Community Based Learning (CBL) Requirement

Global Displacement in a Hostile Time. This community-based research seminar on migration combines anthropology and principles of activist research. With 65 million people forcibly displaced, and over 244 million more migrants living abroad worldwide, migration in its various forms is one of the most pressing human rights issues today. As an anthropology class, we will read about the lived experience of migration spotlighting the distinctions and commonalities between migrants, refugees, asylees, and trafficked persons. And as members of a 4-credit community-based research class, students will conduct field research and create advocacy opportunities on behalf of migrants in the Metropolitan D.C. area. In this way, you will learn from the communities around you while contributing in ways that they identify

Students must have taken one of the pre-requisites or receive permission of the instructor.

How do we become courageous but not reckless? Maintain hope in a world full of despair? Discover how discourse, habits and Christian virtues sustain courage, hope and justice in its religious, psychological and social dimensions. We will explore physical, moral, and spiritual courage, hope, and justice through the lives of individuals, such as Colin Kaepernick, and communities, such as the protestors of the Dakota Access Pipeline. We will look at how courage and hope manifest in everyday life in addiction, in financial stress, in playgrounds and context of a warming planet. While there is an emphasis on Christian ethics, readings and discussion are not limited to Christian approaches. This course is a Community-Based Learning course through which students partake in 20 hours of work over the course of the semester with local community organizations as part of regular coursework. Partnering opportunities include working with after-school programming, people experiencing homelessness, or through existing CSJ programs. Transportation costs are covered. Questions? Please email Kerry.Danner@georgetown.edu

In a globalized and networked world, the linkages between social and environmental issues are becoming increasingly evident. From climate change and sustainability to resources and economics, scholars and practitioners alike have been bridging the divide between society and ecology. This connection has yielded an emerging perspective suggesting that environmental issues need not primarily be a source of conflict but rather can offer a basis for promoting peace and social justice. Environmental peacebuilding is at the forefront of this transition, constituting both the ecological realm of peace and the peacemaking potential of ecology. Through various theoretical lenses, immersion experiences, and real-time case studies, we will explore this integrative paradigm in terms of its history, its present relevance in concrete settings, and its prospects for transforming the future. [Note: this course will have a community-based learning (CBL) component that connects the classwork with service-learning opportunities in the area.]

This course will examine the history, policies, and social forces that have shaped migration to the United States, focusing in particular on the post-1960s period. We will discuss the socio-political and economic factors that contribute to the movement of people, and social movements and campaigns to protect migrants’ rights. Given the contentiousness of the issue of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., we will focus on understanding the social and legal construction of one’s immigration status, responses to past and current waves of migration, federal and local efforts to control unauthorized migration, and the immigration reform debate. As a community-based learning course, students will have the opportunity to study the DC immigrant community and partner with organizations that serve immigrants to learn first-hand about their challenges and aspirations. Class discussions will be based on guest speaker presentations, documentary films, and assigned readings, including books, research articles, reports, ethnographies, and testimonies

Realizing the American promise of equal access for all children to high-quality education has been an ongoing struggle, even as the definitions of equality and everyone have broadened and shifted over time. Advocacy, defined here as “organized efforts and actions based on the reality of what is and a vision of what should be,” has long played a central role in the evolution of equitable, universal education. In this course, students will examine historical trends and pertinent theoretical frameworks to explore ways that educational advocacy organizations have defined what is and worked to advance their respective goals for what should be regarding educational equity. A major component of this course involves students engaging in field-based learning as partners with a non-profit community group, organization, or institution that advocates for educational equity. Through work with their advocacy partners, students will have the opportunity to conduct in-depth research and complete a project on a specific topic as they work to advance their host organization’s efforts. In-class learning experiences for this course include professor and student-facilitated discussion, lectures, multi-media presentations, and guest speakers.

EDIJ 241, Essential Practices for Effective Instruction I, is a community-based learning praxis course. This course examines the relationship between the teacher, the learner, and the content. Through this course, students create an asset-based approach to working with learners, develop as reflective practitioners, and strengthen inquiry skills as they relate to education issues. This course is designed to challenge students to reflect on their identities as learners and teachers and on their work with students in the community.

Reading, Teaching and Social reflection is intended for students interested in teaching, and besides the usual classes, involves working for two hours one morning a week (the morning is chosen by the student) as a teacher’s aide in one of three inner-city Catholic schools. These schools include Immaculate Conception School in Shaw and Sacred Heart Bilingual School in Mount Pleasant, all of which have been welcoming Georgetown students for the past 22 years. The focus of the course is on teaching reading in the primary grades, and students from this class have gone on to Teach for America, the Inner-City-Teaching-Corps and to degree programs in Education at Berkeley, Columbia Teachers College and Harvard, among other places.