Addressing equity and inclusion

We all are part of a University known for its people diversity. As TAs, I feel that we are advocates for student equity and inclusion in our classroom. I never had any bad experience in this subject inside my classroom but if this happens I would try to teach/inform rather than get mad at the students. We come from different backgrounds and I am aware that each student has their own opinion in this matter.

In another note, gender in science career is probably a common matter in labs. It happened to me once, when my lab partner made me understood that he was more capable of doing a technique because he was a male and he refused to go to the more experienced postdoc because she was a female. He did not say it in those words but his actions made me think that was the reason. This scenario made me feel angry at the time because it is just sad that people has this idea on their minds. At that time, I told him that his thinking was so wrong and unfair.

Fostering independence

In order to teach my students on how to be independent, I began to think on how I became independent when I was in the same position as them. I was an undergraduate student and an apprentice once, who struggled being independent because of external factors, such as English not being my native language. It was a challenge that I had to overcome through time, but I did it thanks to my persistence and my supportive mentors.

I would like to describe one scenario on how I have helped foster independence in my students.

The first scenario is toward my students. With the help of my coordinator, we build an inquiry based lab with a climate change theme because its relevance as a world problem. We did this to increase student engagement but also to teach students to be independent. Students worked in groups and had to perform a semester project built to reinforce different skills in them.

We started class with general background for all of them to be in the same page because we were aware that everybody is not inform about this topic, plus we wanted them to feel comfortable talking about this real-world problem. After giving them the big picture, each of them had to do a little of research and pick a climate change topic that they were interested in. They had to brainstorm individually and come up with an ideal project (a form was given for them to fill out the objective, hypothesis, variables, etc). Feedback was given to them and from there, students were paired up based on their topic of interest and as a group they had to pick which project out of the three to pursue. After this, each group had to propose their project in front of their peers sharing all the details (even the cost) of their study. Later, they performed their projects (received a lot of feedback throughout the semester) and prepared a final presentation to share their findings.

I was very satisfied with the end results. My students learned how to be leaders, listeners, researchers, critical thinkers, creative, responsible, good at time management, proactive, confident, cooperative, etc. I also learned a lot from this because it was my first time teaching this method and I found myself being more excited, supportive, proactive, adaptable, practical, rational, resourceful and the list goes on.

I really hope I get to teach and apply the same method in the future.