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GEDI2016

Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority!

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This week I would like to reflect on the “Dear White America” speech from Tim Wise. His speech last semester here at Tech opened my eyes to many different perspectives of the issue with the current regulations in higher education institutes. Reading the inclusive pedagogy articles: from safe spaces to brave spaces, identity and intellectual performance, and reducing the stereo type threats I cannot say that I disagree with their presented methods. However I am not sure if they are sufficient to address some of our current issues… Yes, changes in the educational system/exams/etc. can help, but this will not impact what students learn outside of school from the community that they are in contact with. We cannot neglect the fact that the interaction of students with each other is a major part of this equation… If a student does not feel comfortable in a classroom setting because of gender, race, or other categorization issues, restructuring the exams or the educational system will definitely have an impact on the performance of such students. However how are we moderating the interaction of the students with each other? How are we making sure that they are understanding of each other?  I think that it is very important to educate the teachers with the background and history of the ethnic minorities that they will be mentoring. I believe that this should be a requirement for all teachers and professors which will help them understand how some of these issues are impacting the society and how they can be best conveyed to students. Most probably I will be teaching a course in my last year of PhD here at Tech and I think that it is necessary to have a discussion with my students to open their eyes to some of these problems. As most people (alike myself) may think that this problem does not relate to them and since this problem may not be near and dear to the hearts of people who have not experienced it, they are less likely to learn more about it or work their way to finding some potential solutions to these problems.

One way to implement this change in higher education is to offer one mandatory course for all majors which discusses the background, culture, and history of various ethnic minorities and how the future of the nation depends on equal rights and opportunities for all current minorities which might be the majority of the population of the United States in the future (here’s an additional resource). Students enlightened with the true history of various ethnicities are more likely to perform better in their courses and therefore are more likely to perform better when they work in today’s global environment. Our graduates are the future generation of the CEOs, employees, teachers, professors, policeman, and policy makers. Although I think that this problem needs to be fixed from much higher place in the hierarchy of regulations. We in higher education can also impact this problem in many ways by understanding that our population blend will look very different in the future and that we need to find better ways of understanding and serving the minorities by both training our teachers and students…

 

Explore a World Richer than what is Offered in the Printed Books . . . !

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What is authentic teaching and how can we find our teaching style? I certainly believe that teaching styles is dependent on ones personality and capabilities… I have seen many cases where professors are adapting some good teaching practices in the wrong way! One good teaching practice is to ask questions in order to guide the learner to the solution instead of just presenting the solution. This could be done by posing questions such as what do you think? Why do you think that is? Are you sure? What are we missing here? etc. As much as questioning the learners is a good practice,  asking too many questions will confuse the learners! I took a course last semester in which the instructor would answer most of the questions with a question! And whenever someone responded to a question  he would say are you sure? I found that too confusing and it seemed like he was not well prepared for the class…

This is when teaching styles should be adapted to ones personality and capabilities! You cannot just try to employ teaching techniques without customizing them to your teaching style… Maybe this professor was trying to guide us to the right solution however he could have better implemented this by accordingly planning his questions rather than  questioning everything and confusing the students… Maybe he loses focus whenever he poses a question and has to ask more questions so that he can make time to get his focus back… Yes, questioning is good but the questions should be leading the student to right path!

As teachers we should have the ability to connect the theories with the reality… An interesting article in the Faculty Focus  mentioned six paths to a more authentic teaching.

  1. Being sincere
  2. Being true to oneself
  3. Acting in the interests of learners
  4. Care for the subject
  5. A process of becoming

A great example of these practices was mentioned in the reading as we need to find ways to draw on the child’s vast experience of oral mathematics not teaching them things that computers can do! If we want to pose questions frequently, we should do this while we consider what the learners will be getting out of responding to these questions… Where are these questions taking them? Instead of just mindlessly posing questions so that we can convince ourselves that we have “employed” this great practice! So let’s take some of the great practices that are adaptable to our major and sincerely employ them in our teaching while we are aware of our circle of knowledge, are staying true to it, and considering what the learners need to be/are getting out of this process. Most importantly the road to success is always under construction (Lily Tomlin) so always ask for feedback from students and try to find places for improvement. One great thing that I liked about one of my Professors last semester was that he would not just rely on the departmental evaluations and would directly ask us for suggestions. I find this a great practice since it shows ones genuine care for improvement…

Becoming literate means thinking differently than one did previously, seeing the world differently, and this suggests that there are many different literacies!

Professor=Teacher=Facilitator

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As Ellen Langer beautifully states: “The simple process of mindful learning, of actively drawing distinctions and noticing new things-seeing the familiar in the novel and the novel in the familiar-is a way to ensure that our minds are active, that we are involved, and that we are situated in the present.” 

I definitely think that working my way from undergraduate to graduate school, learning has been a much more pleasant and active experience for me. Being in engineering, I think we have all experienced those professors which just write a bunch of equations on the board and finish the class with some examples which they might provide the answer to right away or during the next session! The main reason that I attended classes like this was to take notes so that I can go home and study from notes after class! This approach is the “top down” approach which relies on discursive lecturing to instruct students. I should say that I find this method beneficial for students who just want to familiarize themselves with the topics which are introduced in a course and maybe take the time themselves to dive deeper in the topics that they find beneficial to their life/work/research. This is the same concept as auditing a course. I definitely think that if we are taking courses for credit we should be very hands on with that course and not just familiarized with some concepts and methods of that topic. This ties well with the “bottom-up” approach which relies on direct experience and repeated practice of the new activity in a systematic way. Some of best courses that I have had in my life shared two common guidelines which I find very useful:

1) The professors always mentioned not to worry about the grade. This semester I noticed that all professors were required to put a grading scale on their syllabus! I do not know if this is very useful! Since it puts extra stress on the students and also all the professors ended up mentioning that they were required to include this grading scale on their syllabus and that they will curve the class to help students focus on learning and not theirgrade. So why include the grading scale on the syllabus?

2) They always tied the theory with some great life examples. As as example I took a decision theory course last semester and as part of the course requirement we had to learn how to play poker and participate in a poker playing session in class! I mean how much more hands on can we get with decision making?! Everyone had to consider their (and other player’s) probability of winning, and then figure out how much it is worth for them to bet according to their chances of winning in a limited amount of time! Not to mention that at some point emotions will get involved since you want to win so badly, or you have already bet so much that you have “nothing to loose”, or are pressurized by another player! You should also consider that other players might be bluffing! This tied very well with most of the topics that were introduced in the course and helped me adapt the skills that I learned to a real life example which could also be further adapted to trading stocks, important life decisions (i.e. at a personal or job level), etc.

I also think that redesigning your syllabus (which I wrote a blog post about last semester) is a fun and creative way for enhancing the learning process and making the class more active and interactive. Why not look back at our best learning experiences and try to adapt those methods to what we are teaching? Another example in my field (civil engineering) could include some hands on work, preferably in the lab with designing structures and testing them under various types of loads. Yes, I know how to design structures for bridges, houses, etc on a piece of paper. However this is just like another example introduced by Ellen Langer which was someone teaching you methodologically how to perform CPR on infants and adults. Now imagine that you are walking by a pool and you come across  a 7 year old who needs CPR. What do you do? How do you adapt your CPR knowledge to this 7 year old?

As teachers, we should introduce concepts and theories, and design activities and group projects which allow the learners to engage in the content by exploring, debating, creating, practicing, and imitating rather than just receiving! We need to facilitate the learning process so that learners are prepared to adjust and adopt what they have learned to real life scenarios rather then teaching them to be mindlessly sequential. In this way learning will be fun and interactive and students will not think about what would be on the test but will think about the applications of the content that they are leaning. 

 

Let’s not repeat history! Don’t be boring teachers! Be fun,  be creative, be dynamic, be inclusive . . . !