This post is predominately in reaction to the Facebook/ social media posts "Me too" as a way women this week have taken to trying to show the extent to which sexual assault and harassment exists in the US. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this social media movement, a lot of which come from the idea that women shouldn't have to "out" their personal experiences to give a magnitude to a problem, but this week I want to focus on a marked trend and that is salaries and jobs and women in engineering.
This is an issue I think on a lot. I strongly believe that people should be judged on the quality of their work and find it seriously compelling when you learn about how introducing double blind auditions was the first time a woman had been hired to a major orchestra. I think its crazy that in 2017 this conversation is still ongoing and that individuals honestly think that gender is a reason to doubt someones abilities. But I digress.
In terms of ethics, this is honestly not something we've discussed or read and I have to wonder why. No where in our ethics readings have we looked at equality as ethical. We've focused on the role of integrity in engineering and of bringing in the public, but what about fellow experts who are not getting credit or the opportunities they deserve? Including and representing diversity is a hot topic right now in both collegiate and work settings and I do think there is serious discussion as to how to ethically do this.
I don't believe that women should be given preferential treatment solely because they are women in the hiring process, but we need to acknowledge that being a woman in a male field sets you at a disadvantage. Its hard to envision yourself in a role you've never seen anyone like you have. If I walk into an interview with all male interviewers and an equally qualified male counterpart does as well, he will most likely have more conversationally relevant topics to talk about. Whether thats sports or video games or just overall manliness (I know there are women who rebuke these trends I am all for it but there are genuinely some conversational differences that arise between a group of men and a group of men with one woman). I'm not sure how to fix this issue but the idea of a "diversity hire" also raises some concerns, but I don't have a better solution. Studies shows that the perceived gender and race on your resume can affect your chances of being given an interview. I know women who intentionally put I. Keenum over Ishi because they know they statistically are more likely to be taken seriously. I'm wondering if double blind hiring could be a thing and I'm trying to figure out how it will work. I realize that even this won't overcome decades of systematically altering the opportunities given to different races and genders, for instance a heavily involved member of SWE is generally thought to be female, but there has to be a way to help this out.
So, Laurie Anderson is coming to our humble campus to show some of her work and I will be helping out with the gallery exhibits in a research capacity (specifically the background information for the pieces). So far, I’ve been in a process called wallowing, a holdout from my humanities days, in which I inundate myself with research materials: primary and secondary sources, media, anything that mentions my chosen research topic. I have spent the last couple of weeks reading, watching, and listening to everything I can find about Laurie Anderson. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t know much about her work before my assistantship, but I have been learning a great deal in the last few months and since the exhibit opens in May, I will probably be an expert by then. I’d better get back to wallowing now. There will definitely be more posts about her and her work over the next few months.
In this post, I wanted to make a brief comment on diversity in general, discuss diversity in higher education, and then I have a few thoughts on diversity in professional offices. I’ll conclude by talking about inclusive pedagogy. It goes hand-in-hand with creating a community environment and appreciating the opportunity for innovative thinking.
I am a proponent of diversity. I believe it broadens our horizons and aids us in our personal development.
Katherine Phillips in “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter” makes some interesting and thought provoking statements on diversity and how it enriches our thinking environments and fosters creativity. Based on decades of social science research, Phillips distills the idea of diversity down into this concept: “The key to understanding the positive influence of diversity is the concept of informational diversity. When people are brought together to solve problems in groups, they bring different information, opinions and perspectives.”
Building on the idea of informational diversity, it makes sense to reason our best classrooms, labs, and studio environments will develop through having a diverse group of students in our academic programs. So why is it that some programs seem to struggle with diversity? It’s not that they aren’t diverse because they don’t want to be, but I believe for reasons relating to outreach, recruitment, access, and privilege. These reasons could be thought of as barriers to diversity and are born out of different contexts.
Outreach is the first barrier to diversity in higher education. One of the major tenants of land grant universities is to serve the people of the state/area that it calls home. We in higher education talk a big game about outreach and connecting with the community, and in most cases, this would be warranted because an impact is being made. But I bring outreach up as a barrier because I believe that we could be trying harder to connect with the communities we serve and sharing our knowledge with them. It’s hard because it takes effort, but we should be trying harder to integrate with area schools and not just feel satisfied if we have a “successful” program for just one or two years. We must be relentless in our outreach–especially to the youth–for they are the key to our future and we need to spark the imaginations of children so that they might grow up and respond to the complex problems our world is facing.
I participated in a water conservation conference (fair) targeted at primary school students when I was a little girl. There were probably hundreds of children there exploring the booths, learning about water, and getting a taste of what applied science looks like. I didn’t know then that this would be such a momentous occasion for me, but it always stuck with me. I’ve always cared about conserving natural resources and environmental issues and this educational event was just one of many that contributed to my research and philosophy today. Had the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Mississippi State University Extension and other sponsors not put on the fair, I wonder if I would have developed my passion for protecting the environment?
Recruitment is a barrier to diversity for both the institution as well as potential students. If students out there don’t know that they could go on to higher education, they end up getting missed entirely. For universities to attract quality students, they need prospective students to be aware of the opportunities in front of them. Waiting until students are in their final years of secondary school is almost too late to start. Sure, institutions of higher learning could get lucky and attract top students who are planning to go to college. Conversely, had they targeted younger students sooner, they could have sparked the curiosity of a young student and set them on a path they wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. It comes down to more than just outreach from the university–individual programs would benefit from spending time outside the silo–or inviting prospective students in–so that they can learn about what their options might be for programs of study.
Think about how you found your profession. Was your track slated for you? Did you discover your discipline early in life? Did you experience a crisis and fall into what you’re doing because a career counselor had experience interpreting Myers-Briggs Personality Tests** and Career Aptitude Tests for wayward students?
**this link leads to a version I found online and I can’t be sure of the accuracy of the instrument…but I’d be willing to guess that it’s accurate enough to be fun!
For some, like myself, I didn’t really know what a landscape architect (LA) did let alone what the entire discipline was about when I stepped foot in their courtyard at Mississippi State University so many years ago. In retrospect, the choice made sense, because my father is in construction and excavation and my mother is a Master Gardener, but I never thought of it as an option for myself because I didn’t really understand what LA’s actually did! From experience, I see where a gap in my learning early on (not understanding the profession) meant that it took me much longer to discover my calling because I didn’t have the vocabulary yet to describe what was missing for me. Could the LA Department have found me sooner? Would that have made a difference in my trajectory? It’s hard to say, but I do know that it was an opportunity nearly missed and I am grateful that I started down this path. Had I not asked “what if?” I would likely still be serving Jager-Bombs, draft pints, and pizza in Starkville, MS’s most beloved and iconic establishment Dave’s Dark Horse Tavern.
But I digress.
If I hadn’t been recruited into both my Master’s program at MSU and again for my attendance here at Virginia Tech, I imagine I would be living a very different life than I am right now. I count myself lucky to have been both in the right place at the right time AND to have been fortunate enough to get noticed!
Access is a barrier to diversity for obvious reasons. It is well accepted that there are certain groups in the population that have less fundamental access to education, let alone higher education. Perhaps the barriers manifest due to financial constraints, (error in) standardized testing, or just not having the support at home so that a student doesn’t feel like they can dream big and pursue interesting careers.
Privilege. Ok this one is a little bit difficult/uncomfortable for me to talk about and so I am going to address the topic gently. First, if you aren’t sure what privilege is, I have linked a short video below that is a good introduction on the topic.
Merriam-Webster gives two definitions for privilege: “:a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor :prerogative; especially:such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office.”
Talking about privilege is uncomfortable for me because I do enjoy certain privileges–and for a long time, I really had no concept of this, and for that I am more than just a little embarrassed. I think of myself as a caring, empathetic person; yet, how can I be if I am/remain completely clueless about the issues and challenges facing my fellow humans? Don’t get me wrong. I follow world news and am aware of conflicts around the world and the unfortunate plight of man in different places where there might be one or more factors (climate, resource limitation, social network, governance, systemic racism, etc.) beyond a person’s control that work against the success of that person. Peggy McIntosh’s piece “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” identified several conditions of life that resonated with me–some that I did enjoy and others that I didn’t.
For me to be able to talk about and comment on privilege means I have to unpack my own so that I can bring a heightened level of awareness to the front of my attention. I can’t be thoughtful about the issue in general if I don’t spend a little time trying to identify, for myself, what privilege has meant in my own life. In a nod to Shankar Vedantam’s theories in his book & podcast “The Hidden Brain,” I have to take back control of my brain and suspend the autopilot function. I day this because it has been extremely easy to not address my own implicit bias and think about how privilege manifests in my own life.
The difficulty I struggle with when talking about privilege is not unlike what Arao & Clemens describe in their (2013) article “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces” where people participating in this discussion feel uncomfortable as they are pushed to think through the issue and come to terms with their own privilege. I don’t feel unsafe, but what I do feel is a twinge of guilt for being ignorant in the past. I feel frustration for others who are dealing with obstacles in their lives every day. I understand the implicit imbalance in our society and that there are some people who are deeply wounded by their circumstance. I can’t apologize for being born into the life I am blessed to have, but I can honestly say that I am sorry that “the deck” (of life) was stacked for some and not others.
Privilege is an ugly and uncomfortable part of our (global) culture. By law and in the eyes of God, we are all equal; but by birth and circumstance, we are not. So what does that mean for learners, prospective students, and the university?
Well, if we accept that different people inherently expose us to new ideas, cultural norms, and ways of thinking that promote creativity, than it means that we need to be reaching out to those underrepresented students who do not enjoy the same level of privilege as those in the majority/power/white males. I’m not saying that white males should not be recruited or encouraged to attend college–what I’m saying is that we should try doubly hard to reach the Latino/a, African-American, Native American, female, working-class/poor/rural students who likely experience hardships with respect to access, outreach, and recruitment into higher education and would undoubtedly benefit from the environment and also bring their own diverse experiences to it. When people with less privilege have their needs met and a pathway to success, there can be no limit on their potential achievement.
Research says that students do better when they see people like them as their instructors and as practitioners in their profession. Claude Steele discusses these ideas **2 articles in the reference section** and concludes that students do better when they are 1) not worried about not doing well because of being stereotyped and 2) when in groups that contain people of similar background.
So between outreach, recruitment, access, and understanding privilege, the university (and academic programs in general) can work to increase the informational diversity of academia by inviting eligible students from diverse backgrounds to come study. I firmly believe that we need more underrepresented people–people of color, women, etc. in higher education and working as professionals in their discipline in the work force. Humanity is diverse and we should promote an environment of active inclusion and once we get the students through the door, show them that they matter through inclusive pedagogy in the classroom.
Inclusive pedagogy is the final and most important piece. We, as academics and rising educators, must be sensitive to the humanity present in our classrooms and that each individual has their own story, their own set of goals, and motivators–ideas that will define their individuality as well as their homogeneity with the rest of the group. We may be a diverse population, but first and foremost we are human beings. Successful instructors facilitate active learning through setting up an environment that allows every student to feel like they belong, like they are appreciated, and like they have something to contribute.
C.L. Bohannon leads freshman in a sketching course outside Burruss Hall. In this critique, everyone’s work is reviewed and everyone participates in the discussion.
References:
Arao, B. & Clemens, K. (2013). “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces.” The Art of Effective Facilitation.
McIntosh, P. (n.d.) “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
As my first semester of grad school plods along, I'm thinking a lot on "Why am I doing this?". I have friends making their careers and families as hair stylists, teachers, marine educators and the list goes on. What is compelling me to stay here for long nights and early mornings and do I agree with the system I'm participating in?
Let me start off with the idea that I like research, but I don't like the constant undulation of stress that comes with trying to do classes and research. That part is a struggle and it has me longing for summer days. So on the basis that I actually like some of what I do, what kinds of hours is ethical to expect of grad students?
I know this is a controversial topic that some countries think school should be everything and some professors recall the numerous all nighters they pulled in pursuit of their PhD, but is this reasonable? I mean in the US we have the 40 hour work week ( which is itself on the higher spectrum of work weeks) but grad school seemingly ignores this. If you take the 13 hours of class I'm in and then multiply by 3 with the idea you do 3 hours of work outside class for every hour you are in. And then you add 20 hrs of research a week. You're at a 59 hour work week, which is a lot. I like what I've been doing in grad school so far and I'm excited to actually get involved in research projects but I do find myself asking am I living to work or working to live?
I'm sure ideally you find a balance of both and its definitely possible. Many people get graduate degrees. I just wonder if its reasonable and what is the alternative? Right now I spend most of my waking energy researching and doing homework and while I could do more on the weekends, the long weeks make weekends a much needed respite. I'm sure I'll get used to it but I do sometimes think of the expectation that is set and if it is something I would want for others. I'm also not sure of the alternative because I believe that getting a PhD should be a lot of work. Its not clear to me, but it is something I think about when I see a lot of undergrads walking to their cars starting at around 2pm.
I'm trying to figure out what motivates people to choose a career path. Some people, I know, are in it for the most money, some just want to be able to travel and some people honestly never have a career. I don't understand though, going through the crappy hours, honestly low pay of getting a PhD, all to throw that away with fraudulent NSF grants.
I'm talking about the Virginia Tech professor who was recently accused of financial fraud for sending money to China and not paying the correct amount to Virginia Tech. Now his trial will be in 2018 and until then I am just going off of the alleged accusations because this man is not the first nor the last to throw away his career for money.
What gets me though is, he has a tenure track job. He has won the academic lottery and is getting paid to theoretically do what he wants. I don't know about you but I honestly wouldn't waste my entire career on money, that I don't even get to keep!!! I'm sure this is where the nuance of ethical violations comes in. Its a slippery slope and I have to assume that this Dartmouth educated professor didn't go through his grad program thinking - if only I can land a tenure track job, then I can steal a million dollars and send it back home.- Thats not enough motivation to get you through the years of school.
But what, I wonder, was the first pebble that fell to lead him down this slippery slope? I'm sure it was something simple, like maybe a contract they held did more than they were supposed to and wanted compensation. But when should someone or could someone have blown the whistle? This seems like a case that from the inside doesn't seem as bad as it looks from the outside. But it looks really bad.
Every grant I've been on has been painstakingly obsessed with a clear budget and maybe its because I've gotten lucky on who I work with. To me though, I'm happy to get a PhD but I'm not just doing it for the sake of it. I hope it helps me get a job I want down the line and I don't plan on throwing away (oh god) whats going to be at least 20 years of education for fraud.
This past week each member of our team was assigned a role to act out in the DC Lead Crisis that occurred from 2000 – 2004. I acted as Lynette Stokes, the representative for the DC Department of Health. The exercise of reading all the briefings and then defending the actions of others, was a great example to me of often what it can be like to be a leader in an organization. In this case, however, most representatives were guilty of misdoing or covering it up and quite honestly, I was appalled at how they acted.
After watching the footage of the actual press conference where Lynette Stokes lied to the public I realized that how deep of a hole you can dig yourself into. Knowing what she knew and having an office dedicated to defending public health, she could have given advice regardless of how her agency had acted. The EPA and DOH agreed in my group that we were going to tell everything we knew to the public whereas the CDC, Washington Aqueduct and WASA lied or really just shifted blame. The blame shifting and pointing fingers, really accomplished nothing.
As the DOH, I decided to give all the advice I could base on the packets I was given. I admitted that the DOH did not produce effective health warnings and that we had failed the public, but I also tried to avoid chaos. The DOH is responsible for making sure those that need access to healthcare can get it and assessing the honest risk of individuals. I tried to stick to the morals that the DOH lays out because that is what the job of Lynette Stokes was.
I do think the final question of the press conference was interesting. “Should you keep your job?” was asked of each of the panelists and not surprisingly all of us said yes. When arguably, none of us have done our job already.
I don’t understand why the samples were originally not reported and while it’s good that people felt the need to whistle blow, it shouldn’t have been necessary. The degree of jaded it takes to not realize how doing your job in protecting the drinking water quality of others can affect public health is honestly mind boggling. This exercise kind of showed to me how people will act in their own self-interest and showed that we somehow need a better way of determining who is a good leader. The idea that you can be fired for factual results and that even when you report them correctly you can be fired in completely ludicrous. I wonder if a series of HR complaints against Mr. Mercotte could have helped and I wonder how we can prevent this from happening in the future.
This exercise, and really this course overall, has really challenged my view of others. I try to always assume individuals are doing their best and to discover that some people will willingly not do their job is hard. I don’t think of myself as the most moral person in the world and honesty when reading the Young Professionals survival guide, I find myself seriously considering what I would do in these situations. For me, clear things like fraud (falsifying reimbursements) aren’t the challenge, but it’s the situations when you are pretty sure what someone is asking you to do is wrong but they are your boss. I can see myself struggling with this and that is why I have really tried to be careful with who I surround myself with.
This week we discussed Biases in our daily life and how, as scientists, we need to be constantly aware that we hold biases and try to be as honest with ourselves about what those may be. I was shocked to hear responses to the Hindsight Bias when it was presented in a research setting.
The idea that "the end justifies the means" isn't something I'm comfortable with, especially because you often don't know the "end" of an instance. Maybe its the outcome of a pharmaceutical study as discussed in class but more likely than not its less defined. I realize that for some this may seem trivial but I do research for a living. Its literally why they pay me to go to grad school and the idea that there is any acceptable level of data falsification essentially invalidates a lot of the work I do to create genuine inferences from real data. I am confident that the things you discover through genuine scientific discovery are more interesting than conclusions that say what you want them to but its a bit extremely frustrating to see that it may be true. Even if, in our class example, no one gets hurt and its an effective drug, why then do we have regulatory limits and industry. Unfortunately these came about from individuals taking advantage of each other and that is what seems to be suggested here. Obviously if people die from your mistake it is seen as more egregious but research is what leads to most of our scientific innovation and to discount it is short-sighted.
We need to be careful what we justify as bias and what is unethical. Improving the world relies on the honesty and hard work of others. We have to trust that the medicine we take was accurately vetted and the buildings we work in have steel that passed all necessary deflection tests. An interesting aspect of this course thus far has been that it has made me consider how many people do I have to trust in my daily life and how much of what I use now was formerly research or a scientific development? What I'm getting at is we have to trust each other if we want to live in society. We have to trust that its no ones self interest to cut corners or that there are mechanisms in place to catch these wrong doers. I guess I'm trying to say is it's important to step back and see why your work or research is important and why people are paying for it. Taking a step back and being able to put life in perspective can only help.
Mindful learning. It’s such a powerful concept. As one of the last blog posts going up this week, I had the pleasure of reading the reflections of so many of my classmates before I composed this post. I have to say that was probably the best thing for me as I have been struggling with what mindful learning should/could look like for an educator in the design field. I enjoyed reading my classmate’s stories because I realized that we all have a shared experience of classrooms/learning environments that are not actually designed for student learning. Each story I read was different, some students shared stories of triumph over the obstacles that stood between them and accomplishment; others were sadder: reflections on surviving in an educational system that wasn’t designed to educate but to test.
In the end, I realized it’s not what you teach, but how you teach. Dissecting “how you teach” for me became another series of questions I’m asking myself: what will my lessons be like if I’m going to encourage mindful learning? How do I create a culture and environment in the classroom that can facilitate the learning outcomes I want for my students? What small changes can I begin to incorporate so that I can systematically overhaul my teaching style to reflect the kind of educator I want to be for my students? What can I do to make sure that every student leaves my class feeling like they gained something beneficial?
For any readers that are new to this concept, here is the link to the TED talk given by Sir Ken Robinson “How to Escape Education’s Death Valley.” It’s a 19 minutes well-spent.
So here’s the honest truth: there’s a learner in each of us. It’s human nature to be able to grow as learners. To suggest that some people are just incapable or don’t want to–well, to me, that’s just preposterous. To give up on a difficult student is a failure of the educator and the system that the student is in. Sir Robinson is right: “Teaching properly conceived is not a delivery system.”
Coming up, I could tell the difference from day 1 in the classroom whether or not the class was going to be fun, exciting, and something to look forward to or if it was going to be difficult in the sense that I was going to have to force myself to survive it until the term was over. Even today, I can generally tell on the first day of class what my experience is probably going to be like over the upcoming semester. And despite there being all of these awesome resources out there-seminars, TED talks, workshops, and the like–we still seem to have a large population of our educators who either don’t know or just don’t get it. I’m a class right now that I find super-fascinating and I’m excited to be learning the topic–but the lectures—well, they’re fast, full of jargon, and truth be told, after the hour and a half is up, I find myself thinking “what in the hell just happened?” Because I don’t remember a bit of what he just said. Thankfully, I’ve learned to develop an independent reading list from the sources that get cited on the PowerPoint or else I would be completely lost. I’m determined to make it through the course, but it’s proving to be a rough ride. So then I think about it in the context of this course, and I wonder: why isn’t it fun for me? What can I do as the student to make this more fun? I don’t have an answer to those questions yet.
But learning IS fun and exciting (I wouldn’t have chosen to spend my life learning new things if it wasn’t!) And learning IS an adventure (Thank you Dr. Nelson!) So why, if these ideas about changing the way we approach teaching and learning are we still running into educators (and administrators) who don’t appreciate that there is a difference and there is room for they themselves to grow?
Again, I don’t have an answer to this question, but I’m working on a philosophy. In the meantime, I am working hard to change how I choose to think, act, and react in the classroom (and out of it). Bringing mindfulness to every aspect of my life has been a real challenge–I’m having to step outside of myself and learn to view the world with a new perspective. I’m fighting falling into the trap of automatic behavior, thinking, and responses. Just because we were trained in our formative years to be good little students doesn’t mean that we were actually being trained to be good learners and thinkers.
For me, the real challenge is learning how to see the difference and then changing my approach so that I can be a facilitator instead of a road-block in my own classroom and learning environments. I’m grateful for this experience in Contemporary Pedagogy–every week, there are new seeds planted and I am eager to support this personal growth.
I’m late writing my blog this week because we had a family emergency over the weekend. I have a 9-month old who has been very ill the last few weeks. Friday night was pretty difficult. She spiked a fever, so we returned to the doctor Saturday morning and we ended up spending the night in the Pediatric wing at Carilion in Radford for her to undergo some testing and receive IV fluids. Lucky for all of us, she had a positive response to the new medication they placed her on and we were able to return home Sunday to continue her care. After a sleepless weekend I am finally starting to catch up with my academic life (as I put everything on the back burner for a couple of days), but I’m still feeling pretty scatter-brained from the mental and physical exhaustion. The lessons on mindfulness were extremely helpful in coping with the ups and downs of the last few days. Interesting how that works.
I have a past that I once considered dark. I was embarrassed to admit to any new friends I made that I had once been a hardcore gamer. For about 3 years during my undergraduate years (a decade ago), mostly summers and over holiday breaks when I wasn’t working, I spent my time plugged into World of Warcraft (WoW)… not casually playing–grinding for resources, completing quests, raiding, and participating in team PvP combat. It was never dull! I had multiple top-level characters-my favorites were a human warlock and a Draenai priest, that I played with friends in real life and with friends I had met online. I was embarrassed to talk about my gaming past because of the reactions I would get from people. If I wasn’t getting a blank, yet horrified stare, the person I was talking to might be laughing or snickering at me for my juvenile, time-wasting hobby.
But I never saw it as a waste of time. I learned a lot in those games about social interaction, team work, planning, communication, and problem solving that I don’t think I would have had an equivalent opportunity to experience in real life. Especially in an age where communication and learning is increasingly happening online and in the digital realm, I believe it is increasingly important that we all practice our skills so that we are ready to engage with other people/learners whom we might not be working with face-to-face.
Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown in “A New Culture of Learning” talk about how gaming is a highly social activity that can bring together and engage multiple generations while also allowing the players to direct themselves in the play. I think this is an insightful way to look at WoW and other games like it. It is a simulation of a fantasy world, sure–but that doesn’t make the learning outcomes any less real or valuable.
Jumping into a “traditional” classroom, we think of a teacher in front of a class full of students and what are they doing? Well, they might be doing something out-of-the-box that’s fun and engaging, but more than likely, they’re doing the same thing we teachers have always been doing–they’re lecturing their class to death and they’re wondering “what is it about the students these days?”
News flash: it’s not the students. It’s you. It’s me. It’s us. It’s educators who have been so focused on career development/their own learning/whatever, you name it–that they’ve forgotten what it was like to be a student having to struggle through another exhausting lecture-based class.
Just last week, I had to give a presentation to a class that I’m the Research Assistant for and since I was in a relative hurry and the information wasn’t exactly “interesting” per se, I created a basic PowerPoint to deliver the information and at first, was satisfied with my work/preparation. During the 20 minute presentation, though, I discovered quickly that I had made a mistake. I was the only one that talked. No one really asked any questions. I was trying hard not to read the slides, but found myself stumbling through the information. I was probably 4 minutes into it when I noticed I “lost” my first student, and I was only half way through before one of the professors on record walked out because what I was doing/delivering was clearly a waste of his time. In retrospect, especially after the readings this week, I realize that I would have done them a better service to send the class an email with links to the websites where I pulled the information from and then spent that same 20 minutes discussing the case studies rather than boring everyone to death with policy discussion.
The big question I’ve been asking myself since then is: “How am I going to do it better next time?” and “What am I going to do differently?” From Jean Lacoste’s Teaching Innovation Statement, I pulled this quote because it really resonated with me: “I want to reach every single student in the class. I want each student to feel important, and I want each to know I care about his or her education.” And it’s true. I really do care about each and every one of my students. I want them to get the most out of our time together, yet when given the opportunity to really help them, I feel like I set myself up for failure by following the same model for classroom interactions every week. (But that’s why I’m in this course now–so that I can learn to be better. One of my personal mantras is “Know Better, Do Better” and pedagogy is no exception. I decided to go into education because I LOVE learning, yet I realize that I don’t know all that much about teaching, yet.
I am going to wrap this blog post with an excerpt from the Robert Talbert reading:
“Notice also that I do not count whether a lecture is inspiring or not. No doubt many lectures are inspiring, but being inspired and being taught are not the same thing, and just having one’s thoughts provoked doesn’t mean that one has interacted with the lecturer in any real way.”
As I look to the future and imagine opportunities where I will be able to make a difference to my students, I will start by not “teaching” with the same stale lecture and exhausting PowerPoint that I have elected to use in the past. These methods are outdated by contemporary standards, and we owe it to our students to do a better job at meeting their educational, social, and creative needs. There are so many different innovative, exciting, and engaging examples of how educators are out there today, providing a completely new and inspiring educational experience.
So how will I be different in the future? Well, I’m going to start by slowing down a little bit. I’m going to slow down and start paying closer attention to the things that inspire me and capture my attention–and then I’m going to study those methods. I’m going to be mindful about my own learning experiences and see if there are things from my past that I can draw on in order to grow into a better version of myself (who is actually an amazing educator!) I will be thoughtful and thorough when it comes to my course material because I owe it to my students to provide them the best education that I possibly can–and that if they’re going to show up ready to be taught, then I am certainly going to meet them on their terms.
The guest in class this week has me seriously thinking on local government and how we establish trust with the public. As engineers and in any other profession. We commented that you trust your doctor to look out for diseases and to talk care of you, just like you likely trust your government, or at least local government.
When I grew up I wanted to be president. As I aged I thought I wanted nothing to do with that career and switched into engineering but lately, admittedly since around summer of 2016, I realized that the people who run for public office really have no job requirements other than winning a vote. To me, that is terrifying. You always assume that your president, mayor, head of EPA or even your school board is looking out for you, but what if they aren't? Who is keeping them in check and what can you do if you think that elected officials are no longer working "for the people"?
I was talking to a friend about this very issue and he mentioned that when he visited Hong Kong, the main thing he noticed was that pharmacies are stock full of baby formula. He explained that he heard it was because, for a while, Chinese baby formula was contaminated with pesticides that caused a whole host of negative health effects in infants. Now Chinese parents who can afford it buy British sourced formula in Hong Kong and take it back to mainland China whenever they can. This lack of trust in the government is unfortunately something I am becoming more familiar with but it is not something I grew up with.
My brother volunteered with our city council this summer and was in charge of researching the public record background of candidates running for office. Its a little offputting to me that no one else is in charge of this within the government but I guess I can see why. His research uncovered multiple candidates with pasts that I would not want for my government officials. Multiple candidates had serious offenses ( not felonies which would take them out of the running) and three had serious character flaws when you began researching their public record history. This is not who I want representing me in government, but then who should? This summer our Mayor decided to bisect a city park serving low income youth for an access road for the nearby golf course. He did this with parks and recreation funds and with a mayoral executive order. On the night of the city council vote when it could be overturned, only 3 of the 5 council members showed up and at least 4 were needed for the vote to win. My brother spent the rest of the summer researching other ways to stop the park from getting destroyed and that is still ongoing but I'm realizing that the people we place in our local governmental offices have more power over our daily lives than we would like to think.
Ideally kids can go to the park without a road running through it. They shouldn't have to look both ways to get the frisbee that went to the other half of a previously large park, but that may not be the case anymore. We trust our local government to make sure the town's bills are paid, the lights can be turned on and any local initiatives are taking place. We trust them to keep our schools running and our water clean. When people don't hold up their end of a job they ran to convince you they should have, what should we do? We can't kick everyone out of government but we can work on making sure that people realize being a member of local government is a responsibility and not a privilege. The public's life is in your control and local government is not just a stepping stone to better things.
I like to think of our government as a collection of Leslie Knope's trying to look after us, but I fear its not and it is our responsibility to change that. We can all vote, we can all run for office ( assuming you can fund it and don't get me started on that). As a community we are responsible for others and I feel like in our politicized times we often forget that. I'm excited to keep going on with this course to discuss further the responsibilities of the engineer in this equation, but ethics do not just fall on you as an engineer. They rely on you evaluating the community you live in and deciding what it should look like.
