The coming of the Spring semester has brought with it not only an array of opportunities for new studies and research but also an experience of an entirely different kind – teaching. I now teach a section for Sociology 380, research methods, and facilitate an intergroup dialogue session on race and ethnicity. I’m quickly finding that I’m really not as new to this instruction thing than I thought I would be – my students are essentially my peers and really teaching seems to be akin to organization leadership, my old friend. And herein lies a bit of a philosophy I’m discovering. Once you cover the basics of skills and motivation teaching seems to be more about communication, collaboration and most importantly, inspiration. Having taken the classes I’m teaching I find myself in the mind of the students – but with an additional perspective – that of graduate school. Realizing just how important concepts like dialogue and comprehensive knowledge of research methods are has been an integral part of my experience with the graduate school transformation.
So my optimistic tangential mind naturally aspires to introduce positive change into the mesh of academia. As a strong believer in technology as a learning tool I’ve already introduced web sites into both of my courses. Students seem to love the agenda and resource linking on the 380 site, and we’ve still yet had only one session for intergroup. Improvement in the realm of technology is just an easy first step. Working with the fabric of the courses is what I’m increasingly interested in. After attending the annual Latino-Latino Studies Program conference a few weekends ago I started sifting through ideas on how to integrate another crucial component of academia that all too often gets overlooked – activism. My methods course specifically presents a spectacular opportunity for students to volunteer around town for their ethnography project. I’d like to collect a list of some of the better places students might volunteer and observe at the same time in the CU area. At the same time if I can manage to figure it out I’d love to let students talk about their community organizations and involvement in a brainstorm session somewhere during the course – I’m sure they have ideas I don’t. And if nothing else I’d love for them to apply their critical sociology skills in new ways during their ethnographies – be it in a social group oriented categorical fashion (race, gender, ability, etc…) or from a standpoint of evaluating with theory models (Marxist, Weberian, structural functionalism, etc…). I’m not just concerned with the students learning the mechanics of the methods, but also the thinking that goes behind them. We’ll see where this goes, I’m relatively new to the teaching thing and have to first prove my worth. In the words of the great Mario, “Here we go!”