GRAD 5114 Contemporary Pedagogy_Sihui

I was impressed by several points by Paulo Freire in this short recored interview.

The first point is remaining your own personality, while being tolerant as educators. It is difficult to recognize and agree to other point of views while defending your own thoughts without swing.

In the Warring States period of ancient China (BC 770-BC 221), many wise ideological tendencies sprouted out. Three major philosophy system, the Confucius, Lao Zi and Mo Zi, together with many other philosophers built up an booming prosperity of ideas. Philosophers communicated with each other, and learned from each other to consummate their own ideology. No one philosophy was dominate, or tried to kill the others. But they evolved and perfect together, contributing a significant portion to the whole Chinese philosophy.

The second point is teachers should appraise and confirm that the speaking from students are as beautiful as the experts. Teachers should be democratic in class to ensure that every student has the right to speak out what they are thinking.

This principle is not conduct very well in Chinese education in general from my perspective. The respect to teachers is rooted deeply in every Chinese mind since we were born. The disagreement with teachers will be considered as un-respective conduct, especially when students express different opinions in the classroom and cause embarrassment on the teachers. Students are expected to be submissive, follow every rule from authoritative teachers, and be diligent on learning. Things are gradually changing since the whole Chinese society are more open, but exchanging academic believes between teachers and students are not as free as it is in the US. Secondly, students with wrong answers should be punished without any excuses. This is quite straight-forward rule in China; wrong is wrong. The part of correct within the overall wrong answer will be hidden and ignored in most cases.

I was amazed at the relationship between diversity in workspace and the sales profits. And I believe diversity brings more creativity and critical thinking in working environment, especially in academic areas.

Based on my own study abroad and travel experience, I found that people who speak different language think in different ways. Partly of the reason is that the grammar is different, for instance, the sequence of words or phrases that you put into sentence. That will affect the sequence of which part of the sentence comes to our mind first, thus reflects on the priority in our thinking.

Additionally, we all admit that the ideology is very different based on culture. As the globalization moving forward, there is a strong need that the students want to learn about different cultures and how everything works in different regions around the world, so they can better survive in the globalized work market. I was talking with a winemaker in New Zealand on the wine sale in China. His company wanted to open the market in China, tried very hard to import their wine to China. But they were kind of failed, until one Chinese guy helped them set up the representative office in China, took care of the Chinese officials who oversee the wine market, and used the local advertisement and promotional skills to open the market. There are some tricks in this, and the single Chinese representative well played the game and increased the wine sales much more.

Multinational corporations embrace diversity. Sadly, it is not easy for international students to get in. Companies, like Nestle and PepsiCo in US, state very clearly in the job postings that they will not hire students who need Visa sponsorship. It is totally understand from the profit perspective, and the diversity they are looking for is the diversity within people who are US citizen or with permanent residency.

It is fun working with people from different background and culture, and I really enjoy it. This is one of the main reasons that I came to US for graduate school; the diversity within myself is strengthened, and hopefully will make me smarter.

This may not be a full list of what I value as a teacher, but I want to use this as a starter, and I will add more when new ideas come to my mind.

Pay attention to top students and students who are falling behind. 

I am not saying the students in the middle should be neglected, but more attention should be paid to students on the extremes than they normally received. Accessibility should be provided to every students.

I was a straight-A student from the first day schooling, and benefiting from that, I was appraised by teachers and got positive emotions towards learning. But I did not feel that I got what I want from the teachers. My Inorganic Chemistry professor told me if I want to learn the advanced knowledge that most students cannot understand, I need to learn by myself. She was not going to cover that in class. I wish she can briefly introduce the knowledge beyond the syllabus, and offer the willingness to discuss it in her office hours rather than telling me that it will not be tested therefore you do not need to learn it. We have to admit that some students, overall they may fit in the class, but on some aspects, they are way better than others. Teachers are there to inspire their talent, rather than let the gifts diminish.

The other experience is from an African student of mine last semester and she fell behind in writing lab report. English is her second language, but she is working hard. As teacher, we can tell her to seek assistant from the writing center, or we can be more patient on advising and help her build self-confidence. She was excellent and very lucky to receive the scholarship and study in the US. We as educators should provide the biggest possibility for her to succeed. Her success will not only be her personal accomplishment, but will also benefit her family, her children, and her country.

I would like to recommend an ancient official textbook that I am reading now, called Great Learning. This book is a precious legacy from our ancestors, and concisely talks about the wise principles in education. The classical Chinese are so beautiful that its soul will be damaged from any translation.

Most young Chinese at my age seen the movie No One Less in some kind of encouragement activity arranged by schools when we were in primary school. The movie talks about a story about a young teacher looking for her poor dropped student and getting him back to school around 1990s in Chinese countryside. We were asked to watch this movie together in the auditorium because the teachers wanted us to be aware that some kids were too poor to go to school and we should cherish our opportunities to receive education.

No one can deny that economic ability is one step stone to the access of education. We talked about open access, connected learning, but how about the kids that are too poor to get accessibility or too poor to be connected? From 2008, the Chinese government pay for all the tuition and books for all school-age kid from the first grade to the 9th grade. The free education for primary and secondary school attract back millions of poor students back to school.  College students can take loans without interest, and brilliant young scholars can get the scholarships to study abroad. Financial assist does improve education accessibility.

But, let us look at the high college drop rate in developed US. In the blog titled “Setting Students’ Minds on Fire” By Mark C. Carnes, President Obama stated in 2010, “more than a third of America’s college students fail to earn degrees“. Do the students drop because they cannot afford the tuition? Yes, the expense to go to college in the US is unexpected high but this is not the only or primary reason, since students are eligible to work part-times, take loans, win scholarships and all sources of financial aid. Why they still drop before they get degrees?

Think about the football tickets when Virginia Tech played with Ohio State at the Lane Stadium. From my view on Facebook, they are no less than $200 for a non-student ticket. Big football fans will still get it by borrowing money from family or friends or raising money from strangers, even if as nearly-bankrupted college students they do not have $200 in their pocket or bank account. Why did not my advisor who earns $100,000 per year buy only one ticket? Because she did not like football games at all! She would rather spend $20,000 on her vocation to Florida and swim with Manatees instead of $200 on a football ticket. It is a matter of whether you consider it worth or not when you can afford but you do not buy it.

The students with full access to all sorts of financial aid but still quit college share the same reason. They do not think it is worthy to receive college education. It is understandable. We all know there are plenty of problems in higher education, it is hard and pressure-burn to carry a huge student loan, or maybe simply they cannot see a direct input and output from college, and they still do not figure out their life puzzle. Educators are trying to improve the quality of higher education; government are putting more education budget to help out students financially; public media are promoting the short and long term salary increase with a college degree. What else we can do to help those kids who are in chaos?

No push, no rush. Maybe we can let them enjoy their gap year or gap years as volunteers, experience how it feels with full time work even as waiters or labor workers, or play video games even doing nothing. When they realized they lack the skills to make a better and meaningful life, they will come back to school and learn and strengthen themselves. The society or community should provide the opportunity for them to come back. When they come back, they will be more motived since they know what are they interested in and what they should learn. Not only the schools admitting older students, government providing financial aid to them and their family, but they need emotional or spiritual encouragement and more. For example, Virginia Tech Graduate School arranges over 30 casual picnic, and provide free weekly drop-in child care for VT students with children who need a break or have to study or attend a lecture or want to catch up on work.

I wish everyone who drops or quits but wants to go back to college can have the access to receive higher education. I consider this as an important part of accessibility to education.

We watched the TED video How to escape education’s death valley by Ken Robinson this Wednesday. When he came to the point of no students should be left behind and human beings are inherent of creative, it reminds me of my exchange experience in University of Helsinki, Finland during my junior year.

The professor in Food Micro lab surprised me at the first class. He asked which language we would prefer when he was teaching, and our options are English, Finnish (the native language in Finland), and Swedish. As all the students were finish people except me as a Chinese student, we agreed to use English in class, but Finnish students can choose all three languages to write the lab report. All students were required to use English in slides and presentations. If the professor lacks the ability to use English, my accessibility to this class would be very limited. His professional English gave me the chance to enrol in this class and explore the world of Food Microbiology. More surprisingly, he always said some simple Chinese greeting sentences before or after class, which made me less homesick and feel more about being supported. It is not easy to study abroad, especially with less native people around (there are about 5000 Chinese in total in Finland). But every time the Finnish people speak Chinese, I felt warm and their friendliness, and respect to my culture.

Many of you may heard of the story of Tower of Babel.  Language should not be a barrie between students and learning. Both students and instructors should put efforts to minimize it. From my personal perspective, uploading the slides or notes is very helpful instead of only talking and writing on the blackboard. It can be very difficult to read hand writing.

Another professor left me a deep impression was the professor in Academic Writing. Most of the students in that class were greaduate student, and the assignments was to write a research proposal and peer reviewing in class. As a junior, I did not know much about research proposal and I did not see why I need to write a research proposal. But I knew that I need to develop my skills to written English, and know more about the language used in academic. So I talked with my professor, and he suggested I can write a personal statement and curriculum vitae for my graduate school application as I would apply soon. I was very happy with that, because the getting into graduate school was more important to me at that point. I will probably never need to write a proposal if I failed to get into graduate school and got a job after college. The composing of personal statement and curriculum vitae also drilled my skills to write professionally. The customized assignment and flexibility benefited me more than the standardized tasks.

I really valued my education experience in Finland, and it was my first time abroad but not bad, even not close to at any point. The value and need of individual student was recognized and respected.

I am very pleased to become a member of the GEDI learning community at my second year in graduate school. All the information we shared and the discussions in the classroom open my eyes to the current trend of higher education. The closely connected environment and accessibility of resources shock me as a young researcher.

I work in the Enology and Fermentation lab in Department of Food Science and Technology, analyzing the chemical component of  grape and apple juice, and of course wine and hard cider that everyone likes. My special interest falls into the health-beneficial compound group, the polyphenols. From my research world, the connection and accessibility are well demonstrated in a comprehensive database on polyphenol content in foods, called Phenol-Explorer. With this database, I am able to compare my results to other results of researchers around the world. All together, we are building the database with structures of the discoverd polyphenol structure and content in a variety of food by each individual effort. Until June this year, 500 different polyphenols are presented in the database as well as their over 35,000 content values  in more than 400 foods. All these information comes from more than 1,300 scientific publications. One single small brick does count in this magnificent structure!

I am taking GEOG 1024 World Regions by Professor John Boyer, the most popular class at Virginia Tech. What surprises me not only is his enthusiasm of teaching, but also his teaching philosophy of Accessibility and Relevance, and more surprisingly, the muilt-media platforms in this online course. We interact in Twitter, in the course management platform Moodle, and share information with iTunes, Youtube, and he holds office hours on Ustream. I even found his video courses translated into Chinese on Wangyi Open Course, a Chinese open course sharing platform. Just with a computer that connected into the Internet, a Chinese student who never come out of his or her village, and who cannot speak English, can explore the whole world with Professor Boyer on the other half of the planet!

I also would like to bring up a hot ongoing debate in China with the comparison of Chinese education style and British style. Five Chinese teachers from the best Chinese secondary schools were participated in an exchange program conducted by BBC, and they went to Bohunt School in Hampshire,  England and taught 15 students in 9th grade in Chinese teaching styles. Here is the documentary series, Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School. Because the whole world is connected, there is more need to open our mind, see different pedagogies around the world, and learn from each other.

I am looking forward to the new adventure with fellow GEDI knights this semester, and we, a strong team with a wide range of different backgrounds, will become more connected as the class discussions becoming deeper and deeper.