“After Class” is a blog about education and democracy. It moves on from my previous “Article of the Week” blog which I wrote for 10 years as the director of Oberlin College’s Center for Teaching Innovation and Excellence (CTIE). The title reflects a variety of realities:  A tremendous amount of learning happens directly after a class ends, as the teacher (and, with luck, the learner) consider what just happened; having retired from teaching and from directing Oberlin’s teaching and learning center, my life is now all located in an “After Class” space, and my writing is now unconstrained by institutional obligations (not that they necessarily held me back in the past). And, finally, the title suggests a more intersectional approach to considerations about education and democracy, informed as it is not only by critical theory, but by #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo.

Author: Steve Volk is Professor of History Emeritus at Oberlin College where he taught Latin American History and Museum Studies between 1986-2016. He founded the Center for Teaching Innovation and Excellence (CTIE), Oberlin’s teaching and learning center, in 2007 and served as its director until retiring in July 2018. He was named Outstanding U.S. Baccalaureate Colleges Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Center for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in 2011. In 2012, he was named a Great Lake College Association Teagle Peadagogy Fellow. In 2003 he received the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award from the American Historical Association, and was recognized for his teaching leadership by the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education. In 2001 he was commended by the Government of Chile for “his contributions in helping to restore democracy” in that country.

He can be contacted at svolk@oberlin.edu.