The CUNY Humanities Alliance began this semester at LaGuardia Community College on Friday, February 2, 2018 with the first part of a two part Winter Institute, where fellows workshopped their syllabuses with each other and their faculty mentors, and obtained practical advice for new faculty at LaGuardia. The next institute will take place on Friday, February 23, 2018 at the Graduate Center.
Community College and the Future of the Humanities is the theme of a national conference that will be jointly convened by LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center. The CUNY Humanities Alliance invites workshop proposals from community college students, four-year college students, graduate students, mentors, faculty, and administrators that address one or more of the following topics:

• Innovative Pedagogies: Community College Pedagogy and Curricula in the Humanities
• Transfer and Continuity: Pathways between Community and Four-year Colleges
• Diversity and Inclusion: Learning and Life Circumstances of the “New Majority” College Student
• Value of Humanities: examining, articulating, and affirming humanities education in the lives and careers of students, and for the broader public
• Research and Professional Pathways: Connecting interests, research, teaching, and professional development

The committee encourages creative and participatory formats for sessions. For more details about the conference and the link to submit a proposal, visit the Call for Papers. The deadline for proposals is March 31, 2018.
The Humanities Alliance’s Graduate Teaching Fellows continue to reflect upon their pedagogical practices and innovate new ones. Check out these recent posts:

• J Polish uses “Personal Traffic Lights” with their theatre students and reflects on the practice of consent-based participation in Okay, But Did It Work? — A Reflection on Consent-Based Participation Practice (a cross-post from the Designing for All (DfA) project coordinated with LaGuardia CC’s Center for Teaching and Learning.)
• Chaya Nove considers the affordances and limitations of Powerpoint slides in To PowerPoint or not: Reevaluating the use of slides in the classroom

And in case you missed the following posts last semester:

• Alison Walls on designing classroom spaces with the needs of students (and teachers) in mind in The Teaching Space, where she argues that “A thoughtfully designed educational space is not impossible.”
• Micheal Rumore continues his reflections on the promises and challenges of critical pedagogy and discusses how he guides students to do a “close reading” of the classroom in Making the Classroom an Object of Inquiry
• Inés Vañó García follows up her reflections on shadowing a faculty mentor and guiding students to active inquiry in a new post Textbooks aside, making room for more critical thinkers!
• Alison Walls reflects on the experience of receiving critique in an MFA theatre course, and the value of critique as a process for classroom learning in Embracing Critique
• Hansol Oh reflects on her debut as a new teacher, an anticlimactic lesson plan, and what she learned from student feedback in Envisioning the Classroom as a Rehearsal Space
• Kahdeidra Monét Martin discusses her teaching strategies and the activities she designed for a session on undocumented youth and the effects of ending DACA, and shares student reflections in Apples, Peaches, and Mangoes: Showing Care & Being Aware for DACA

Our Graduate Teaching Fellows return to LaGuardia classrooms for the Spring I quarter in March. Stay tuned for new reflections on humanities pedagogy, teaching with technology, assignment design, and more!