Take a free summer workshop with Cheryl E. Matias — a leading voice in racial justice and teacher education — and earn a digital badge from the University of Kentucky College of Education. 

Open to anyone (professionals, teachers, community members and students), Matias’ fun and interactive workshop — "Beyond the Black and White Screen: Seeing/Reading Race in Social Media, Films and Society" — is designed to help participants level up their skills in self-paced and live classes. When participants successfully complete the workshop, they will earn a digital badge to add to their resume, email signature or website. 

Matias delivers national talks and workshops on whiteness, racial justice and diversity. She is a full professor and director of secondary education programs, including the Master’s with Initial Certification program, in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the UK College of Education. 

“We wanted to create a way for people who value lifelong learning to spend time with the same world-class faculty our students know and love. Our faculty are dynamic, engaging and enjoy the process of making their knowledge and research accessible to the broader community,” said Margaret Mohr-Schroeder, UK College of Education associate dean and professor in the Department of STEM Education. 

Register online by Sunday, July 11. The workshop begins Monday, July 12 and will run through Thursday, July 22. Participants can attend optional synchronous Zoom meetings from 4 to 5:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 15 and Thursday, July 22. 

About the workshop

"Beyond the Black and White Screen: Seeing/Reading Race in Social Media, Films and Society": This fun, interactive workshop is designed to teach participants how to “read” race, racism and whiteness in digital texts (film, media, music, social media, viral videos, online articles, posts, tweets, blogs/vlogs, etc.) while also modeling online, interactive pedagogies to engage in antiracist teaching practices. Participants will view various digital texts along with workshop readings on critical media literacy, critical race media literacy, critical whiteness studies, and other racial theories to best support racial literacy. In the end, participants can choose to engage in a virtual project where they deconstruct a digital text on their own using the readings from the workshop. Completion of this workshop will result in a UK “Reading Race in Media” badge and 25 professional development hours. 

Questions about the UK College of Education’s Professional Learning Series should be directed to Mariama Lockington, program coordinator, at COElearningseries@uky.edu. Visit https://education.uky.edu/learning-series/ for more information.