All posts by Ciera Smith

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About Ciera Smith

Ciera Smith is the Program Manager for Faculty Development and also teaches in the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences department. Ciera earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also has a master’s in Urban Studies from Eastern University and her master’s in education from DePaul. Outside of work, you can find Ciera running, lifting weights, cooking, or exploring new coffee shops in the city.

“Graphic banner with bookshelf illustrations and icons (globe, books, plant, open book, laptop) displaying the title: ‘Decolonizing Your Reading List: A Practical Starting Guide.’”
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Decolonizing Your Reading List: A Practical Starting Guide

In recent years, many faculty have encountered calls to “decolonize the syllabus.  What does it mean to “decolonize the syllabus? How would a faculty member go about accomplishing this? Like other catchphrases, I really don’t know. Is it a matter of eliminating Shakespeare, Milton, Marx, and other white men and replacing them with more “diverse” authors? Or, is it a matter of re-writing the course from scratch? Should faculty start with a clean slate instead of trying to revise what already exists? Continue reading →

A classroom full of blue students with one red student under a spotlight.
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Teaching and Learning While Black

When I was a junior in high school, a classmate who sat next to me in AP U.S. History told me that I needed to be “smart” to get into the University of Maryland. While sitting in the same AP class, this confused me, but I knew why she made this statement because I had been navigating white educational spaces since I was in the 6th grade. This was not the first microaggression that I experienced in these spaces and certainly would not be my last. But in that moment, it reinforced to me that teaching and learning while Black would always be a different experience for people that looked like me.  Continue reading →