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Notes from Fall 2021 Meetings

November 2, 2021

Meeting #1     10/19/21

This semester, we are using Christopher Emdin’s “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too” to examine our pedagogy in relation to teaching to the whole student. In this text, Emdin draws on his own past experience as an urban student along with his current roles as a scholar, researcher, and urban teacher educator to offer lively, absorbing discussion of the ways in which those teaching urban youth can, “ … excavate the institutional, societal, and personal histories they bring with them …” (2016, p.15), in order to develop pedagogies and practices that can facilitate student success and joy in learning.

For our first meeting, we discussed the chapter, “Camaraderie: Reality and the Neoindigenous” Some quotes from the chapter that we centered our discussion around included:

Pg. 19: “The reality is that we privilege people who look and act like us, and perceive those who don’t as different and, frequently, inferior.”

Pg. 21: “To be in touch with the community, one has to enter into the physical places where the students live, and work to be invited into the emotion-laden spaces the youth inhabit.”

Pg. 23: “Addressing the issues that plague urban education requires a true vision that begins with seeing students in the same way they see themselves.”

Pg. 27 “Reality pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that has a primary goal of meeting each student on his or her own cultural turf. It focuses on making the local experiences of the students visible and creating contexts … that positions the student as the expert in his or her own teaching and learning …”

Pg. 30 “… it begins with the acceptance of the often overlooked fact that there are cultural differences between students and teachers that make it difficult for teachers to be reflective and effective …”

We shared the view that this approach is challenging in our setting but is well worth striving to implement to the greatest extent possible. We also wished that there could be faculty-wide reflection and commitment to Reality Pedagogy, rather than just small pockets of faculty trying to do this work. It would clearly be easier to be effective if there were a cohesive, campus-wide approach.

We agreed that integrating students’ perspectives and experiences into our coursework is an achievable goal, to some extent. One area of challenge that came up was related to our expectations about students’ use of  Standard Academic English in their writing, and how important is it to evaluate students on such usage. One faculty member who mostly teaches ESL students, shared that, initially in her classes she strives to create a “discourse community” in which informal exchanges of writing and conversation are emphasized. Later, as trust and supportive peer-to-peer and student-to-professor relationships emerge, more time is spent on adherence to the conventions of Standard Academic English.

Another participant, herself an immigrant, shared her own experiences as an undergraduate working multiple jobs while attending school. She sees these experiences as having helped her to have insight into the students’ experiences and life contexts. Such insights guide her choices not only about what to teach but also about how to integrate social interaction and collaboration into her classes and how to create class policies that reflect an understanding of and responsiveness to the challenges most of our students face in their daily lives.

We also discussed the need to create a classroom environment where people of very varied cultural backgrounds and life experiences can feel safe, respected, and heard. Part of this is recognizing the emotion-laden nature of teaching and learning and honoring and welcoming the emotions that may arise in the classroom. This also means partnering with the students to choose course content and themes that are relevant to their lives and making their experiences and perspectives a central part of our coursework.

Having explored, through this chapter, some of Emdin’s foundational definitions and goals we agreed that next time, we’ll focus on a chapter that gives some concrete recommendations for pedagogy and practice.

Meeting #2     12/7/21

For this meeting we focused on the chapter “Coteaching”

Coteaching is one of the seven “tools” of reality pedagogy that Emdin has developed. We began by watching a brief video that offers a helpful overview of five of the seven tools: Cypher (or Cogenerative Dialogue), Coteaching, Cosmopolitanism, Context, and Content.

We then discussed our responses to what Emdin proposes about Coteaching, and what implementation might look like in our classrooms.

One challenge that was raised was the relinquishment of a certain degree of control that this approach asks of the teacher. The, comfortable for some, “mantle of the expert” must be shed much of the time in this approach because students’ own experiences and life contexts are centered. We felt that, if the teacher is able to shift their positionality in relation to the students in the ways Emdin calls for, there would likely be substantial benefits for student engagement and learning. One participant pointed out that many students are reluctant to participate in class because they’ve internalized a notion of themselves as not having much of value to share and of not being qualified to exercise agency over what is taught and learned.

One education professor who teaches a course on music and movement methods for the early childhood classroom, described some ways in which she designs her class so that the stories, songs, and dances of students’ home cultures are integrated into coursework and assignments. Students become the teachers to their classmates and to the instructor, thereby broadening everybody’s cultural knowledge and investment in the class.  Of course, this approach also makes her classes much more fun and engaging!

We concluded by agreeing that, while co-teaching is unlikely to replace more teacher-centered pedagogies in most of our classes, it certainly could be used some of the time to enhance and expand what is taught and learned. Technology tools such as blogs, on-line social annotation software, and programs like Jambase and Flipgrid, that make learning more participatory, can also shift teachers’ and students’ identities, and move toward a conception of shared responsibility for and interest and investment in course content.

Notes from 3rd meeting – 5/29/20

June 21, 2020

Meeting #3     5/29/2020

For our third meeting we discussed the brief chapter “Conversation.” Guiding questions to consider ahead of time were:

  • What is your response to hooks’ view of the role of conversation in the classroom?
  • Are there ways to create spaces for meaningful conversation when enacting distance learning?
  • Are there approaches you’ve implemented this semester that allow the benefits of conversation to be a part of your classes?

We had a lively discussion about whether and in what ways the conversations that take place during face to face to instruction can or should be replicated on line. Some participants worked, this semester, to use the technological tools available to them as best they could to try to replicate the exchanges of experiences, ideas, and observations that take place during in person conversations in the classroom. Others put their energies into scaffolding student collaborations that are more specific to a remote learning environment, such as use of google docs and Discussion Board. One participant commented that, “You can’t grow a plant on-line.” Others noted that, even facilitating discussions via video meetings was just not the same as the “carnival of the classroom” which, at its best, can be so generative of intellectual inspiration for students.

Along with this more general discussion of pedagogical philosophy, some specific ideas for effective on-line practices were shared, including:

  • Assign roles to small groups
  • Place students in ongoing groups based on their availability
  • Have groups create and share a final product – e.g. a googledoc, PowerPoint, etc.
  • Have different students be responsible for leading discussions each week
  • Take pieces of a conversation and make a record of them in a googledoc
  • Have students work on a writing assignment after they’ve had a conversation about it
  • Use Zoom breakout rooms as well as techniques such as, “Think, Pair, Share” and “Turn and Talk.” Such strategies are especially helpful to students who may be reluctant to speak in a large group.

Notes from 2nd meeting – 5/15/20

June 21, 2020

For our second meeting we discussed the brief chapter “Engaged Pedagogy.” Guiding questions to consider ahead of time were:

  • hooks states that, “Engaged pedagogy begins with the assumption that we learn best when there is an interactive relationship between student and teacher.” and that, “…the classroom functions … like a cooperative where everyone contributes to make sure all resources are being used, to ensure the optimal learning well-being of everyone.”
    • What is your response to hooks’ view of an optimal learning environment?
    • What are the implications of our current “distance learning” mode for enacting engaged pedagogy?

Over the course of this meeting, several participants shared methods and strategies they’d been using to foster classroom community, to create opportunities for students to work collaboratively, and to integrate students’ unique identities and personal expression into course activities and assignments. Some of the ideas shared were:

  • In a bio class – students are Citizen Scientists. Small groups collect and analyze data; they work from shared Excel documents.
  • In a children’s literature class – the professor texts students a video of herself reading a book aloud each week, then students create videos of themselves reading aloud and share them with the class
  • In an early childhood music education class – students are invited to bring their own young family members to join in a weekly Zoom sing along.
  • Other strategies included: assigning and exchanging lots of personal writing, participating in surveys about personal interests and experiences, using Zoom breakout rooms, using googledocs and Bb Discussion Board, creating class Facebook pages, and students and instructors posting videos on Bb in order to introduce themselves

We also discussed how our institutional context impacts our work. Some participants felt that there should be more support for faculty to create their own platforms, rather than having to deal with the limitations of Blackboard. Some voiced the perspective that faculty are not adequately perceived by administration as having useful knowledge about how our college can and should approach distance learning. The issue was also raised of a lack of structures that invite communication and collaboration between faculty and advisors, even though advisors know their students well.

Following this meeting, a number of resources related to the discussion were shared:

  • A guide to incorporating social/emotional learning into the college classroom, from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology
  • A New York Times article from an anthropology professor at Queens College:  “What We Lose When We Go from Classroom to Zoom”
  • An article in Liberal Education, from group member Professor Jason Leggett, about how collaboration can drive virtual spaces
  • An open courseware website from MIT that makes the materials used in the teaching of MIT’s subjects available on the Web

Notes from first meeting – June 1st, 2020

June 21, 2020

Meeting #1     5/1/2020

For our first meeting we discussed the brief chapter “Critical Thinking.” Guiding questions to consider ahead of time were:

  • How do you respond to hooks’ definition of critical thinking?
  • How do you respond to hooks’ characterization of the rewards and challenges for faculty of teaching critical thinking?
  • How do you respond to hooks’ characterization of the rewards and challenges for students of becoming critical thinkers?
  • What are the possibilities and limitations of our present “distance learning” model for offering instruction that fosters critical thinking?

This first discussion centered around some of the observations and concerns of faculty requiring students to write research papers as one of the main projects for their courses. Some faculty were struggling with how to reproduce the scaffolds they offer during face-to-face class time in the distance-learning environment. This is important because few students enter our courses with a solid understanding of the purpose and organization of a research paper. Descriptions were shared during the meeting of students struggling with how to write up data that had been collected and faculty concerns that students didn’t really have a personal investment in the projects, and were put off by the lack of a place for personal voice in this kind of writing.

One notion we considered was if, sometimes, there are other writing formats, besides a formal research paper that would make more sense to assign because they allow students to process and communicate what they’ve learned in a more engaging, authentic way. Suggestions for formats for writing that might better incorporate students’ personal voices and that they may become more personally invested in, included: web pages, blogs, zines, letters, and articles. These formats have clearer real world purposes and allow for authentic exchanges with real readers.