Spotlights
Humans of St. Norbert: Kat O'Meara
Faculty
Humans of St. Norbert: Kat O'Meara
Humans of St. Norbert:
“Because of the racial reckoning that began in summer of 2020, I was looking for ways to go beyond performative allyship and actually thinking of how I can use my expertise to find connections with anti-racist and inclusive pedagogy to be able to create actionable items for students. Many of the students that I work with in English, are English education folks so they are looking for ways to bring this into their classrooms and into their own practice.
[The Anti-Racist and Inclusive Pedagogy/Practice class] was originally designed as a class to help teachers implement equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practices or pedagogies into their classrooms. However, when I created the class, Howard Ebert said this might be a really good class to offer at the graduate level for the master of liberal studies students. And then the MBA students heard about it and jumped on board! We talked a lot about implicit bias and various forms of racism. I was a little nervous because as a white lady it can be difficult to talk about these topics, but that’s what I led with in the class. I actually got a lot of feedback from the grad students that they appreciated that they were learning alongside me. We were able to have some really excellent discussions and students really enjoyed the opportunity to have break out groups and be vulnerable.
[My favorite part was] seeing how the students picked up the content from the course. To see my students make connections to their MBA programs and see how students apply the course content was really exciting! One of the assignments in the class was to analyze an EDI statement. They could choose whatever one they wanted and a lot of people chose their place of business or chose an organization that they frequented or were a fan of. That was a really cool analysis because that was a theme we kept coming back to. It’s great to have this internal outrage about things that are happening in our world but how do you actually make the difference to start making these changes.” – Kat O’Meara, assistant professor of english and director of writing across the curriculum
“Because of the racial reckoning that began in summer of 2020, I was looking for ways to go beyond performative allyship and actually thinking of how I can use my expertise to find connections with anti-racist and inclusive pedagogy to be able to create actionable items for students. Many of the students that I work with in English, are English education folks so they are looking for ways to bring this into their classrooms and into their own practice.
[The Anti-Racist and Inclusive Pedagogy/Practice class] was originally designed as a class to help teachers implement equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practices or pedagogies into their classrooms. However, when I created the class, Howard Ebert said this might be a really good class to offer at the graduate level for the master of liberal studies students. And then the MBA students heard about it and jumped on board! We talked a lot about implicit bias and various forms of racism. I was a little nervous because as a white lady it can be difficult to talk about these topics, but that’s what I led with in the class. I actually got a lot of feedback from the grad students that they appreciated that they were learning alongside me. We were able to have some really excellent discussions and students really enjoyed the opportunity to have break out groups and be vulnerable.
[My favorite part was] seeing how the students picked up the content from the course. To see my students make connections to their MBA programs and see how students apply the course content was really exciting! One of the assignments in the class was to analyze an EDI statement. They could choose whatever one they wanted and a lot of people chose their place of business or chose an organization that they frequented or were a fan of. That was a really cool analysis because that was a theme we kept coming back to. It’s great to have this internal outrage about things that are happening in our world but how do you actually make the difference to start making these changes.” – Kat O’Meara, assistant professor of english and director of writing across the curriculum