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Passion, Purpose, Power: A First-Year Experience Course

Who are you? What changes do you want to see in the world? How can your college degree help you make those changes? What tools do you need in order to successfully earn your degree so that you can get out into the world and make those changes? 

 

Passion, Purpose, Power: A First-Year Experience Course is a lower division course designed to answer those questions. Together, we will embark on a journey of self-reflection and self-learning to identify your passions and your intentions for pursuing a college degree. We will use critical consciousness as a framework to examine social inequalities within your communities and how you, a budding scholar-activist, can use the knowledge from your college degree to begin tackling those issues. Lastly, this course will equip you with real world skills for academic, career, interpersonal, and personal success. 

LEARNING OUTCOMES

(1) POWER: Students will use critical thinking skills to identify and address social, political, and economic injustices in their communities

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(2) PASSION & PURPOSE: Students will reflect on their educational journeys and identify ways their college degree can give them the tools and knowledge they need to create change in their communities.

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(3) POWER: Students will develop academic success, career preparation, interpersonal, and self-care skills to support them in their journey through and beyond higher education. 

UNITS

INTROS
Self & Community

This unit is an introduction to the course and to each other. We'll spend two lessons going over class expectations and getting to know ourselves and each other through a Vision Board activity.

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01
Building Critical Consciousness

Unit Guiding Questions: 

  • What is “critical consciousness” and how can adopting this perspective benefit you as a student of color? 

  • What are your identities and how do they intersect to create the unique ways you experience the world? 

  • How does oppression operate to marginalize people on the basis of their identities?

  • In what ways do you experience privilege versus oppression? 

  • How can you use your privileged identities to support those who are oppressed, and what do you need from folks who are more privileged than you in order to move toward liberation? 

  • What are the issues your community faces? 

  • How can you use activism to begin solving issues in your community?

02
Critically Analyzing our Educational Experiences

Unit Guiding Questions: 

  • How does oppression operate to create inequalities for first-generation college students? 

  • How does the history of higher education relate to the struggles first-gen students experience?

  • How have you experienced barriers in your educational journey?

  • What resources are available on campus and in the community to support you during your college experience?

  • How have students of color mobilized to create spaces and changes for their communities on campus? What can we learn from these students? 

  • What strengths do you bring to this campus community?

03
Academic Success Skills

Unit Guiding Questions: 

  • Which skills can support you in being successful academically in college?

  • Can adopting a growth mindset help you approach academic failure in more fruitful ways? 

  • What factors contribute to academic success and failure that "growth mindset" can't address? 

  • How can you be gentle with yourself by acknowledging systemic factors that may have contributed to "failures" AND express resilience by acting on your "failures"?

  • How is the "hustle culture" detrimental to our perserverance through and beyond college? 

  • How can you use planning and prioritizing strategies to achieve harmony between your obligations as a student, your personal values, and your needs for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health?

04
Personal & Interpersonal Wellness

Unit Guiding Questions: 

  • Which skills can support you in achieving and maintaining personal and interpersonal wellness? 

  • What are the Seven Dimensions of wellness? What does it look like to be well/unwell in these areas? 

  • What is the difference between self-care and community care? 

  • What are some strategies for self-care? 

  • What are some strategies for community care? 

  • How can we use restorative justice principles to heal from relational harm in our every day lives? 

05
Career Success Skills

Unit Guiding Questions: 

  • How can I set myself up for success when applying to internships, jobs, and other self-development opportunities during and after college? 

  • What are my unique professional strengths? 

  • How do I express my professional strengths through a resume, cover letter, and elevator pitch? 

  • Why is networking important? 

  • Who is my network of mentors that I can lean on for support in my professional life? 

LESSON PLANS

Unit:Building Critical Consciousness

Showing up in the World: Identity & its Impact on our Lives

So You Wanna Get Woke? Critical Consciousness & Using the Language of Social Justice

Being a Homie: Practicing Allyship

Allyship in Action: Theatre of the Oppressed 

Creating Change: Forms of Activism

Impact of Oppression & Issues in Our Communities

Unit:Academic Success Skills

Developing Growth Mindset...or not?

Resilience Mindset: Bouncing Back in the Face of Failure 

Danger in the "Hustle Mentality" 

Understanding Values = Understanding Priorities
 

PROJECTS & ASSIGNMENTS

Vision Board

The purpose of a vision board is to visual representation of you: your past, present and future. Using collage, illustration, digital media, or whatever visual medium works for you, create a poster that describes: 

  1. Where you come from 

  2. Your interests and passions 

  3. Who influences you: family, friends, mentors, historical figures, celebrities, etc. 

  4. Where you hope to be in the future: career, location, accomplishments, family, etc.

  5. Anything else that is important in understanding who you are and want to become

Educational Journey Narrative Paper

In 3-4 pages, tell the story of your educational journey. Walk me through your experience going through elementary, middle, and high school and what led you to the decision to go to college. Highlight any pivotal moments, experiences, or people (ie: parents, teachers, friends) that influenced your views on education. You may discuss achievements and failures (explain the lesson those failures taught you, if any). You are not confined to discussing academics; you may discuss extra-curricular activities or major life events that influenced your education as well. This will be the foundation for your final project.

Wellness Action Plan

Using the 7 Dimensions of Wellness Framework, describe what wellness looks like to you. Create a 3 step action plan for what to do when you feel unwell in each of the 7 dimensions. Examples provided in class and on iLearn.

Community Issue & Resilience Group Project

In groups of 3-4, you will learn more about a community of your choice and explore the social/economic/political issues they face (ie: Filipino immigrants in San Francisco’s Excelsior neighborhood, undocumented students at SF State, etc) faces, their strengths, the ways they address the issues in the community, and your idea(s) for how to address the issue.

Create a 15 minute presentation that:

  1. Describes your focus community and how you relate to it: demographics, physical/figurative space, your positionality in relation to the community (ie: Does someone in your group identify with this community? If not, how do your identities influence the way you approach the community?) 

  2. Outlines and describes the issue(s) this community faces 

  3. Discusses the strengths of the community (using Yosso’s CCW Framework) and how they work to solve their issues 

  4. Outlines  at least one idea for how to address the issue(s) in the community 

 

While you may do your research by consulting community organization websites, YouTube videos, news articles, etc, it is highly encouraged that your group conducts an interview with a leader in the community. 5 pts extra credit will be given to groups who provide documentation of an interview conducted with a community leader. See instructor for a list of potential community leaders to interview.

Education as Liberation: Final Project

This project builds upon your Educational Journey Narrative paper and is a culmination of everything we have discussed in class. Your task is to describe your educational past, present and future. 

  • PAST: What was your experience like going through the K-12 educational system? What was your view on education? What helped you be successful or not successful? Why did you decide to go to college? This can be a summary of what you wrote for your Narrative Paper.

  • PRESENT: What do you expect to gain from your college experience? How do you expect to grow personally, academically, and professionally? What supports will you lean on throughout your college experience? 

  • FUTURE: How can your college education be used as a tool for liberation? In other words, how will you use your college degree after graduation to serve others or create change in the world? (ie: a Bio major may discuss how they want to work on climate change, a Criminal Justice major may discuss how they want to end mass incarceration) 

 

You are given the creative freedom to express your educational past, present, and future in a medium that works best for you. Below are your options, but if you have another idea you can discuss it with me. 

  1. Narrative Paper - 4 pages minimum 

  2. Zine (a booklet with a combination of visual art and written pieces) - 5 pages minimum 

  3. Video - 3 minutes minimum 

  4. Visual Art - Must complete a write-up explaining the piece and how it relates to your educational past, present, and future. Write-up must be at least 2 pages. 

  5. Poetry- Depending on length of the piece, must complete a write-up explaining the piece and how it relates to your educational past, present, and future. Write-up must be at least 2 pages, but may be shorter if you have a longer poem. I will reach out to students who choose the poetry option. 

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