Could you explain more about CIDER workshop? Is it specific for your major or it is a workshop for all students from different majors?

I also want to say that it is really interesting that you have a goal to implement a learning service in your future career. I think it is important to have such goal since it can affect your direction when you enter into academia and as a result it will be helpful for community you will serve in future.

Thanks for this post!

One of my advisor’s homework assignments features an explanation of a problem that says “Here’s generally how I expect you to do the problem… But there was this one student one time that solved this problem like this… I’m not sure why it worked, but it did!”

That humility exists throughout the class and not only do you feel that the teacher is accessible, but you feel that you have the freedom to take risks on assignments! Each assignment in that class felt like an adventure.

Great post! I appreciate the rant, especially your suggestion about sharing ideas with your advisor. I know there are probably as many advising styles out there as there are advisors, some that micromanage and some that are hands-off and the rest that are somewhere in-between. However, I think applying Freire’s viewpoint, from my understanding, it would be best for advisors to act more like students themselves than teachers, in order to learn with their graduate students. Graduate students should in no way be ‘containers’ in which advisors ‘deposit’ information. As you said, the creativity this would inspire may well lead them both to a Nobel prize! Thanks for sharing!

One of the greatest lessons I learned through my now 5 years of working on the PhD is about work life balance. I totally understand your lament about reading and clearly you enjoy reading for fun; I would encourage you to make that a priority. For me, a slow reader who is easily exhausted by reading course materials, I have found the joy of audio books. It’s an opportunity to get lost in that sea of words without feeling like I am still working. Setting some time aside every week to listen to something fun has really helped me with my productivity and enjoyment of the the time I have as a graduate student. If you need a good, fun, linguistically interesting book to consider trying Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie on audible.com or in book form, as well as the equally entertaining predecessor Haroun and the Sea of Stories (not available on audio).

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Thanks for the post! As for the question about Freire’s view of technology, I tend to think he would appreciate its use in the way we saw in the game playing/game creation programs we discussed earlier. However, I could see (and have experienced) how technology could easily be used to only further ‘the oppression’ (i.e. online quizzes). It’s all about how the resource is used.

What a great post! I feel like the story your shared about the standardized test speaks directly to a thought I kept having looking over the Paulo Freire resources this week–this reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson and how he describes the inequities of our education system today, squashing the creativity and uniqueness of children that should be encouraged. Thank you for sharing this and that it is OK to make mistakes as a teacher!

Noel, love the quote “You must learn the rules so you know how to break them and then you can choose whether to break them on purpose.”. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for your comment. This line “The Wall looks at systems of control and questions them, challenges them, and explores what happens when we accept control and what happens when we fight against control” summarizes The Wall so well!

Hi, thanks for your comment. I agree with your first half of the discussion regarding indoctrination and the compartmentalization of knowledge. However, criticism is an important part of living in this world. Constructive criticism is critical in making improvements to existing processes. Just because I presented a critical point of view does not mean that I don’t support schools – I am merely commenting on drawbacks of the current system which I think can be improved upon. There are plenty of folks who don’t go to school and remain illiterate – sure they manage to make a living and make sense of the world, but then they all end up voting for Trump ?

I agree with Gary, technology itself is not going to create the “epistemological curiosity” for which Freire argues. Rather it is how we use technology to foster curiosity and knowledge creation. This has theme has played over in my head as I have been revising my syllabus and thinking about ways I can use technology not to dump information on the floor of the classroom but to encourage students and myself to create knowledge through deliberate explorations. Each time I add to the syllabus, I ask myself: Is this something that will generate curiosity or could I put it on a thumb drive and have the students regurgitate the information at a later date? If the the former, then it stays; if the later, it goes in the pile of things to look at if you can’t fall asleep at night.