News from the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
University of Massachusetts Boston6 December 2018
Student Matters
The following spring 2019 CCT courses are open for registration:
CRCRTH 602 Creative Thinking (online with limited meetings on Wednesday evenings)
CRCRTH 615 Holistic and Transformative Teaching (hybrid, Thursdays at 4:00)
CRCRTH 645 (BIO 545) Biology in Society: Critical Thinking (hybrid, Wednesdays at 4:00)
CRCRTH 653 (PPOL 753) Epidemiological Thinking and Population Health (hybrid, Tuesdays at 4:00)
CRCRTH 688 Reflective Practice (hybrid, Mondays at 7:00)
CRCRTH 693 Action Research for Professional, Educational, and Personal Change (online synchronous, Thursdays at 7:00)
CRCRTH 694 Synthesis of Theory and Practice (hybrid, Mondays at 4:00 (to be confirmed); Tuesdays at 7:00)
Please note that all CCT wikispaces web sites will become
inaccessible starting at the end of January (when the Wikispaces service
shuts down). Links and materials available on these sites will be moved
to a new web location. See future announcements for details and note
that wikis will no longer be updated with new materials:
http://cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/
http://sicw.wikispaces.umb.edu/
CCT Community
This upcoming spring marks the 40th anniversary of the CCT Program and
will be celebrated by a one-day conference. See below under Events.
CCT Events
Save the Date: Sunday, May 5, 2019 (note date change from previous announcements)
Journeys: Changing Our Schools, Workplaces, and Lives
A conference-workshop to mark 40 years of the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
Participate in person or online. Open to all.
During this one-day conference-workshop, we will create spaces,
interactions, and support that help us recognize and extend the changes
that we—students, alums, faculty, and associates from CCT's 40
years—have made in our schools, workplaces, and lives.
Preparing for and participating in this conference-workshop will provide
an opportunity to reflect on ways that developing as a critical,
creative and reflective practitioner is like a journey into unfamiliar
areas—journeying involves risk, opens up questions, creates more
experiences than can be integrated at first, requires support, and
yields personal and professional change. See the web site for more details and as new information is added.
Alum and CCT associates Notes
Brian Lax (CCT/SICW alum, '17) reports that he just started a new job
at an alternative secondary school in Nanaimo "working with students who
require a more supportive learning environment. And my position is
science focused. So I am right now revisiting what I learned in the CCT
program and thinking about applications."
CCT alums and associates are encouraged to send items of interest to
the Critical and Creative Thinking community to be included in future
newsletters. Please submit events, announcements, and opportunities
through this form: http://bit.ly/CCTSICWi
EventsOne-day Workshop: Introduction to Dialogue Across Differences
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Location: Essential Partners HQ
186 Alewife Brook Pkwy, Cambridge, MA 02138
Register online here and see additional details.
This one-day workshop uses real-world case studies to introduce
participants to the theory and practice of EP’s Reflective Structured
Dialogue framework. Intentional communication helps individuals,
organizations, and communities build trust, enhance resilience, and
engage in constructive conversations. This one-day training is perfect
for many kinds of professionals. With the skills learned in our
workshop, you can begin to build trust, enhance democratic resilience,
and foster connections despite deeply-held differences of value, belief,
opinion, or identity.
PBL2019: Problem-Based Learning Winter Workshop
January 9-11, University of Delaware, Newark, DE
In this workshop you will learn the steps to develop engaging problems
for your discipline and show you various models of how to set up your
classes to successfully integrate this type of learning. Our program
will be designed primarily for new and current practitioners of PBL,
focused on college/university level education.
For more information and to register, see the web site.
Florida Creativity Conference
March 29-31, 2019, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee and
Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, in partnership with the
Florida Creativity Alliance
This conference provides a space for creative exploration, interactive learning, music and movement, innovative practices.
For more information and to register, see the web site.
OpportunitiesCall for Proposals: Interrogating Self-Care: Bodies, Personhood, & Movements in Tumultuous Times
Location: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
Conference Date: March 29 & March 30, 2019
Proposal Deadline: January 4th, 2019
The graduate students from nine universities of the Boston-area
Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality
present a biannual interdisciplinary conference entitled Interrogating
Self-Care: Bodies, Personhood, & Movements in Tumultuous Times to be
held at MIT on March 29 & March 30, 2019. See the full description of the Call for Proposals for other details.
Kendall Fellowship: Understanding Scientist Activism
Center for Science and Democracy
Union of Concerned Scientists
Cambridge, MA or Washington, DC
Over the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has led the
largest mobilization of scientists and other experts in our
organization’s history, as thousands have volunteered to use their
expertise and voices to inform far-reaching local and national policy
decisions. How can we capitalize on the energy and momentum to sustain
this movement? We seek a Kendall Fellow with research experience
studying social movements to help us understand and leverage the
mechanisms that enable collective and individual advocacy in the science
community, for an enduring effort. Learn more and apply here.
The Graduate Consortium of Women's Studies (MIT) announces spring 2019 courses:
Gender and Food: WGS.700 Spring 2019 at MIT campus, Tuesdays 4 - 7pm, January 29, 2019 - May 10, 2019
Gendering U.S. Immigration Policy: Sociopolitical, Theological, and
Feminist Perspectives: WGS.645 Spring 2019 at MIT campus, Thursdays 9am -
12pm, January 31, 2019 - May 12, 2019
For more information on courses and registration, see the web site.
Food for Thought
(additional web links and posts can also be found on CCT's Diigo pages. General critical and creative thinking focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/ccreflect; Science in a Changing World focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/sicwumb)
Video:
Teaching STEM with dirt bikes (YouTube)
Articles:
Organized
Sports Are Not Play: How organized sports have co-opted play and why
early organized sports aren’t a great option for kids (Self-Directed)
Let’s Talk Teaching: Critical Thinking (Illinois State U.)
How to Talk to Kids about Art (Artsy)
A Film About Higher Ed That Should Bother You a Little (Chronicle of Higher Education)
An
Archive of 800+ Imaginative Propaganda Maps Designed to Shape Opinions
& Beliefs: Enter Cornell’s Persuasive Maps Collection (Open Culture)
Film News: John Leguizamo to Star in ‘Critical Thinking’ as Coach Whose High School Chess Team Becomes National Champions (Remezcla)
Study: Representations of Women STEM Characters in Media (GDIGM)
A
Guide to Overcoming FOBO, the Fear of Better Options: How to get better
at making decisions when every choice looks like a good one (Medium)
Festival Albertine 2018: Reimagining Democracy: Recorded livestreamed discussions from October sessions now available (Altertine)
Human Permaculture: Practical Communication Techniques (Permaculture News)
A New Front In The War Against Fake News: Kids (Forbes)
'Desperately disappointing': 10 years since the Melbourne Declaration (Sydney Morning Herald)
Using Reflective Practice in Parenting (Podcast)
27 Artists on the Worst (and Best) Advice Anyone Ever Gave Them on Being an Artist (Vulture)
Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test (The Atlantic)
Five Ways to Teach Students to Be Learning Centered, Too (Faculty Focus)
A Velocity of Being: Illustrated Letters to Children about Why We Read by 121 of the Most Inspiring Humans in Our World (Brain Pickings)
We Cannot Amuse Ourselves to Death: Our respect for the truth is at odds with the entertainment economy (Medium)
Cambridge Arts’ Community Supported Art program (Cambridge, MA)
Five Ways to Teach Students to Be Learning Centered, Too (Faculty Focus)
Damien Hirst: Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable review – beautiful and monstrous (The Guardian)
Miss Betty Bowers: Speak English? YOU FIRST! (YouTube)
White House Press Briefing: A Bad Lip Reading (YouTube)