Teaching

My teaching interests broadly include topics related to the sociology of education, youth studies, community-based youth organizations, sociology of race, critical pedagogy, Black education, youth resistance, urban education and policy, community-engaged research, and critical ethnographic and qualitative methodologies.

Course Descriptions

Youth, Education, + Society
This course explores the study of youth through theoretical, historical, social, and cultural perspectives with a particular focus on youth of color in marginalized contexts. This course interrogates the concept of “youth” as a socially constructed category and examine how “youth” have been positioned within educational, political, economic, and social contexts.  Themes explored include: conceptions of youth as a social category, education and schooling, race, gender, sexuality, politics and activism, community-based learning, criminal justice, media, and popular culture. By drawing on a variety of historical and contemporary “texts” and current events students study the lived experiences of young people who are situated within diverse racial, cultural, gendered, and classed contexts. Throughout the course, students reflect on their own experiences as “youth,” their relationship to education and other social institutions – and how it informs their understanding of society, educational theory and practice. Students are asked to think critically about the implications of race/ethnicity, social class, gender, sexuality, power and privilege throughout all themes and topics of the course.

Rethinking Afterschool Education: Community Engaged Learning
After school community-based spaces are often regarded as positive and affirming spaces for youth. In policy circles, they are usually regarded as valuable to youth and communities with little exploration into their diversity, philosophy, framing of youth, or pedagogical practices. This course provides students with the opportunity to engage with and discuss historical, ideological, and contemporary issues within after school community-based programs at large and within the local context. Rethinking After School Education is a community-engaged learning course intended to provide students with a theoretical understanding of afterschool education, as well as an applied and practical approach to working with and being of service to community-based programs. While receiving training on working with youth, race and privilege, and educational and economic inequality, students engage with one organization in the local community. Students also engage with guest speakers, including directors and youth workers from after school programs in the local community and other cities throughout the country. Once at the partner site, students will
perform the services most needed by the site.

Education + Resistance in Community-based Spaces

Drawing upon theoretical and empirical literature, students are asked to critically think about the ways political and social context shapes the construction and culture of these spaces. Students explore how educational policy and the confluence of power, race, class, and gender, shape community-based programs for youth. This course examines the ways these diverse out-of-school spaces inform the educational experiences, political identity development, and organizing and activist lives of minoritized and vulnerable youth. Topics include: grassroots organizing and activism, academic outcomes and access to higher education, full-service community-schools/school-community partnerships, socio-political development, funding and philanthropy, neoliberalism and education privatization, and after-school and out-of-school time education. Additionally, students examine the social and political context of community-based educational efforts in order to understand how they can be nurturing spaces of resistance for youth, as well as spaces of conflict and social reproduction. This course challenges students to think critically community-based spaces and their capacity for educational, political, and social change for youth and communities. 

Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Youth + Education
This course is the graduate level version of Youth, Education + Society.

Social Science Research Methods: Publishing Practicum
This class provides instruction on the skill and technique required to effectively manage your time and organize and execute a writing project in a timely fashion. By the end of this class, students have a clear plan in place to complete a writing project to prepare for academic publication. The skills learned in this class will be useful for any subsequent writing project—large or small, single author or co-authored students take on. In this course, you will also develop a habit of daily writing. By the end of this course, students will completed semester writing goals, develop a habit of daily writing, and submit a manuscript for publication.

Sociology of Black Education