10 Event Planning
Transformative Speaker Series
TLH hosted illustrious visitors in our Transformative Speakers Series. In its second year, TLH hosted Susan D. Blum, Felicia Rose Chavez, Jesse Stommel, and Jamila Lyiscott. Dr. Blum led the interactive workshop “Practicing Ungrading: Why and How” in October 2021, sharing knowledge from her influential edited collection Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). Dr. Chavez led a two-part workshop in February 2022 called “Anti-Racist Pedagogy: Adapting Our Teaching Habits,” where she outlined tools for transforming teaching, such as co-creating curricula with students. Dr. Stommel’s “Ungrading and Alternative Assessment Workshop” in March 2022 opened a reflective dialogue on antiracist, inclusive teaching and how we can move beyond grading. Finally, Dr. Lyiscott led the workshop “Liberation Literacies Pedagogy: At the Intersection of Language, Race, and Power” in April 2022, detailing the difference between liberation and inclusion in the classroom and beyond. Over 1,300 faculty, staff, and students at CUNY and beyond attended and engaged in this series.
In its third year, TLH hosted or co-hosted Lorgia García-Peña in collaboration with the Publics Lab; Bettina Love, author of We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom; MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America; Vietnamese-American writer Ly Tran, author of the memoir House of Sticks; and renowned poet Tracie Morris, the first tenured African-American poet of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop after serving as the program’s inaugural distinguished visiting professor of poetry.
Transformative Speakers Series: (from left to right) Felicia Rose Chavez and Jesse Stommel, Susan Blum
Inviting Speakers
Cosponsored Events
In Spring 2021, during the COVID-19 global health crisis, the TLH program dedicated support specifically to showcasing and broadcasting the work of our own CUNY faculty. Rather than turning to outsiders, we led by honoring the practices and vision of CUNY faculty whose commitment to racial justice and equity are central to the mission of TLH and crucial to the transformative practice of higher education.
TLH offered $500 awards to honor those 90 faculty organizing 75 professional development workshops in accordance with TLH’s mission. They organized these workshops in collaboration with 80 students who received $300 scholarships. We partnered with and supported our faculty in their efforts to share innovative ideas and methods with the CUNY community and the general public: we provided TLH Open Office Hours to mentor faculty on how to make their workshops engaging and interactive using TLH methods; we promoted their events by creating event graphics and setting up Eventbrite pages to track RSVPs; and we helped to broadcast their events across CUNY through our social networks.
Cosponsored events could be, but were not limited to, professional development workshops and presentations on innovative pedagogy, reading or viewing discussion groups, faculty-organized symposia, public art performances and other event types that inspired transformative teaching and learning.
Event Accessibility
TLH arranged for full accessibility of our public events by offering CART (live captioning) and ASL interpreters. We chose to offer these access features by default as a way to include people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing without requiring extra work on their behalf or creating any uncertainty about accommodations. Two ASL interpreters are typically required for any event, and CART providers may need a backup depending on the length of the event. The cost of both services was approximately $600 per event.