Author: Selvamarroquin

As a future professor I expect to be questioned

I connected so much with Parker Palmer’s piece, “A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited.” There were so many quotes I thought were so thoughtful, but I will start with a few of my favorites.

“… I decided to become a professor, animated in part by the belief that education can humanize us”

“… taught to value intellectual detachment above engagement with the world. They refused to recognize what they knew”

“Does education humanize us? Not nearly often enough. We have yet to uproot the myth of “value-free” knowledge, and hence we turn our graduates loose on the world as people who know, but do not recognize that our justice system often fails the poor, that corporate logic usually favors short-term profits over sustainability, that practical politics is more about manipulating public opinion than discerning the will of the people, that our approach to international relations is laced with arrogance about our culture and ignorance of others, that science and technology are not neutral but rather means to social ends.”

I had a conversation with my roommate this past weekend about what I want out of (potentially) becoming a future professor. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and what I want. Whether I want to be at a predominantly teaching institution or research institution. I don’t believe I should have to choose and compromise one for the other. I want to be able to do research with the necessary resources and my job is to teach students. I am passionate about both and I don’t want to go to an institution that won’t support me doing both. To most people when I tell them that they tell me to go to a teaching school, but I think I want to work at a research institution because I see the teaching there being more of a challenge. I see large public institutions being where I can get the most diversity of opinion and backgrounds in the classroom (diversity being amongst the college going population, which is inherently not diverse, but hopefully slightly more diverse than the private institutions). My teaching strategy is what I think to be pretty straightforward. While I would be teaching in a geosciences department, I don’t expect to be teaching geoscience majors, I expect art history majors, business majors, economics majors, biology majors.

I couldn’t care less if my students become geology majors. That’s wonderful if they feel connected to the material, but I don’t feel that that is my job as a future professor. My job is to get them to think and critically engage with what they are learning and the wealth of literature and knowledge that I’m asking them to engage with. My job is to get my students to think. My job is to create members of society that can critically consume what they are being told, not just blindly accept. That can recognize bias and think about how they think and in what ways they may be biased. I want them to question, I want them to question me, I want them to question their peers. Memorizing the geologic time scale front and back doesn’t tell me anything about their ability to critically think. If they can take context clues and put those together with how they’ve learned to think, that’s what I care about. Science is driven by observation and asking questions, that’s what I expect of my students.

There is so much more I could say about Parker Palmer’s piece, but I will leave it here for the sake of space. 🙂

Biracial or Biethnic?

I have been trying to understand race and identity my entire life and it has been a complicated road. My mother is white and my father is a hispanic immigrant from El Salvador. Being multi ethnic (I guess I’m not biracial since hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race..?) is absolutely confusing, and in my 26 years and many hours of reading about race and identity, I’m not sure I’ve figured things out. While I culturally may not be very openly hispanic it doesn’t matter, because my brown skin is what people see first. When they meet me they make a judgement based on my skin tone and my name. There are opinions and stereotypes that people have about me and how ‘my people’ act. For this reason I have to think carefully about how I conduct myself in an academic setting and how I approach challenging discussions of race and where/when I choose to speak up. Frankly, I don’t have much of a filter on this topic and regularly call out what I appear to be biases, but it is incredibly draining sometimes.

For this blog post, I decided to respond to several comments that stuck out to me in the ‘Dismantling Racism in Education’ podcast:

 (1) “Because I’m brown that doesn’t make me a diversity expert or an expert on race”

Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time this has come up. So true. I understand the desire to have representation on panels discussing race, but I wouldn’t say that I am the expert on race. Like Sara said in the podcast, I have lived experiences that are unique to my white colleagues. For that reason I am more comfortable navigating the conversation of race, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing should be put on me to teach others what is wrong and right.

(2) “White Privilege”

Again, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve tried to navigate explaining this one. I appreciated the breakdown and separation of white privilege from social/economic privilege. These are two different things that should not be confused. White privilege is so closely tied to representation, being able to see your face represented and being able to see your experiences represented as the norm. That is white privilege. White privilege is ignoring that police brutality is a thing because as a white person you don’t have negative experiences with police officers, so how could anyone else? (Insert face palm emoji)

(3) “It costs white people nothing to speak up”

Yasssss. Please. Do speak up. For me. When I speak up, I’m considered an angry brown woman. Any time I bring up race or point out biases that my white peers have, I can guarantee you that going through someones head is ‘the race card again,’ and that is exhausting. Knowing that I can keep bringing up what I believe to be wrong, but then I get pegged as the continually angry person pointing out race problems. But why do I always have to be the one to say something. If we see ourselves as progressives, then it should be just as evident for me that something is racist as it is to the person next to me.

(4) “Many of us are reluctant to speak up because we don’t have the expertise”

I have heard this a lot, and I agree, as a white person you may not have the expertise, and I appreciate you admitting that upfront. So here’s what you can do. Educate yourselves. Please. Take the time to listen and respect others opinions. Listen, appreciate, and understand that those experiences are real. Do not question that experience just because you have never experienced it. That is what I would say, listen, and respect perspectives that are not your own. Practice becoming comfortable with conversations and situations that make you uncomfortable, that’s how we make change.

Biracial or Biethnic?

I have been trying to understand race and identity my entire life and it has been a complicated road. My mother is white and my father is a hispanic immigrant from El Salvador. Being multi ethnic (I guess I’m not biracial since hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race..?) is absolutely confusing, and in my 26 years and many hours of reading about race and identity, I’m not sure I’ve figured things out. While I culturally may not be very openly hispanic it doesn’t matter, because my brown skin is what people see first. When they meet me they make a judgement based on my skin tone and my name. There are opinions and stereotypes that people have about me and how ‘my people’ act. For this reason I have to think carefully about how I conduct myself in an academic setting and how I approach challenging discussions of race and where/when I choose to speak up. Frankly, I don’t have much of a filter on this topic and regularly call out what I appear to be biases, but it is incredibly draining sometimes.

For this blog post, I decided to respond to several comments that stuck out to me in the ‘Dismantling Racism in Education’ podcast:

 (1) “Because I’m brown that doesn’t make me a diversity expert or an expert on race”

Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time this has come up. So true. I understand the desire to have representation on panels discussing race, but I wouldn’t say that I am the expert on race. Like Sara said in the podcast, I have lived experiences that are unique to my white colleagues. For that reason I am more comfortable navigating the conversation of race, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing should be put on me to teach others what is wrong and right.

(2) “White Privilege”

Again, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve tried to navigate explaining this one. I appreciated the breakdown and separation of white privilege from social/economic privilege. These are two different things that should not be confused. White privilege is so closely tied to representation, being able to see your face represented and being able to see your experiences represented as the norm. That is white privilege. White privilege is ignoring that police brutality is a thing because as a white person you don’t have negative experiences with police officers, so how could anyone else? (Insert face palm emoji)

(3) “It costs white people nothing to speak up”

Yasssss. Please. Do speak up. For me. When I speak up, I’m considered an angry brown woman. Any time I bring up race or point out biases that my white peers have, I can guarantee you that going through someones head is ‘the race card again,’ and that is exhausting. Knowing that I can keep bringing up what I believe to be wrong, but then I get pegged as the continually angry person pointing out race problems. But why do I always have to be the one to say something. If we see ourselves as progressives, then it should be just as evident for me that something is racist as it is to the person next to me.

(4) “Many of us are reluctant to speak up because we don’t have the expertise”

I have heard this a lot, and I agree, as a white person you may not have the expertise, and I appreciate you admitting that upfront. So here’s what you can do. Educate yourselves. Please. Take the time to listen and respect others opinions. Listen, appreciate, and understand that those experiences are real. Do not question that experience just because you have never experienced it. That is what I would say, listen, and respect perspectives that are not your own. Practice becoming comfortable with conversations and situations that make you uncomfortable, that’s how we make change.

Teaching as controlled improvisation

Of the readings for this week, I connected most with Shelli Fowler’s “The Authentic Teaching Self and Communication Skills.” As I think about her handout I really appreciated her statement that “Teaching is not all about the teacher.” I’ve said it so many times, but academics tend to have serious egos. It just seems to attract that type. I don’t mean that all academics have egos, just that it seems to be an environment that breeds that mentality. When you’re constantly pitted against each other to prove the value of your research, it’s not really surprising. For that reason, I think academics find it challenging to connect with students and meet them at their level. The first thing I do while teaching is tell the students about myself and my journey to get to that classroom and my PhD program. I explain to them that I struggled through undergrad. I did my best to stay focused and connected, but I knew that in a class of 200+ I could skip class because no one was paying attention. Today, I make it my mission to make no student feel anonymous because I know that is the first way to lose the connection. I always start the semester by explaining to them all that I don’t have all of the answers, but I will work with them to help them find the answers to their questions.

In that regard I will often call on the class to help teach one other. What makes sense to me and the way I explain something will work for me, but not necessarily to every one of my students. When I teach I aim to learn from my students how to teach. I don’t expect to walk into my classroom and have everything I say stick the first time. I really appreciated the line that you need to “be flexible and adapt your plan as you “read” the dynamic.” Not every exercise I have tried has been successful. This is where improvisation is key. Do. Not. Panic. Just go with it. Have a discussion with the students. Ask them what worked and what they are struggling with. I really believe that maintaining honest and open conversation throughout my teaching has allowed for reflection and evolution of my teaching style. I’m certain I will (and have) fail at teaching one thing or another in the future, but I look forward to the failure, because that just means there is still so much room to grow.

Not another Bruno grammy

I’m writing this while watching the Grammy’s, waiting for Beyoncé to appear on the stage, but my hopes are dwindling with ten minutes left. ?

I wanted to build off of last weeks post, where I talked about specific classes that engaged me most in my educational experience, and shift to educators that I’ve seen that engaged well with students. Specifically, I’m thinking of a professor I TA’d for while working on my masters in paleontology at UT Austin. The professor was, and still is, pretty eccentric in the most endearing way. He’s very sarcastic and is known to cut someone off and ask them to start over if they use, uh, um or really any other meaningless filler word while speaking. This professor taught a course in the spring called, Age of Mammals. Most of the students taking the course were non-majors and the professor aimed to make the material accessible and about the students. He always started the first lecture by sitting on a table in front of a 300 student lecture auditorium asking why the students were there. He wanted to know what they wanted out of the class and would write the syllabus with the students, based on why they chose to enroll in the course. He did his best not to sit in front of the class and lecture, and would always end class by asking, ‘Does anyone have any queries, quandaries, qualms, or concerns?’ Like I said, he’s eccentric.

One of this professors big rules in class was no electronics. No cell phones. No laptops. Nothing. As TA’s we were supposed to sit in the back and go up to any student who was on their phone and ask them to please wait until after class. The main reason this professor was so adamant about no electronics was that he felt it wasn’t fair to any student sitting around the perpetrator, because, he knows mammals are attracted to color and movement and this would distract anyone within eyeshot of the student on their electronic device.

This naturally got me thinking about how I would handle electronics in my classroom down the road. For that reason, I loved reading the NPR article Amy found to include in this weeks reading. I really appreciate Allia Griffin’s take on it, where she thinks they are a distraction, but mainly because they cut off social interaction amongst students. This says a lot about how students are not only learning from the person up front who is being paid to speak, but also from the experiences and backgrounds of their peers. I also appreciated Jesse Stommel’s approach to the matter and that technology in the classroom can be a conversation. I think having an adult conversation about it with the students is necessary and likely pretty effective. I really believe that if students connect with the professor, they won’t want to be distracting themselves and others, because they respect the professor and the learning environment.

Ultimately, I don’t quite know my final stance of technology in the classroom, but I love the idea of engaging students with collaborative documents or anonymous polls. I think there is something to be said for a happy medium and I think that develops naturally from class to class depending on the group of students. It’d be great to hear how others have, or have not, included technology in their teaching. Oh, and if anyone knows what the difference is between record of the year, song of the year, and album of the year, lemme know.

PS. I apologize I did not follow the prompt…

Connections*. That’s what I got from Dr. Michael Wesch’s TED Talk. The reason he was successful in working with students and helping them learn is that he took the time to make connections with his students. I wholly admire his technique and ability to get to know his students to help make them more engaged in class. I too have struggled with the notion that students are taught to just see the end goal of a grade. I’ve told people before that when (if…?) I get a job as a professor at a university I don’t want to give out grades; I don’t want to keep track of points. All I want to know is that the students are learning to process information and ask questions based on that.

I am a PhD student in geosciences and in my experience, I’ve found this technique is often easier to apply in humanities courses that tend to be more discussion based than STEM courses which are much more lecture based. My question is, do they have to be? Why do we feel we have to teach STEM by lecture? Why can’t we have a discussion? Why can’t we get the students involved?

I’ve had two courses that have shaped my view on pedagogy, or at least what I understand of pedagogy (I’m sure that will change over the course of the semester). The two classes that engaged me the most were not in my discipline at all, ‘History of African American Music’ and ‘Invertebrate Biology.’ History of African American Music was fascinating to me because it made the connection between how society and history had so closely driven the style of music produced at the time. They married so well together and it made me listen to music in a whole different way. I sometimes listen to music being produced today and wonder how it will sound in thirty to forty years when it’s being taught in classrooms. It’s hard to see history as it is being made, but it is so interesting to reflect upon and discuss. Even now, four years after I took that course, I still have lingering questions and it sparked my interest in how I can make my subject more interesting and accessible to students outside of STEM fields.

The other course, Invertebrate Biology, was the first experience I had with nontraditional grading and teaching style. This course was taught by a very charismatic Russian biologist who graded our weekly labs based on the drawings we made of the organism we were studying that week. He also tested our lecture material by oral exam. We had a list of potential prompts, went into his office where he randomly chose one prompt, and we had twenty minutes to prepare. The actual exam was a conversation. While we had one question prompting that conversation, he wanted to know more. He wanted to test the bounds of our understanding on the subject matter. He didn’t want us to feel stupid, he simply wanted to assess what connections we had been able to make based on what we had discussed in class. Now that I think about it, this is similar to a graduate student’s preliminary exam, where you are asked questions to test your knowledge and forced to make connections with everything you have learned. This to me is the skill that is most important in learning how to learn and how to think critically, it’s all about making connections.

I guess that sort of brings me full circle with where I started this rant, connections. Long story short, I’m looking forward to a semester of being forced to think about new ways to connect with students and engage them in STEM.

  1. *I apologize I did not follow the prompt and did not talk about networks, but I did do the readings. This will probably be the theme of me blogging for the semester.