CURRICULUM
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Please note that we are in the process of a program redesign.
For those needing to access our course offerings from Spring 2024 and earlier, please refer to the first list of courses.
For those looking to apply for Fall 2024 and after, please scroll down to the second list of of courses. Full course descriptions and syllabi will be available by March, 2024.
Identity and PACHA
(3 credits)
Pacha is a Kichwa word that is usually interpreted as “earth,” and Pachamama as “mother earth.” However, those translations come from a limited epistemological framework. According to indigenous Andean scholars, Pacha refers to the time-space continuum, or as the “everything around and inside us.” This course asks students and their local community counterparts to challenge their identities by broadening their epistemological and ontological lenses to see their individual and collective lives as they relate to Pacha. To synthesize this complicated process, we ask participants to examine who they are as related to the ever-changing ecology in which they live. For this course, ecology is approached broadly, referring to the Greek origin on the word, oikos, meaning "home." We examine our home as an interconnected "place” where our ecology is the triad of our immediate territory (llakta in Kichwa), our surrounding natural environment (allpa), and our global and pluriversal space (pacha). Throughout the course, we use an interdisciplinary lens to examine “who we are” as related to this diverse understanding of ecology, taking into consideration that our ever-changing environment includes an ever-changing human story. (Download Syllabus)
Design and Evaluation of Sustainable Community Projects
(3 credits)
Each semester international students work on ongoing community-based projects while designing new ones in partnership with their host community. All projects must be carried out according to well-studied and effectively practiced methodologies in design and evaluation. This course takes students and their local counterparts through the different phases necessary for effective design and evaluation of a development project. It also requires students to view projects as a holistic and humanistic process that seeks social, economic, environmental and cultural sustainability. We approach projects from the grassroots, treating them as acts of community-based creativity and topics are chosen by students and their counterparts based on conflicts, needs and opportunities existing within our host community. Together they identify the problem, develop an idea, and create a proposal with goals, objectives, plans, budget, etc. All the while they are exploring the project as small-scale community development yet unmistakably interconnected with a globalized reality. (Download Syllabus)
Storytelling: Language and Movement
(3 credits)
It can easily be argued that the greatest human quality is our ability, and need, to tell stories. Every day, we communicate through stories, yet rarely do we study how to tell a story or learn how to become empowered through our stories. This course takes students through a process that seeks to unleash the power of stories, but, most especially, we attempt to harness such power in the creation and presentation of our community’s stories. Based on the realities present in our host community, students work with their counterparts, combining theory with practice, to create and tell stories to the community at large. Since stories are both spoken and performed, we aim to engage the “telling” through both language and movement, thus transcending the limits of each. (Download Syllabus)
TheatRe for Social Change and Innovation
(3 credits)
This course is designed to lead international students and their counterparts through the process of creating social change by practicing (rehearsing) social change. Using exercises and activities that pull from the areas of Theatre of the Oppressed, Applied Theatre, and Performance Activism, we engage challenging concepts through real life situations, stretching from the theoretical areas of structural & symbolic oppression to socially charged topics like social/cultural identity, racism, privilege, power, environmental justice, and gender issues. (Specific themes vary per semester and are identified through preliminary work that Pachaysana conducts with the community at large.) International students work closely with local counterparts to create small-scale projects to be presented to the community as a whole in a final presentation at the end of the semester. We also discuss and rehearse the potential of turning the identified conflicts into opportunities for collective transformation and innovation. Finally, we work closely with community leaders to evaluate the work we have produced in the course for its potential to be applied to current and future community-based projects. (Download Syllabus)
Independent Study
(Optional, 3 credits)
This optional course is specially designed for Rehearsing Change students who wish to complete an internship practicum, independent research project, or independent creative project for academic credits. The independent study can focus on almost any area in the social sciences, education, humanities, and arts, including projects in the Applied Arts. In most cases, but not all, the evaluator of the student’s work is one of the two Pachaysana academic coordinators. In other cases, the class is taken in coordination with the student’s home university, and a faculty member from the home university serves as the adviser and evaluator. In cases where there is no home school advisor-evaluator, and neither of the coordinators are qualified to evaluate the proposed project, a different Rehearsing Change faculty member can serve as advisor/evaluator. The internship and/or research project includes completing contact hours with the hosting organization (or documenting time spent in a research log), regular meetings with the adviser/evaluator and maintaining a reflective journal, which includes a final analytical component. The creative project uses a similar approach, however the final product can be a one of many options including but not limited to a collection of poetry, an extended monologue, a written short play, a choreographed dance, a series of visual artwork, etc. (Download Syllabus)
Pre-Semester Course - "Ecuador: Language, Culture and Justice"
(Optional, 3 Credits)
This 3-week Spanish-intensive course links language instruction to an array of complex themes related to Ecuadorian history, culture, identity, and issues of social justice. The course, co-taught by Pachaysana faculty and local Spanish tutors, is set in the rich historical center of Quito (Old Town), where students take 3 hours of coursework per day. Each day we combine traditional learning that works on improving Spanish skills with experiential learning methods, including but not limited to museum visits, cultural site visits, participation in local community endeavors, and engaging in workshops run by Pachaysana partner institutions. Students are required to read and journal every day and produce a final project at the end of the three weeks. Additionally, several days a week students are also provided with optional enrichment opportunities, which in the past have included short excursions outside of Quito, collective cooking days, and attending plays or concerts. Spanish instruction is usually two students per tutor, allowing the tutor to focus on the most immediate learning needs of each student. Cultural and social justice themes vary according to student interests and existing opportunities in Quito. (Download Syllabus)
"Rehearsing Change" Curricular Redesign
to start with our pilot semester, Fall 2024
"Language, Identity and Justice"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
This course links language instruction to an array of complex themes related to Ecuadorian history, culture, identity, and issues of social justice. It also asks students to consider their journey to Ecuador as an opportunity to explore their own complex identity. The course is community-based and co-taught by Pachaysana faculty and local community educators. Each day we combine traditional learning that works on improving Spanish skills with experiential learning methods, including but not limited to museum visits, cultural site visits, participation in local community endeavors, and engaging in workshops run by Pachaysana partner institutions. Students are required to read and journal every day and produce a final project that links language learning to their own journey of identity and social justice at the end of the course. Additionally, several days a week students are also provided with optional enrichment opportunities, which in the past have included short excursions to Quito, collective cooking days, and attending plays or concerts.
"Critical Interculturality and Indigenous Epistemologies"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
An ever-growing number of students, scholars and activists criticize our educational institutions for upholding colonial structures, and via numerous movements are calling for “decolonization.” Yet, any effort to decolonize our education must go well beyond the content of what we teach in the classroom. In addition to what we are learning, we must explore how we learn, where we learn and with whom we learn. This course addresses decolonization through the the perspectives of interculturality and epistemology. Led by local Indigenous leaders and informed by readings from Indigenous and Latin American scholars we use interactive methods such as Popular/Participatory Pedagogy and Storytelling to reconsider what interculturality means and how we can participate in creating a more epistemically just world. By the end of the course, informed by the course projects and dialogues with community educators, students will formulate clear questions and identify potential strategies for applying critical interculturality and decolonizing methodologies in their own educational praxis.
"Creative conflict Transformation"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
Life without conflict is not life, yet many conflicts prohibit us from expressing our true humanity and enacting social change. This course is designed to lead international students through the process of creating social change by practicing (rehearsing) social change. Led by local experts in arts for social change, students explore numerous creative practices that focus on identifying and transforming different kinds of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict. From Theatre of the Oppressed to Puppetry to Mask Making to Poetry to Music to Visual Art to Performance Art, we will engage challenging concepts through real life situations, stretching from the theoretical areas of structural & symbolic oppression to socially charged topics like social/cultural identity, racism, privilege, power, environmental justice, and gender issues. (Specific themes vary per semester and are identified through preliminary work that Pachaysana conducts with the community at large.) We also discuss and rehearse the potential of turning identified conflicts into opportunities for personal and collective transformation. Students will create several small-scale projects that are designed to assist students manage/navigate conflicts that occur when they begin their independent studies.
Pick one 4-credit elective or two 3-credit electives
"Alternative Education"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
A self-designed course done in practice with local schools or after-school education programs in our partner communities. Students volunteer, observe and reflect in partnership with the schools/programs as a way of learning and growing together. Supported by guided readings and regular advising sessions, students work with local educators at local schools, after-school programs or other non-formal education projects on developing curricular content, designing alternative learning methods or creating educational policies.
"Practicum in Education"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
A self-designed course done in practice with local schools or after-school education programs in our partner communities. Students support local educators by volunteering or interning as a co-instructor. Supported by guided readings and regular advising sessions, students are charged with assisting with lesson planning and course instruction.
"Sustainable food systems"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
A course done in partnership with local cooperatives/associations, students learn about food forests, permaculture and ecosystem restoration. Supported by guided readings and regular advising sessions, each student will select a specific topic and create a community-based project in coordination with local community educators. The topics should be of specific interest to the host community. Examples of course topics might be the effects of organic fertilizer on yucca plants, comparing qualities of coffee between shade-grown and non-shade-grown coffee, identifying the commonalities between permaculture practices and ancestral farming practices. Projects will be presented to the host cooperative at the end of the course.
"practicum in Ecosystem restoration"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
In this course, students learn by co-creating new plots in food forests, reforesting small sections of community farms or developing small permaculture projects in community centers. Supported by guided readings and regular advising sessions, students are charged with coordinating with local agriciltural specialists, documenting their daily tasks and reflecting on lessons learned. Students in this class are also asked to share what they learn on the community's social media platforms so as to educate people outside of the community.
self-created Independent study
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
If none of our elective courses meet a student's needs, they can petition to do a self-created Independent Study. The petition needs to clearly state 1) why the student needs to do a self-created independent study (for example, it is required for my major), 2) why the existing elective options do not meet that requirement, 3) what learning objectives does the student have for their independent study, and 4) in what department at Juniata College do they plan to have their independent study housed.
Learn how students set up their individualized education plans