Wow. What a day yesterday was. I've had difficulty this summer doing anything academic (precarity and pandemic do not equal productivity, that's for sure), and I jumped right in to all the readings, videos, podcasts and discussions happening in the STEM-H and Critical Pedagogy course. My brain is still tired from everything it took in yesterday, but having slept on it all, I have some clear points I wanted to write down. So I set up a blog - welcome to the inaugural post!
I discovered Digital Pedagogy Lab, the brain child of Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel last spring - I couldn't figure out a way to financially get there last year. But I was determined to get there this year! I almost didn't, because yet again, finances were going to get in the way, so the silver lining to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is that DPL went online! I was so excited because there was a dedicated STEM track - its not easy to find STEM folks willing to chat about pedagogy, let alone critical pedagogy. And so far it's been amazing.
Yesterday was an intro to critical pedagogy. We had several questions to ponder with one sticking out to me:
What is your definition of Critical Pedagogy? Would we want to operationalize a term like Critical Pedagogy and, if so, how would you operationalize it?
We started with a great vidcast with Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh and Jesse Stommel, where Jesse gave his own definition of critical pedagogy, which basically recognizes that we and out students bring our whole selves to our classrooms and we need to recognize that context when teaching. Rissa and Jesse had a great conversation about whether critical humanizing pedagogy was almost redundant because doesn't critical equal humanizing - still pondering that.
We read and annotated Mehta and Aguilera's (2020) "A critical approach to humanizing pedagogies in online teaching and learning" where the discussion turned to practices that may negatively harm students - such as using flipgrid with English Language Learners and them being embarrassed or concerned because they have strong accents. What I loved most about this article is that they shared vignettes, but no recommendations, because there are no easy quick fixes to creating an inclusive classroom. Every student, every group of students is going to be different - a critical pedagogue has to recognize that.
And so I really want to sit here and think about what it means to a) recognize and allow students to bring their whole selves into a science classroom, and b)what it means for me to bring my whole self into my classroom.
First, my students. I will prompt this by saying that I work at a predominately white, private, 4-year, liberal arts institution. I don't get a lot of first-gen, ELL, or even students of color. But they do exist and it was clear that the institution itself wasn't really considering them in the pandemic shift this past spring - there was a large push for synchronous zoom classes. There was little concern for the actual lived lives of the students themselves. I had students that were helping with siblings, students whose rooms had already been converted to a different space, those that didn't feel comfortable turning on videos, and those that had to go work 40 hours a week to make ends meet in their families. Even at a pricey private school.
All of that being said, I have to acknowledge the lived experiences of my students as a non-majors science instructor. My students come into my class with a wide range of experiences in the sciences. Some of them have literal horror stories about science teachers they had as children. Some are indifferent and really don't understand why they have to take a science CORE course. Others took all AP courses in high school. So I have such a broad range of backgrounds - just in terms of their science experiences, let alone the rest of their lives.
I have recognized this having taught the course for six years now, and as a result I realized the unfairness of assessing students using the competitive grading system we use and have switched to an ungrading system that involves students writing reflections about themselves and the science topics we discuss in class - they have choice in what they learn, and I have zero content focuses goals of the course. They can approach science in in ways that make meaning for them. This is really important to me, because I have literally one shot to influence my students into thinking science is important and that they have science identities. I'm am not going to waste my shot (credit to Jessica Merricks at Elon University for the Hamilton analogy).
Side note: Yes, I teach non-majors and can (for the most part) ignore content. I recognize this is not the case for majors. If you teach majors though, you should follow the work of Bryan Dewsbury at the University of Rhode Island - he's done amazing work on inclusion and identity in intro bio classes while cutting content of their BIO 101 course.
Now for me. How do I bring my whole self into my classroom? For a long time, I was convinced there were two of me: teacher me and me me. Teacher me was pretty professional. Me me was a nerd that likes to wear jeans all the time. It's only been within the past year that I've let the two collide while working - I wear jeans a lot more to work (this was big because my first teaching job required business professional) which makes me far more comfortable in the classroom. Second, I've let slip to my students my interests (Star Wars and cross stitching really) - this I've done through my icebreaker activity on day one. I know, icebreakers are painful at times, but I try to ease the painfulness by putting myself in the hot seat more than my students. For my students, they have to tell me about their favortite teacher. In exchange, they can ask me anything. I've gotten favorites questions, one student once asked me what my favorite item in the room was, and one was a little shocked because they asked what my biggest fear was and when I replied that it was losing the people I loved, they responded with "Wow, that was deep. I figured something like spiders!" I even started a mini rivalry with a student whose favorite Marvel character was Iron Man - sorry Lauryn, it's Cap. Always Cap.
Starting on day one, I am a person to them, not just their teacher.
But another piece of bringing my whole self into the classroom is how much of myself I'm allowed to bring into the classroom - which leads me to faculty agency and the role it plays in student agency. I mentioned above how I always thought there were two of me: teacher and me. But the reality is that there are two teacher mes. I teach for two institutions, and the cultures are so different that I actually am two different teachers. At my primary institution, I have complete freedom over every aspect of my course - content, pedagogy, assessment. Because of that, I can pass some of that agency to my students - I allow students to vote on topics we discuss in class, I ungrade and they reflect and self-assess throughout the semester, etc. I also have a lot of support from administration to do these things. At my other institution, I teach in the college of online learning, where our classes are built for us - we have very little agency. We can make some minor changes, but I can say that I’ve come up across some of our ID staff putting up roadblocks to make any major changes. As a result, it’s really difficult to pass that agency down to students and we are stuck doing the 3 response discussion forum nonsense, very “banking” style assessments. I also have less of a connection to that institution because of precarity and my value to them - I get paid less, I don’t always have courses, and I’ve been burned by the institution as a whole several times.
Mehta and Aguilera (2020) actually put this into words as a tension that underscores critical humanizing framework: "the consideration for creating humanizing teaching conditions for instructors, as these ultimately become the learning conditions of students (pg.117)." Faculty agency is required for students to have agency over their own learning. If a faculty member feels disempowered in anyway, the likelihood of them creating an empowering, transformational experience is pretty low. And unfortunately, in this time of chaos, when we could be making real radical changes in education as a whole, there's very little faculty agency being built up - a lot of mechanical quick fixes to remote learning and unknown that lies ahead this fall, rather than some of the conversations that need to be happening about who our students actually are and what they actually need from us.
References:
Mehta, R., & Aguilera, E. (2020). A critical approach to humanizing pedagogies in online teaching and learning. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 37(3), 109-120.
I discovered Digital Pedagogy Lab, the brain child of Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel last spring - I couldn't figure out a way to financially get there last year. But I was determined to get there this year! I almost didn't, because yet again, finances were going to get in the way, so the silver lining to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is that DPL went online! I was so excited because there was a dedicated STEM track - its not easy to find STEM folks willing to chat about pedagogy, let alone critical pedagogy. And so far it's been amazing.
Yesterday was an intro to critical pedagogy. We had several questions to ponder with one sticking out to me:
What is your definition of Critical Pedagogy? Would we want to operationalize a term like Critical Pedagogy and, if so, how would you operationalize it?
We started with a great vidcast with Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh and Jesse Stommel, where Jesse gave his own definition of critical pedagogy, which basically recognizes that we and out students bring our whole selves to our classrooms and we need to recognize that context when teaching. Rissa and Jesse had a great conversation about whether critical humanizing pedagogy was almost redundant because doesn't critical equal humanizing - still pondering that.
We read and annotated Mehta and Aguilera's (2020) "A critical approach to humanizing pedagogies in online teaching and learning" where the discussion turned to practices that may negatively harm students - such as using flipgrid with English Language Learners and them being embarrassed or concerned because they have strong accents. What I loved most about this article is that they shared vignettes, but no recommendations, because there are no easy quick fixes to creating an inclusive classroom. Every student, every group of students is going to be different - a critical pedagogue has to recognize that.
And so I really want to sit here and think about what it means to a) recognize and allow students to bring their whole selves into a science classroom, and b)what it means for me to bring my whole self into my classroom.
First, my students. I will prompt this by saying that I work at a predominately white, private, 4-year, liberal arts institution. I don't get a lot of first-gen, ELL, or even students of color. But they do exist and it was clear that the institution itself wasn't really considering them in the pandemic shift this past spring - there was a large push for synchronous zoom classes. There was little concern for the actual lived lives of the students themselves. I had students that were helping with siblings, students whose rooms had already been converted to a different space, those that didn't feel comfortable turning on videos, and those that had to go work 40 hours a week to make ends meet in their families. Even at a pricey private school.
All of that being said, I have to acknowledge the lived experiences of my students as a non-majors science instructor. My students come into my class with a wide range of experiences in the sciences. Some of them have literal horror stories about science teachers they had as children. Some are indifferent and really don't understand why they have to take a science CORE course. Others took all AP courses in high school. So I have such a broad range of backgrounds - just in terms of their science experiences, let alone the rest of their lives.
I have recognized this having taught the course for six years now, and as a result I realized the unfairness of assessing students using the competitive grading system we use and have switched to an ungrading system that involves students writing reflections about themselves and the science topics we discuss in class - they have choice in what they learn, and I have zero content focuses goals of the course. They can approach science in in ways that make meaning for them. This is really important to me, because I have literally one shot to influence my students into thinking science is important and that they have science identities. I'm am not going to waste my shot (credit to Jessica Merricks at Elon University for the Hamilton analogy).
Side note: Yes, I teach non-majors and can (for the most part) ignore content. I recognize this is not the case for majors. If you teach majors though, you should follow the work of Bryan Dewsbury at the University of Rhode Island - he's done amazing work on inclusion and identity in intro bio classes while cutting content of their BIO 101 course.
Now for me. How do I bring my whole self into my classroom? For a long time, I was convinced there were two of me: teacher me and me me. Teacher me was pretty professional. Me me was a nerd that likes to wear jeans all the time. It's only been within the past year that I've let the two collide while working - I wear jeans a lot more to work (this was big because my first teaching job required business professional) which makes me far more comfortable in the classroom. Second, I've let slip to my students my interests (Star Wars and cross stitching really) - this I've done through my icebreaker activity on day one. I know, icebreakers are painful at times, but I try to ease the painfulness by putting myself in the hot seat more than my students. For my students, they have to tell me about their favortite teacher. In exchange, they can ask me anything. I've gotten favorites questions, one student once asked me what my favorite item in the room was, and one was a little shocked because they asked what my biggest fear was and when I replied that it was losing the people I loved, they responded with "Wow, that was deep. I figured something like spiders!" I even started a mini rivalry with a student whose favorite Marvel character was Iron Man - sorry Lauryn, it's Cap. Always Cap.
Starting on day one, I am a person to them, not just their teacher.
But another piece of bringing my whole self into the classroom is how much of myself I'm allowed to bring into the classroom - which leads me to faculty agency and the role it plays in student agency. I mentioned above how I always thought there were two of me: teacher and me. But the reality is that there are two teacher mes. I teach for two institutions, and the cultures are so different that I actually am two different teachers. At my primary institution, I have complete freedom over every aspect of my course - content, pedagogy, assessment. Because of that, I can pass some of that agency to my students - I allow students to vote on topics we discuss in class, I ungrade and they reflect and self-assess throughout the semester, etc. I also have a lot of support from administration to do these things. At my other institution, I teach in the college of online learning, where our classes are built for us - we have very little agency. We can make some minor changes, but I can say that I’ve come up across some of our ID staff putting up roadblocks to make any major changes. As a result, it’s really difficult to pass that agency down to students and we are stuck doing the 3 response discussion forum nonsense, very “banking” style assessments. I also have less of a connection to that institution because of precarity and my value to them - I get paid less, I don’t always have courses, and I’ve been burned by the institution as a whole several times.
Mehta and Aguilera (2020) actually put this into words as a tension that underscores critical humanizing framework: "the consideration for creating humanizing teaching conditions for instructors, as these ultimately become the learning conditions of students (pg.117)." Faculty agency is required for students to have agency over their own learning. If a faculty member feels disempowered in anyway, the likelihood of them creating an empowering, transformational experience is pretty low. And unfortunately, in this time of chaos, when we could be making real radical changes in education as a whole, there's very little faculty agency being built up - a lot of mechanical quick fixes to remote learning and unknown that lies ahead this fall, rather than some of the conversations that need to be happening about who our students actually are and what they actually need from us.
References:
Mehta, R., & Aguilera, E. (2020). A critical approach to humanizing pedagogies in online teaching and learning. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 37(3), 109-120.
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