TEAC 431J Pandemics, Schools, and Helping Meatpacking Communities Recover from COVID19

This course will consider how meatpacking communities in Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas have been particularly hard hit by COVID-19, will concurrently note that such communities have much higher Latinx, African-descent, and other non-white populations, and will examine the prospective roles of “schools as community centers” (Dewey, 1902) as these communities seek to persist/rebound in the face of the pandemic’s health and economic challenges. Students in the course will help research and draft two grant proposals (one research oriented the other community-development oriented). So in addition to taking on an interesting, complicated, state and regionally-relevant topic, the course will involve intentional practical skill development. Class sessions will include Zoom interviews with education administrators, community leaders, and others, as well as examination of various descriptive statistics (school budgets, enrollment demographics, epidemiological data, etc.). Coursework will also interrogate proposed links between school and work, school and health, and school and community identity and cohesion. The three co-instructors for the course are colleagues in UNL’s Dept. of Teaching, Learning, & Teacher Education—Dr. Edmund ‘Ted’ Hamann, Dr. Amanda Morales, and Dr. Ricardo Martinez. All three instructors have significant research experience in meatpacking communities and in considering questions of school quality, responsive teaching, and social mobility in such settings. (Questions about the course can be directed to Dr. Hamann at: ehamann2@unl.edu.)