I agree with the previous comments that it is difficult to find a balance between personal and professional life. But if I become an instructor in the future, I will try to be friends with the students in the class (if the class size is not that large) and probably share personal feeling as well as stories with each other. Bringing some emotion factors to the classroom definitely can help students learn better and sometimes even help instructor to know the strength and weakness of each student.
Author: Shiqiang
Comment on Again, TEACHING & COOKING by Shiqiang
I enjoy reading your post and your metaphor of “cooking”. Studying in VT for over 2 years sometimes get me think about the difference between Western and Asian way of teaching. Personally, I always felt stressed out by my teachers on all subjects before college. I feel that the situation may be caused by the large population, limited resources, and fierce competition followed. Cultural difference can be the second cause as Asian people tend to believe that education is the only way to get a desirable life, especially for poor families. Hence, too much attention is paid on education, so does the stress. At current stage, I just wish that if I will come back to Asia to teach in universities, I can practice what I learn here and focus more on diversity, universal precautions, and mindfulness.
Comment on The Humane Part of Education by Shiqiang
You are still welcomed to join the Ethics class, haha. I think it is really great for our department to let us have Future Professorate certificate in order to be eligible for teaching. This helps a lot for the potential instructors to be well educated and get prepared. Just like you, I really appreciate all the communicating and education course offered here in VT (they are not normally offered in Chinese universities), which definitely will make me a better educator in the future.
Comment on Language⇌Image⇌Action by Shiqiang
Multi-tasking is not that easy in a classroom setting with only 50-min length. I feel like every time I was given some time to complete a online reading quiz just before the class, even it only requires 5 mins, the whole class will need to spend at least 10 min to complete them. After that, we tend to discuss it a little bit and express our feelings. By the time the instructor finally have all our attentions, it has been 15 min. Fortunately, this is a 2.5-hour class, so the professor does not worry too much about the time left. Same problem can be identified in the some programming class that instructor talks about some examples while students need to run their own program on personal computer.
Comment on ‘Delicate Handling of Intellectual Diversity’ by Shiqiang
I like your diversity statement rooted in your personal experience. Having a diversified classroom or lab setting is always a challenging task, but if you manage it well, it can become a very exciting and rewarding experience since all classmates or labmates and even the instructor/supervisor can actively learn from each other. Achieving this balance takes some special techniques, and some examples listed in your post are quite refreshing. It’s really good to see you already have some thoughts and even practice some techniques on diversity during your graduate study!
Comment on Jigsaw-Zigsaw: An Adventure for Every GEDI by Shiqiang
Critical pedagogy and innovative thinking can help students learn more beyond the class and textbooks. This semester I’m taking one class consisted of lots of reading, discussion on open-ended questions, interviews, and weekly blog reflections. I have learned quite a lot from the class but spend quite a lot of time every week. As a graduate student with heavy research workload, I can only sacrifice my sleep time. So from my personal experience, as more time and energy are invested into critical thinking from both students and teachers, critical pedagogy can be promoted not only from teacher and student perspective in a classroom, but also from the credit/research requirements for graduation and program/degree expectations. This can help students balance their time and energy, and have more flexibility to practice critical thinking.
Comment on Won’t We Need to be Able of Critical Thinking Ourselves? by Shiqiang
Practicing critical pedagogy in higher education is definitely quite important, and just like the post mentioned, we should not be afraid to ask questions to promote “critical thinking” in the classroom. As a kid, we are so curious about the world around us and try so hard to get deep down to unveil the principles. When we gradually grow up, we have more experience and tend to learn new things based on what we previously know to enhance learning efficiency. But these empirical knowledge/experience may become the largest obstacle for critical thinking. I know it is quite difficult to practice this in our daily life, but we can definitely try this in a 50-min class. Student can be an open and clean book entering the classroom and enter a “kid” mode. Once the class is over, each of us can even compare what you learn from the class with your past experience once stepping out of the classroom.
Comment on Do you speak English? by Shiqiang
There are a lot of micro-discrimination around us, and sometimes we have to forgive those people because they actually don’t know about it or do it unintentionally. I believe the best way to solve this is through education, and as future young professionals and professors, we can make a great example in our own classroom or working environment. Just like your several solutions listed above to promote inclusion. Let more students and co-workers know about these micro-discrimination, and we can build a healthy and comfortable living/learning environment for everyone.
Comment on Small class size helps Inclusive Pedagogy by Shiqiang
Lots of valid points here, Syeed! I’m lucky enough to have a one-year experience as a student inside a four-people class. Teacher don’t use podium at all (we use it to play ping-pong actually), and they tended to sit besides us to address our questions one-by-one. That year should be my most efficient year in learning all the new knowledge. So I totally agree with you on the class-size part. But most of the time, I was in a class of about 80 people, and you can image the overcrowding environment.
For international students, language is always the first barrier. We should have more patience and encouragement for everyone to express their ideas freely.
Comment on Team Diversity by Shiqiang
I always like to join a diversified group since every group member can bring new ideas and information. This also leads us to the importance of having an inclusive campus and learning environment. But at the same time, with culture and background difference, we need to have more patience, time and space for everyone to express their ideas, though some of them may not be practical. We should discuss all the ideas with respect and kindly point out the strength and weaknesses in every ideas. In this way, we can efficiently learn from each other towards an optimized team solution.
