Spring 2020
Violence Prevention
This Capstone will partner with the Learning Gardens Laboratory (LGL), a 12-acre garden education site on Portland’s southeast side. Students work collaboratively to gather stories of community gardeners, teachers, and community partners who regularly gather at LGL to learn and farm. Capstone students will gain skills in interviewing, storytelling, and using narrative as a means for social change, in addition to learning about sustainable food systems and the impact of learning gardens.
Trauma often leads to contemplative dissociation- a detachment from the body and the mind. Through a social justice framework, together we will explore trauma and healing using Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). IPNB is relational neuroscience that offers kinder, broader wisdom to understand how we are hurt and how we heal within relationships (including the relationship with the self).
Curriculum and Material Development for Heritage/Indigenous Language (INDIGENOUS LANG ACTIVISM)
The goal of this course is to give students a solid background in historical and societal issues that influence language diversity through hands-on collaboration with current language sustainability efforts. This capstone partners with endangered language communities in the Northwest (tribal language programs in general and the Warm Springs Tribal Language Program, specifically) to work together to support those programs by giving students “on-the-ground” skills to accompany class studies. Capstone students will develop language and/or pedagogical materials that will support the endangered language programs/teachers in their work to offer language classes in their communities. General class instruction will be exclusively online or hybrid and those students who can meet at the PSU campus may be able to participate in a visit to the language communities to increase students’ practical understanding of the language and community issues for their final work. All students who are interested in Indigenous and/or language activism are welcome to this capstone (regardless of any prior familiarity with Indigenous languages or history), and especially those who are interested in supporting our community partner’s fund-raising efforts and curriculum/teaching activities. Students in this capstone are strongly encouraged, as a class goal, to foster a healthy online community and collaborate with peers through group work. Members from our community partner and other guest speakers will also join online (likely using Zoom), and other online meeting times will be determined by class and community participants’ availability and schedule.
Black Civil Rights/Black Liberation
This six credit course combines applied critical race theory, historical and contemporary Black Liberation narratives, and community-based learning to address pressing social issues affecting Black communities across the state of Oregon. Using critical dialogic pedagogy, the Black Civil Rights/Black Liberation class seeks to create collaborative learning spaces where students and Black-led initiatives can engage in prescient conversations about race and racism. The capstone class contributes to the Black Liberation in Education Teach-in event, as well as the design and implementation of sustained programming redressing anti-Blackness, and supporting Black Liberation as a central tenet of any social justice movement. The course runs in both winter and spring term and is designed to support ongoing community engagement programming.
Mentored Storytelling - Swinehart: This Capstone partners with two schools in Oregon - Walt Morey Middle School in the Reynolds School District and Wilson River School in Tillamook, Oregon. PSU students will provide creative mentoring to students to help them express themselves through storytelling. The course will examine issues of social justice; power and privilege in our society, community and classrooms; holistic learning; the power of empathy and being vulnerable in a leadership role; and what creates self-advocacy. PSU students will critically engage with relational pedagogical practices including story exchanges, interviews and personal narratives.
In this course, students have the opportunity to learn the basics of grant writing. A much sought-after skill in many sectors, grant writing helps a variety of nonprofits and government agencies obtain funds for various projects they are interested in pursuing. For this class, our community partner will be JOIN. As they describe on their website, JOIN exists to support the efforts of homeless individuals and families to transition out of homelessness into permanent housing.
Students will contribute to an ongoing research project on access to healthcare. Participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own experience with the healthcare system as well as collect, analyze and disseminate information on access to primary care in the US. No prior research experience required. Results will be presented to Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.
This capstone is designed to provide an opportunity to learn about Spanish culture and society by means of synchronous and asynchronous discussion group forums between American and Spanish middle and high school students. The communities of students will be from: Portland, Oregon, various schools in Washington state and Zamora, Spain. These forums will be between paired classes (one USA and one Spanish) of similar grade and language level and will be facilitated and monitored by both teachers of each class. Each grouping of classes will be assigned 2 capstone students.
During this course students will grow in their cross-cultural skills and understanding. They will learn about refugee resettlement and the systemic educational obstacles that English learners face and overcome.Students completing this capstone will have a well developed sense of their civic identity as it relates to newcomers in their local communities.