Introduction
As a quick reminder, please see My Story to know more about me and my background. Reflecting back to my experiences prior to as well as during my graduate years, my various engagements in community development programs and institutional partnerships has made me interested in community engagement ever since.
Given my background in education, and for the purpose of fulfilling the requirement of MSU Graduate Certification in Community Engagement, i am focusing on community engaged teaching and learning. Doberneck and Schweitzer (2010) states that, "engage teaching is organized around sharing knowledge with various audiences through either formal or informal arrangements." I believe the same is true for engaged learning. For this reason, I chose to develop my engaged teaching and learning through my engagement as a graduate coordinator of LATTICE. Therefore, being an engaged educator for me means being actively involved in the development of knowledge and its application inside and outside of the school settings that can provides solutions to real life problems of the students and the community locally or globally. It represents my values as a pragmatic critical pedagogue.
LATTICE stands for Linking All Types of Teachers to International Cross-Cultural Education. Quoting directly from the LATTICE website, the organization defines itself as:
"A learning community and international network that cultivates and supports a global perspective in K-12 classrooms through personal and professional development opportunities. It provides international experience by connecting schools to local and international communities and linking internationals to classrooms with visits and emails. It supports international learning so that the children of today can be effective participants in the world of tomorrow."
As a professional learning community, LATTICE consists of K-12 teachers, teacher educators, faculty and graduate students with interest in global/international education. Many of the K-12 teachers are from the Greater Lansing Area and a few others coming from Grand Rapids and Detroit area. Most faculty and graduate students are from the College of Education - MSU, with some addition of students in the social sciences, arts and letters, as well as engineering. Irregular members are coming from various centers and offices under the International Studies and Programs. In the 2013/2014 academic year, all the sessions took place in East Lansing. Some of the sessions were conducted at the MSU Federal Credit Union (FCU) community meeting room and some others were held at Spartan Village Community Center. There was one time that we had to host the meeting at the Lutheran University Church, due to unavailability of meeting space at our regular place. During my assignment as the graduate coordinator, LATTICE partnered with MSU, Intermediate School District (ISD), and MSU-FCU. The partnership with MSU and ISD comes in the form of expert knowledge and technical assistants whereas MSUFCU provided meeting place and logistics for most of the sessions.
LATTICE was formed in 1995 by the late Sally McClintock, who was an outstanding educator herself, as an international education partnership between school districts in mid-Michigan, Michigan State University, international graduate students/scholars at Michigan State University, and community members. As a non profit organization, LATTICE is nested in the community of professional educators primarily within the Greater Lansing Area.
Given my background in education, and for the purpose of fulfilling the requirement of MSU Graduate Certification in Community Engagement, i am focusing on community engaged teaching and learning. Doberneck and Schweitzer (2010) states that, "engage teaching is organized around sharing knowledge with various audiences through either formal or informal arrangements." I believe the same is true for engaged learning. For this reason, I chose to develop my engaged teaching and learning through my engagement as a graduate coordinator of LATTICE. Therefore, being an engaged educator for me means being actively involved in the development of knowledge and its application inside and outside of the school settings that can provides solutions to real life problems of the students and the community locally or globally. It represents my values as a pragmatic critical pedagogue.
LATTICE stands for Linking All Types of Teachers to International Cross-Cultural Education. Quoting directly from the LATTICE website, the organization defines itself as:
"A learning community and international network that cultivates and supports a global perspective in K-12 classrooms through personal and professional development opportunities. It provides international experience by connecting schools to local and international communities and linking internationals to classrooms with visits and emails. It supports international learning so that the children of today can be effective participants in the world of tomorrow."
As a professional learning community, LATTICE consists of K-12 teachers, teacher educators, faculty and graduate students with interest in global/international education. Many of the K-12 teachers are from the Greater Lansing Area and a few others coming from Grand Rapids and Detroit area. Most faculty and graduate students are from the College of Education - MSU, with some addition of students in the social sciences, arts and letters, as well as engineering. Irregular members are coming from various centers and offices under the International Studies and Programs. In the 2013/2014 academic year, all the sessions took place in East Lansing. Some of the sessions were conducted at the MSU Federal Credit Union (FCU) community meeting room and some others were held at Spartan Village Community Center. There was one time that we had to host the meeting at the Lutheran University Church, due to unavailability of meeting space at our regular place. During my assignment as the graduate coordinator, LATTICE partnered with MSU, Intermediate School District (ISD), and MSU-FCU. The partnership with MSU and ISD comes in the form of expert knowledge and technical assistants whereas MSUFCU provided meeting place and logistics for most of the sessions.
LATTICE was formed in 1995 by the late Sally McClintock, who was an outstanding educator herself, as an international education partnership between school districts in mid-Michigan, Michigan State University, international graduate students/scholars at Michigan State University, and community members. As a non profit organization, LATTICE is nested in the community of professional educators primarily within the Greater Lansing Area.