Our work on teaching has focused on two major concerns: teaching working-class students and teaching about class. YSU, like many other state universities and community colleges, enrolls many first-generation college students. These students bring important assets and experience into the classroom, and their success in college depends in part on having faculty and advisors who understand their needs.
Social class is a complex and sometimes uncomfortable subject, and it can be challenging to teach. The CWCS has developed courses and resources that we hope will help secondary and college faculty bring working-class culture into their classrooms.
- The Syllabus Library offers examples of courses in a variety of fields – composition, literature, history, sociology, and more.
- Teaching about Class is a collection of materials and teaching ideas, developed during our 2006 summer institute, Class in the Classroom.
- WCS Courses at YSU provides information on the courses we’ve designed, including links to assignments and materials.
- Articles is a bibliography of studies and reports on teaching working-class students and working-class studies. In some cases, we have been able to make PDFs of these articles available.
If you want to share your course syllabus, suggest a resource or teaching strategy, or recommend an article, please contact Tim Francisco.