"Preparing to Teach in the Bi-Co: Critical Reflection, Co-creation, and Community"
"Preparing to Teach in the Bi-Co: Critical Reflection, Co-creation, and Community" is a summer faculty development workshop series open to all new tenure-track and interim faculty at Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College.
What is It?
The workshop series consists of three, 90-minute sessions. While each session can be taken as a stand-alone experience, they are intentionally designed to be taken together in order to both foster community and deepen learning. The creation and/or revision of course syllabi will be a focal pedagogical and curricular project.
Through the sequence, new faculty will (re)consider the following:
- What are my beliefs about teaching and learning? From where do these stem? What are central values of the Bi-Co as they relate to teaching and learning? How do I navigate any dissonance?
- What pedagogical and curricular practices that I have utilized and/or experienced in my own career, training, and education are aligned with these beliefs and values? What new pedagogical and curricular practices can I learn from others in this community in order to provide a more meaningful learning experience for all students?
- What ongoing support will I need to enact these shifts and changes? Where and with whom can I engage this support?
Two student consultants, one from Bryn Mawr and one from Haverford, will join each session to provide student perspectives on teaching and learning in the context of the Bi-Co.
When is it?
Workshop Dates and Times, Summer 2025
Session 1: Thursday, June 26, 2025, 11:30 am- 1:00 pm EST; Virtual*
Session 2: Option 1 (At BMC): Thursday, July 23, 2025, 10-11:30 am EST
Option 2 (Virtual*): Thursday, July 23, 2025, 12:30-2 pm EST
Session 3: TBD, Held In-Person During Bryn Mawr College New Faculty Orientation
*Link will be sent out at time of registration
How do I participate?
To register, contact Dr. Kelly Gavin Zuckerman, kzuckerman@brynmawr.edu.
History of the Summer Faculty Workshop Series
This project, originally named Creating and Rethinking Syllabi, was originated and led for the first several years by Dr. Alison Cook-Sather, Professor of Education and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute (TLI) at Bryn Mawr College. Past facilitators and contributors to the vision, administration, and leadership of the project include Dr. Alice Lesnick, Dr. Chanelle Wilson, Dr. Tracey Addy, and Margo Schall.
From the start, the workshops were rooted in pedagogical partnership -- the hallmark of the TLI. They have included students with training and experience as Student Consultants in the design and delivery of each session. This valuing of student voice and students as knowers in pedagogical process affords workshop participants a unique opportunity to think with and learn directly from students currently taking courses at the Colleges as well as recent alums. For more information and writing about the TLI, please see the TLI webpage and TLI forum.
Current Facilitator:
Dr. Kelly Gavin Zuckerman
Dr. Kelly Gavin Zuckerman is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program committed to the development of culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogical practices across the PK-16 spectrum that support the self-actualization of all learners. This work is intentionally attentive to dimensions of difference and the intersection of identities. It centers critical self-reflection, particularly on the part of white educators, and utilizes arts-based methodologies as vehicles for rendering visible that which may not be otherwise seen or measured, rendering audible that which may otherwise be muted or silenced, and rendering perceivable that which may go unnoticed or underexamined.
Dr. Zuckerman began her career teaching English and Dance and Choreography in a small, public high school in the Bronx, NY before earning her Masters in Education from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and doctoral degree in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. As a teacher educator and scholar, Dr. Zuckerman draws upon a critical constructivist framework that attends to the role of context, perspective, and power in educational settings and seeks to amplify and honor student voice and lived experiences, particularly of those who have been historically marginalized. Her theory of change in the field of education is rooted in the power of levity and learning, criticality and care, joy and justice, vulnerability and voice.