CURRICULUM
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
3 Core Courses
(Required for all students)
"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.
ELECTIVE Courses
(students SELECT ONE OR TWO)
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.
"practicum in DECOLONIAL FUTURES"
(3 and 4 Credit options available)
This practicum course also allows students to learn by doing. They learn what decolonizing means to their host communities, and in partnership with local actors they co-create projects that are meant to challenge existing epistemological and ontological paradigms. In academic terms, students work with their community counterparts to apply and operationalize decolonial theories while transforming epistemic conflicts (and enacting epistemic justice).
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