Davis Center Teacher Workshop: Cities and Our Urbanizing World

Date: 

Mon - Thu, Jul 31 to Aug 3, 9:00am - 4:00pm

Location: 

Thompson Room (110), Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

More people are living in or moving to cities than ever before. As of 2014, 54% of people worldwide lived in cities, an increase of nearly 20% from 1950. This number is only expected to increase in the future, with estimates that ⅔ of the world’s population will be living in urban communities by 2050.* This migration from the rural to the urban presents challenges and opportunities that require the participation of individuals, communities, organizations, businesses, and governments (local, national, and multinational). The goal of the 2017 summer workshop for educators will be to investigate and make sense of these challenges and opportunities as a learning community and consider how best to communicate them to our students.

Geared toward middle school, high school, and community college educators in the humanities and social sciences (but open to educators in all subjects), this workshop will:

  • feature presentations by scholars, experts, policy-makers and practitioners who study urbanization and its impact;

  • explore pedagogy and skill-building techniques to help educators and students better understand urbanization as a global phenomenon; and

  • provide an introduction to relevant classroom resources.

 

To support deep conversations around curriculum and pedagogy as well as content, we have partnered with Project Zero, a research group based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Guided by its mission to understand and enhance high-level thinking and learning across disciplines and cultures in schools internationally, Project Zero will help to provide the pedagogical underpinning for this year’s workshop, drawing upon its diverse research-based initiatives, including “Educating for Global Competence,” “Teaching for Understanding,” “Making Learning Visible,” and “Making Thinking Visible.”

The cost of participation in the workshop is $50. Unfortunately, Global Studies Outreach at Harvard cannot provide financial assistance for travel or lodging to workshop participants.

The Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, with support from a Title VI/National Resource Center Grant from the US Department of Education, is able to offer limited travel reimbursement to Community College educators from outside Massachusetts. If you meet these two criteria and are interested in applying for these funds, please declare this within the workshop application.

 

Participation in this program is determined through an application-based selection process.Application instructions are available at the Global Studies Outreach at Harvard website. The deadline to apply is Friday, March 31, 2017.

 

Sponsored by the Asia Center, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for African Studies, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and Harvard’s Global Health Education & Learning Incubator; developed in collaboration with Project Zero, all of Harvard University.

For more information, please contact Cris Martin at clmartin@fas.harvard.edu.