Applications for the 2021 seminar are now closed. Please check back next year for information on the 2022 seminar.

June 7 -18, 2021

Monday – Friday

9:00AM-12:00PM EDT

Online via Zoom

Lead Facilitators:

• Lead Instructor: Dr. Steve Crowley (Department of Political Science, Oberlin College)
• Pedagogy Instructor: Daniel Redman (Ohio State U.)

Regional Experts

• Center for Latin American Studies: Dr. Guisela LaTorre (Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State U.)
• Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies: Dr. Steve Crowley (Department of Political Science, Oberlin College)
• East Asian Studies Center: Dr. Ju Hui Judy Han (Department of Gender Studies, U. California, Los Angeles)
• Middle East Studies Center: Dr. Danielle V. Schoon (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Ohio State U.)

This two-week seminar will inform K-12 teachers about global social justice activism and protest movements by focusing on the regions of East Asia, Eastern Europe/Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The seminar will start by giving participants a solid foundation in the relevant political, social, and historical theories in order to ground their understanding of protests and politics. Then throughout the seminar, guest experts will present regional case studies to provide comparative perspectives of what are prominent current protest movements in their region of study (social justice, corruption, environment, etc.), what hurdles activists/protestors may experience when organizing demonstrations or events, the longer history and culture of protest in the particular region, how protestors and their movement are perceived in the larger population, and how the demands of activists/protestors are considered and/or met by policy makers and reverberate in the political sphere.

By the end of the seminar, our goal is to have given teachers both a strong background in the topic and regional knowledge so that teachers feel empowered to bring this topic into their classrooms whatever their discipline may be. Additionally, our aim is to enable teachers to bring more comparative perspectives into their curricula to support the global learning of Ohio K-12 students. To this end, the seminar will include sessions focused on pedagogy led by a pedagogical expert that will include brainstorming activities, discussions on how to lead conversations with students about protests and activism, and how to inspire students’ civic engagement.

Past Seminars

• 2020, Where Does Our Food Come from? Global Agriculture and Economic Sustainability
• 2019, Global Environmental Issues: The Problems, Solutions, and Potential Outcomes
• 2017, Human Rights in Global Perspective, Mass Atrocities and State-Sponsored Violence
• 2016, Water Security for the 21^st Century