Pedagogies of Care: Accessible Teaching, Systemic Barriers, & Care in Your Discipline
How can educators sustain care for themselves and their students amid growing institutional pressures, shifting technologies, and increasing demands on their time and attention? In this workshop, participants will reflect on what care looks like in their classrooms, what gets in the way of practicing it, and how their disciplines shape (or neglect) its meaning. Through open discussion and reflective activities, participants will examine tensions between institutional expectations and inclusive teaching values, explore systemic barriers that reproduce harm or hinder access, trace the ethical and cultural lineages that inform their pedagogical approaches, and imagine practices of care that foster more just, accessible, and sustainable teaching and learning environments. By the end of this workshop, participants will be prepared to:
- Reflect on how care, identity, access, and classroom climate shape their teaching and learning environments
- Identify institutional and systemic factors that support or constrain care-centered and inclusive pedagogical practices
- Analyze how disciplinary traditions and cultural lineages inform approaches to care in teaching and learning
- Articulate a preliminary “Pedagogy of Care” commitment or set of guiding practices to inform future course design and classroom engagement
Instructors
Kelsey Reeder, Columbia University
Workshop Schedule
This one-session online workshop meets in Zoom on Wednesday, January 21st at 8-10pm Gulf / 11am-1pm Eastern / 10am-12pm Central / 9-11am Arizona / 8-10am Pacific.
Audience
This session is designed for educators with some teaching experience who have already begun reflecting on their teaching practice. Participants will get the most out of the sessions if they have prior exposure to concepts such as inclusive teaching, course design, or classroom climate, whether through formal workshops or their own pedagogical reflection and experimentation.
Registration and Enrollment
Cap: 25. Registration opens Monday, January 5th at 10am CT and closes once capacity is reached. Registration will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis and registrants from CIRTL member institutions or alumni of CIRTL member institutions will receive priority. Once registration closes, all registrants will be notified of their enrollment status.
Accessibility
If you have access needs, please let us know what they are. Contact Zoe Zuleger (zmzuleger@wisc.edu) who is supporting this workshop, to let us know how we can help you have a successful experience. In addition to meeting individualized needs, we will also take measures throughout the workshop to support accessibility for all our students:
- Sending pre-session reminders with upcoming assignments to all students
- Sharing materials for synchronous sessions with students (slides, activity instructions, etc.)
- Enabling live captioning in synchronous sessions
- Incorporating multiple modes of interaction into synchronous sessions
About CIRTL Programming
CIRTL Network programming is designed to develop future faculty committed to implementing and advancing evidence-based teaching practices to create undergraduate educational experiences that are accessible to all learners. Participants can explore our programming in any order, and to whatever extent supports your own teaching development needs and interests. To help participants understand what they can expect across all our programming, all CIRTL programming aligns with four broad learning goals; within those goals, programming might provide participants with an introductory, intermediate, or advanced learning experience.
This course supports the following CIRTL learning goals at an intermediate level:
- Goal 1: Develop evidence-based teaching knowledge. See more Goal 1 programming.
- Goal 2: Connect with community to enhance teaching. See more Goal 2 programming.
- Goal 3: Cultivate teaching skills through reflective improvement. See more Goal 3 programming.
- Goal 4: Prepare for an impactful career. See more Goal 4 programming.

