I believe that education is underpinning to conscientious citizenship in a democratic society. To expand informed citizenship, I chose a career in social studies education.
Clinical Professor
I believe that education is underpinning to conscientious citizenship in a democratic society. To expand informed citizenship, I chose a career in social studies education. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I earned a triple major in political science, sociology, and broad field social studies through the School of Education in May of 2001. I completed my master’s in Educational Leadership from Georgia State University in August of 2005. I completed my doctorate in Curriculum Studies with an emphasis in Multicultural Education at Georgia Southern University May of 2010. My areas of scholarship include narrative inquiry, critical mixed race studies, clinically-based teacher education, and social studies education.
My first year teaching was in a sixth-grade social studies classroom at B.T. Washington Middle School in Mobile, Alabama. It was a de facto segregated school with a student body that was 99% Black/African American and 95% free and reduced lunch. The students and mentors I learned from at B.T. Washington Middle undoubtedly shaped the kind of teacher educator I am for the pre- and in-service teachers that I teach in the Athens-Clarke County and UGA community. My ability to work alongside diverse leaders, teachers, and students by promoting relationships and humanity, while striving to improve the quality of curriculum and pedagogies, are the skills and understandings that I mobilize as a teacher educator at the University of Georgia.
I have three major commitments to (1) equity, (2) teacher quality, and (3) transfer of high-quality pedagogies that are the foci for my teaching and pedagogy. I am committed to the equitable distribution of educational resources; one of those human resources is highly effective teachers. As a teacher educator, I advance teacher quality by requiring my student, who are pre- and in-service teachers, to enact high-impact pedagogies. I mobilize cutting-edge teacher education pedagogies that work towards the transfer of learning from the university campus to teacher’s practice in secondary schools.
I hope my students gain models of effective teaching that are responsive to them as students. I hope my students learn that fostering collaborative learning environments helps their capacity to transfer high-quality teaching from the university to their secondary classrooms. I also hope my students encounter sequenced applied learning that better positions them to transfer the pedagogies to their practice.
Sonia Janis is a Clinical Professor of Social Studies Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia, where she teaches pre- and in-service social studies teachers. Her scholarship is in critical mixed-race theory, curriculum in the U.S. South, and clinical teacher education. She has expertise in secondary social studies teaching, mentoring induction teachers, and curriculums that center counter-narratives.