Megan Kaplinsky, department head of Reading and Teacher Preparation at Long Beach City College as well as current President of ACCCTEP, Association of California Community Colleges Teacher Education Programs, discusses the programs available both at her college and throughout the California Community Colleges. She shares how the California Colleges banded together during the pandemic to create alternative fieldwork options for students in their programs. Born out of that same collaboration are ongoing workshops, online conferences, and regional meetings that address critical issues in teacher preparation.
Megan also shares how her school is addressing the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues ongoing throughout the classrooms of California and across the nation. They are focusing on utilizing an ethnic studies lens having created a teacher education course specifically on ethnic studies. To learn more about this lens she recommends Rethinking Ethnic Studies by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Miguel Zavala, Christine Sleeter, and Wayne Au as well as Transformative Ethnic Studies in Schools: Curriculum, Pedagogy and Research by Christine Sleeter and Miguel Zavala.
If you would like to learn more about ACCCTEP you can visit their website at accctep.org or reach out to her directly at mkaplinsky@lbcc.edu.
