Call for Papers for the SCS 2022 Meeting in San Francisco
“Building the Accessible Classroom”
Panel Description
As educators, our greatest challenge and reward is to invite students of all backgrounds, ages, and identities into our classrooms and to help them make those spaces their own. To do so, we must make our classrooms accessible at all angles and entry points: from putting th̶̶e field of Classics on the radars of students who have never heard of it, to creating spaces that are physically and emotionally accessible for our students to explore the wonders and horrors of the ancient world. This includes finding new ways to teach old material in an ethical and inclusive way, and challenging the dominant perspectives often embedded in the texts we study, the textbooks we adopt, the events we sponsor, and the national exams we administer. Practically speaking, creating accessibility ̶ in materials, pedagogical practices, outreach, and assessments ̶ is key to inviting students of all backgrounds into the classroom. These theoretical points of access find concrete form in reassessing the spaces we inhabit and finding ways to invite new identities into those spaces and into the conversation about classical studies. Likewise, cultivating awareness of the different physical identities that move through worlds ancient and modern is integral to challenging the dominant hierarchies of both time periods. But all this is easier said than done, especially given the constraints and demands of the modern curriculum. This panel seeks to address accessibility from 360 degrees, offering both a theoretical framework and concrete tools for building an accessible Classics classroom at all levels.
Topics
Paper topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
- accessibility for different age-levels: elementary, secondary, and post-secondary
- actionable steps and best practices for constructing an accessible classroom
- scaffolding assignments and presentation in order to introduce challenging topics in an accessible way
- creating relevance and intellectual accessibility for students and scholars of different backgrounds and identities
- highlighting previously marginalized, excluded, and/or underrepresented groups and perspectives
Submission Guidelines
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to Philip Walsh (pwalsh@standrews-de.org) not later than March 31, 2021. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously.
Proposed by
Jessica Blum-Sorensen, Ariana Traill, Emma Vanderpool, and Philip Walsh on behalf of the K-12 Education Committee.