Teaching Made Visible

Hallway conversations about teaching and learning

Tag: self-reflection

The value of being a student when you are an educator

March 2, 2023 /

I’ve been teaching at the college level for many years. My goal is for my students to learn more than they thought they could in my courses, and to be empowered by that experience. I push them to work hard and to show me what they’re learning. I have had many, many students who have impressed me with their learning, and it is a joy to see their growth. But sometimes, honestly, my students’ work disappoints me. Maybe they didn’t follow the instructions or look at the rubric (that I worked so hard on) when they were doing an assignment. Maybe they copied someone else’s work. Maybe they put ideas together in a creative but surprisingly illogical way. Maybe they asked me to tell them what to do rather than trying something out by themselves before asking for my input. 

I think about these students a lot, because I want to support and encourage their growth. However, with increasing experience as an educator, I’ve found it increasingly easy to settle into my position as a subject area (astrophysics) expert. Over time, I remember less about what it was like to struggle to learn a topic or skill in my field, or to challenge misconceptions I held with new, evidence-based ideas. I work hard to improve as an educator. I am hard on myself and I don’t always get it right. But I still have a level of confidence in my subject-area knowledge that is different from that of my students.

So I thought I’d share how valuable it has been to me to become a student again. (Here I want to acknowledge several of my colleagues who post here on TMV are also students as well as educators, and they will have important and individual insight on this, too.) A few years ago, I began taking weekly classes in drawing and painting. While I have always been interested in art, I had little formal training in this area and did not consider myself “good” at art. The experience of studying and practicing drawing and painting has been extremely rewarding, often humbling, and overall very instructive (beyond painting), and it has fed into my practice as an educator.

A progression of expertise, a progression of expectations

A picture of Anne in her art class, standing next to her large drawing of a hammer.
Me, in art class circa 2018, happily accepting
critique of my drawing of a hammer.

When I began taking art classes, I didn’t expect much of myself. I experienced the simple joy of finding out that I could paint something recognizable. I wasn’t too hard on myself if my composition wasn’t perfect, or if I chose the wrong background color. I was receptive to my instructor’s corrections. I was a beginner, after all. Over time, however, I began to expect more of myself. Recently, I decided to try a new medium and was frustrated by how hard it suddenly felt to mix colors or hold a paintbrush. I wanted instruction but also wanted to be able to successfully paint on my own. I’ve realized that it now takes much more bravery to begin each painting. I worry that the new painting won’t turn out well, and I go so far as to imagine that if that’s the case, it might prove that I’m not really an artist. I now have a lot of attachment to the idea of being an artist, where I didn’t before. 

At these times, I can remind myself that I may be experiencing something akin to what my students feel when they are taking a test or beginning an assignment or project: if they don’t get positive feedback on this test/assignment/project, how will that reflect on them as a learner? How will their peers and instructors (like me) judge them? How will they judge themselves? How can I help them approach their learning with open-mindedness to the subject and to the outcomes of their work, especially as their expectations for themselves grow?

Bravery and the potential for failure

Sharing something you’ve worked very hard on can be an act of bravery. There is uncertainty about how it will be received; it is always possible to misunderstand the instructions or what is expected. It is possible to fail. Putting myself in the position of being a student has helped me experience for myself why a student might not try hard on an assignment or might act like a topic (or whole subject, like math) isn’t important. Among other things, this may be because they are avoiding the potential, terrible feeling of failure in the wake of hard work.

Experiencing this has made me think harder about how to make space for students to make mistakes and, occasionally, fail. How can I help them take risks? How can I help them use their mistakes, challenges, and failures to learn more? How can I make space for mistakes and failures in my own teaching, and learn more from them, so that I can get better at supporting my students?

Learning as a not-quite-linear process of growth

Although my continued art practice has improved my ability overall with respect to technique, composition, and working with color, every so often I start a painting that doesn’t come together the way I’d hoped, or I work on a painting so much that, honestly, it gets worse rather than better. These paintings are still a part of my learning process, and they have taught me a lot about learning itself: learning is not necessarily a linear process. I cannot assume that each painting will be better than the last, or that each time I use a painting technique I’ll show improvement. However, I have to practice, experience challenges, and overcome both failures and failure avoidance to become more skilled. 

Similarly, I have to be cognizant that my students may experience setbacks in their learning. They may get stuck on a concept and have a hard time getting “unstuck”. Like me, they may procrastinate because it’s easier to think about the nice grade they got on the last assignment than to start all over with a new assignment. Or, also like me, they may be discouraged by a past grade or outcome they’d hoped would be better, and need some time to approach the task again.

Caveats and conclusions

I want to emphasize that experiencing these things is much more instructive than conjecturing or writing about them. Directly experiencing the uncertainties involved in learning something new has given me deeper insight into what my students’ experiences might be. A major caveat here is that I cannot assume that my experiences directly mirror those of my students. 

What are some strategies and considerations for better supporting students?

  • It is important to let students know that we do not judge them as whole human beings based on the outcome of one test, one project, one assignment, or one course grade. 
  • Students may feel more like we see them as whole human beings if we give them ways to let us know a little more about themselves, including what is important to them, their responsibilities outside of classes, and what their relationship is with the subject matter of the class. One way to do this is to give students surveys, and read and respond to what they write.
  • It can be important to give students constructive, critical feedback at times, to let them know how they can improve. This can be a sign of our respect for what they can achieve, and we can let them know this comes from a place of respect.

What are some strategies and considerations for becoming better educators?

  • Acknowledge and work with our positions as students and practitioners of education itself. It’s worth noticing the parallels between the fact that we are constantly learning about teaching while our students are learning about the subject we are teaching. 
  • We can always consider ourselves students with respect to addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion in the classroom. As we aim to improve in these areas, we can keep in mind that our growth may not be linear, and may include high expectations, hard work, and failures, as well as successes. 
  • We can remind ourselves that the point of this work is to support the incredible, whole human beings that we teach. It’s a side benefit that we get to grow alongside them.

Thank you to the many colleagues and students that I have learned from at the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (UC Santa Cruz), Sonoma State University, and Santa Rosa Junior College. My sincere thanks to my art teacher, Mary Fassbinder, and my fellow art students.

Reflecting on what it means to engage with equity, diversity, and inclusion

February 23, 2023 /

Before you read any further, I need to note that this post isn’t meant for everyone, and I think that’s okay, though it does raise some inherent, unavoidable contradictions.

Some context: Last year, I was part of an NSF grant proposal related to a project that’s been around for over 20 years and is coming to the end of its current pot of funding. As a team, we all agreed that our project was behind the times when it comes to explicitly addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI – as an aside, I know that’s not the typical order of the letters, but I like the reasoning of putting “equity” first as the goal of inclusion and diversity [1]). We wanted to use this new proposal as an opportunity to make EDI an explicit part of our project, so we worked with a consultant to help us critically reflect on our processes and project designs. This work was relatively new to my two White colleagues. For myself, I had some amount of experience with critical self-reflection from my prior work addressing EDI in academic departments, research involving culturally responsive and relevant curriculum, and coursework. 

After the proposal was submitted, my colleagues remarked how they weren’t prepared for what it meant to do intensive EDI work, and we considered how we might share our experiences with our other colleagues.

And that brings me to this post: as part of reflecting on the process and how I might discuss the process of doing EDI work with others, I needed space to process my own thoughts and write them down. But that also brings up the aforementioned inherent, unavoidable contradictions. I identify as a multiracial cis-gender woman, as part of the LGBT+ community, and as both a scientist and a crafter/maker. Yet my “multiracial”-ness stems from the fact I am half HongKongese and half Irish/Welsh/American, with a very much White-passing complexion. In many ways I am highly privileged. Yet the goal of EDI work is to center the most marginalized voices, and so writing an article about my experience runs counter to that goal. But at the same time, as my colleagues pointed out, they felt they would have been able to engage better with the EDI work if they had a better idea of what to expect.

Separately (relatedly?), I find it hard to write or present about anything related to EDI in a way that can work for all audiences. Instead, I’d rather be clear on who I hope something is useful to (though I welcome feedback from everyone!). In this case, my imagined audience is someone with dominant/privileged identities who has some awareness of EDI and is about to begin engaging with some intensive EDI work.  

And with that preamble, here’s some reflections on my experience. Not everyone will experience or react to these things in the same way as me, and there is no “this is the way” or “one size fits all” for this kind of work.

Expect to be uncomfortable

As someone from a STEM background, I’m mostly used to the idea that learning can be uncomfortable [e.g., 2, 3]: essentially, when you learn something new, you’ll initially struggle and be bad at it, whether the topic is quantum mechanics, calculus, or computer programming. It takes a lot of practice to get good at something, and that process involves a lot of failing and stumbling.

However, the “discomfort” from EDI work is a very different feeling. We live in a society that has structures and systems that were developed in a way that was biased towards certain groups, and even though the legal basis for doing so has been (largely) eliminated, those structures and systems persist to this day. A recent National Academies report [4] explored this in detail and called for STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) organizations to actively address these systems.

Learning about these realities leads to some very harsh realizations. Those of us who have identities that are not marginalized have likely benefited from these systems, and also have probably contributed to these systems. For example, I used to advocate for STEM outreach programs that target women and people of color with the goal of “increasing interest” in STEM (which is also a deficit framing), without paying any attention to the realities of STEM that push out and exclude those students. Another example is that I’ve generally been in departments where I had access to mentors who looked like me (cis-female, White-passing), and I haven’t had to go through the thought process of how to communicate or relate to a mentor who didn’t look like me.

Those realizations are uncomfortable. How many students have I hurt by assuming they weren’t actually interested in STEM? How many students did I impact and convince to pursue STEM, only for them to then hit barriers that harmed them and pushed them out? How many students could have excelled in STEM but didn’t have the mentors to support them? How have the standards and expectations we set in STEM denied creativity and de-valued students’ skills and expertise?

Doing EDI work means making peace with the fact that there will be A LOT of uncomfortable realizations, and that is a part of the learning process. I’ve sometimes seen this sentiment framed as “be comfortable with being uncomfortable”, and that’s honestly how I first heard this bit of advice, but I personally prefer the framing of “expect to be uncomfortable”. The idea of “becoming comfortable” doesn’t sit right with me – while it is something that’s an expected and regular part of the work, I don’t like the connotation that it becomes something you’re “okay” with happening. Instead, every instance of discomfort needs to be an alarm bell or a red flag because it means there’s something there that needs to be questioned.

Separating “guilt” and “blame” from “responsibility”

This one might be the most “your mileage may vary” item in this article, but for me, this helped initially as a way to process the discomfort of EDI work. I found that the worst discomfort was over the idea I may have unintentionally caused students harm. I got involved in education research specifically because I wanted to make sure students had better experiences in STEM. How could I have done something so opposed to what I believe in?

For me, one article that helped re-frame my thinking was “White Complicity and Social Justice Education: Can One Be Culpable without Being Liable?” by Barbara Applebaum (2007) [5]. The article’s legalese-like interpretation of culpability and liability appealed to me because of my background in things like high school debate (which itself is probably something to think about, with norms of competitiveness, but that’s a separate article), and it helped me re-frame the blame and shame that I was feeling. Applebaum argued for a distinction between culpability and liability. Because we live in a racialized and biased society, dominant (White) individuals will take actions that reinforce systemic bias without knowing their actions have that impact. However, once they (reasonably) should know something has an impact, only then are they responsible and liable for doing better. 
So, sometimes when I’m feeling particularly uncomfortable because I realize I have helped to reinforce marginalization – like when I read about how many active learning strategies implicitly support assimilation to Western norms of debate and communication, and many of the curricula I’ve worked on emphasize active learning [6] – I ask myself whether my lived experiences would have shielded me from knowing what I was doing was wrong. Usually, the answer is “yes”, but now that I know, I have a responsibility to do better, e.g., talking with colleagues and rethinking my own approaches.

Expect to question everything

Given what I’ve learned about the ways I’ve been unintentionally complicit, I also consider it a responsibility to do what I can to identify potential blindspots gaps of knowledge (note: I left the strikethrough in because I only realized the ableist language when revising this article [7]). This responsibility can take many forms, such as reading articles or watching webinars to learn from experts, but another form is questioning everything, especially with the help of a consultant or a critical friend [e.g., 8].

For example, when designing curricular activities, I ask questions about whose knowledge is present, and what kinds of skills or knowledge is “valued” for grades.  Or when designing a process for reviewing applications, I ask questions about who is able to submit applications (since the process itself can serve as a gatekeeper) and what characteristics are “valued” in the selection process. Some of these questions can get at the very foundations of a project: Who decided the particular issue being addressed is something of value? Who was included in determining this was the “best” approach to take towards addressing that issue? And honestly, sometimes, these are questions I can answer but can’t (directly) affect, but even in those cases, I think it’s important to ask the question and acknowledge the issue.

EDI work is never done

I sometimes joke that I’m attracted to the kind of work where if we were completely successful, that kind of work would no longer exist. If we could fully address EDI concerns, then someday, theoretically, we wouldn’t need to focus on EDI. But unfortunately, that’s sadly not how the world works. I don’t think it’s hopeless – I genuinely think I can make a difference – but we’ll still be doing this kind of work for a long, long time.

So, this means the process of learning (and unlearning) never ends, and we can always do more to identify ways to address systemic biases. And since there’s aspects of the system I have no agency over, I can always work on finding better ways to mitigate those systems and/or finding ways to increase my ability to affect those systems.

And all of these things can be iterated on, especially as the landscape of EDI work in general continues to evolve and change. One of the things I’ve been pushing for on my projects is to do a better job of being transparent about our successes and our failures, especially on issues related to EDI. While everyone’s path is different, sharing that information can provide inspiration and/or identify obstacles to help those who want to pursue their own EDI journeys.

Part of me wonders, and another part worries, what I will think if I revisit this article in a year or three. Will I still think this is a good article for the intended audience, or will I cringe at what I wrote and consider this article to be a “failure” on my EDI journey? 

But that’s not an excuse to put off the work – I have a responsibility to do the best I can, and to keep learning so I can do better.

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