Community Learning Faculty Toolkit
Welcome to the Community Learning Faculty Toolkit at Trinity’s Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER). The purpose of this toolkit is to provide faculty and staff with resources that promote students’ ethical engagement with Hartford partners and to support community learning course development.
Below, we provide curated lists of resources that can aid faculty in course planning and/or be incorporated directly into syllabi. In the tables you will find a short list of resources for each topic. If you scroll from left to right you will see a full citation, a Trinity library permalink, the resource type and topic, and a note on each. You can click the citation to expand to a fuller view for easier reading. Resources that are accessible to students and effective at prompting class discussion are indicated with the tag “Student Reading.” If you would like to make suggestions for additions to these lists, or if you need help navigating the resources listed, please contact Director of Community Learning [email protected].
Hartford’s History and Present
This crowdsourced composite list has been developed through brainstorming sessions with Trinity Community Learning faculty and community partners Jasmin Agosto ’10, formerly of the Hartford History Center, and Steve Thornton, founder of the Shoeleather History Project.
The resources come from traditional scholarly publications, as well as artists and public historians, and are intended to illustrate the context of Hartford including both challenges and assets. Below we highlight 11 resources and you can view a fuller list of Hartford readings here.
Anti-Racist Community Learning
Anti-racist community engaged pedagogy “seeks to counteract the persistence and impact of racism on our campuses and in our community engagement through critical reflection on individual and systemic/structural racism …; intentional course design …; and the creation of a compassionate, reflective classroom that critically challenges racism when it happens, acknowledges the cultural wealth of students of color, and meets students where they are.” Anti-racist community learning practices are necessary to create strong, collaboratively designed and mutually beneficial partnerships with Hartford community partners and to challenge white savior ideologies that position minoritized communities as in need of saving by students and faculty at a predominantly white institution. This list of readings has been curated by CHER staff and faculty as well as student research assistants through the 2020-21 Mellon Inclusive Pedagogy grant via Trinity’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Some of these resources are intended to guide faculty in their thinking about Community Learning course development and others can be inserted into a syllabus to support class discussions (as indicated in the notes below).
This toolkit has been curated by CHER staff and faculty; Community Learning Faculty; Hartford history consultants Jasmin Agosto ‘10 and Steve Thornton, founder of the Shoeleather History Project; as well as student research assistants Bea Dresser ‘23, Anna Grant-Bolton ‘25, Wendy Salto ‘23, and Reese San Diego ‘25 through the 2020-21 Mellon Inclusive Pedagogy grant via Trinity’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).
