Teaching Toward Possibility

CAFE Faculty Learning Community 2026–2027

Reflecting on Ourselves, Understanding Our Students, and Reimagining Our Teaching

Four 90-Minute Sessions
Facilitated by CAFE Faculty Associates: Dr. Gyasmine George-Williams and Dr. Marisol Diaz

CAFE invites faculty to apply for Teaching Toward Possibility, a four-session Faculty Learning Community designed for educators who want dedicated time to reflect on their teaching, learn with colleagues across disciplines, deepen their understanding of the students and communities we serve, and translate reflection into meaningful pedagogical practice.

Teaching is intellectual work, but it is also relational, disciplinary, cultural, creative, and continually evolving. Faculty enter their classrooms carrying their educational histories, disciplinary traditions, identities, assumptions, experiences, and ideas about what learning should look like. Students enter those same spaces with histories, knowledge, responsibilities, aspirations, identities, communities, and experiences of their own. Teaching Toward Possibility creates an intentional space to consider what happens when all of these elements meet.

This is not a lecture series, and it is not based on the assumption that there is one correct way to teach. Participants do not need prior expertise in equity-minded, culturally sustaining, interdisciplinary, or multimodal pedagogy. Instead, faculty will learn with and from colleagues whose disciplines, teaching environments, perspectives, and pedagogical traditions may differ from their own.

We welcome the scientist, artist, engineer, humanist, teacher educator, and social scientist; the new professor and the professor who has taught for twenty years. Different disciplines teach us to ask different questions, recognize different forms of evidence, and imagine learning in different ways. Those differences will be important resources for this community.

Our invitation is simple:

Come curious about your teaching and leave willing to try something.

Our Central Question

Throughout the four sessions, participants will return to a central question:

What becomes possible for students when we critically examine who we are, understand who we teach, consider the conditions under which learning occurs, and intentionally reimagine our practice?

The FLC will follow four interconnected movements:

  • Self: Who am I as an educator?
  • Students: Who are we teaching?
  • Conditions: What makes meaningful learning possible?
  • Praxis and Possibility: What will I do differently?

What Participants Will Explore

Teaching Toward Possibility is informed by critical, culturally sustaining, relational, and Ethnic Studies-informed approaches to teaching and learning. Participants will explore questions involving identity and positionality, knowledge and power, lived experience, history and context, interdisciplinarity, community knowledge, counternarratives, accessibility, collective learning, reflection, and action.

Participants are not expected to become Ethnic Studies scholars. Rather, the community will consider what these intellectual and pedagogical traditions can offer faculty working in a wide range of disciplinary contexts. The FLC will also draw upon scholarship from education, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, critical race scholarship, feminist studies, psychology, disability and accessibility studies, and other interdisciplinary traditions.

What Participants Will Do

Sessions will be interactive and collaborative rather than primarily presentation-based. Participants will have opportunities to:

  • Reflect on how identity, experience, assumptions, positionality, educational history, and disciplinary formation shape their pedagogical decisions.
  • Examine students’ strengths, identities, communities, responsibilities, experiences, and educational contexts when designing learning.
  • Consider conditions within their courses that may support or constrain belonging, accessibility, engagement, voice, intellectual challenge, and meaningful learning.
  • Learn across disciplinary boundaries by engaging with colleagues whose teaching environments and traditions differ from their own.
  • Develop at least one intentional pedagogical change for a course or other learning environment.

Learning activities may include individual reflection, paired and small-group conversations, interdisciplinary collaboration, readings, cases, mapping, storytelling, audio or visual materials, collaborative inquiry, and course redesign. Multiple forms of participation will be welcomed throughout the community.

Who Should Apply?

Faculty from all disciplines, appointment types, career stages, and levels of teaching experience are encouraged to apply. This FLC may be especially valuable for faculty who:

  • Want structured time to think deeply about their teaching.
  • Are interested in better understanding CPP students and the communities we serve.
  • Want to examine questions of belonging, accessibility, engagement, voice, and intellectual challenge.
  • Are open to learning with colleagues from other disciplines.
  • Would like to make an intentional change to a course or learning environment.
  • No previous experience with the pedagogical approaches explored in the FLC is required.

Participation and Compensation

Participants should plan to attend all four 90-minute sessions, engage actively in the learning community, and develop an intentional pedagogical change that they can apply within a course or learning environment.

Additional compensation in the amount of $500 be available to eligible participants upon completion of program requirements.

Session dates and format

Mondays, 9:00am – 10:30am

September 28, October 26, November 23, and December 14, 2026

The first meeting on September 28th will be in person in the CAFE conference room, Building 1, Room 228. Subsequent meetings will meet in the format decided by participants, but mostly on zoom.

Apply to Participate

Faculty interested in joining Teaching Toward Possibility are invited to submit the participation form by September 15, 2026.

Teaching Toward Possibility | Faculty Learning Community Interest Form

Questions

Dr. Marisela Chávez, Executive Director, CAFE