The Faculty Center convenes Professional Learning Communities every semester. Center staff identify books that might be of interest to faculty and staff, and then we come together to read and discuss how each text speaks to our work in the classroom and with students. Past groups have read and discussed Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins 2024), Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Harvard UP, 2014), and Teaching Interculturally (2017).

This semester, a group of us will come together to read the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Paolo Freire’s classic book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Bloomsbury 2018). A foundational text for democratic and critical teaching, Pedagogy of the Oppressed challenges faculty to think about how to center democratic enfranchisement and freedom in the classroom. Given the political, economic, and cultural crises that define our moment, the group will focus on animating the resources that Freire offers anew.