Students enter classes with preconceptions about what a professor looks like. In this episode, Jesica Fernandez joins us to discuss a learning activity that can be used at the start of the semester to help confront and deconstruct these assumptions. Jesica is an Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University. She is also the author of a chapter in Picture a Professor, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus.
Show Notes
- Neuhaus, Jessamyn (2022). Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. West Virginia University Press.
- Fernández, J. S. (2021). Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship. NYU Press.
- Youth for Justice Project
Transcript
John: Students enter classes with preconceptions about what a professor looks like. In this episode, we discuss a learning activity that can be used at the start of the semester to help confront and deconstruct these biases.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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Rebecca: Our guest today is Jesica Fernandez. Jesica is an Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University. She is also the author of a chapter in the Picture a Professor Project edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus. Welcome, Jesica.
Jesica: Thank you very much for the invitation and for sharing and holding space with us. I look forward to our conversation.
John: Our teas today are: … Jesica, are you drinking any tea?
Jesica: Yes, I always drink tea. [LAUGHTER]
John: What type of tea?
Jesica: Right now, because it’s very hot where I am, in San Jose, California and it’s unusually hot, we are in the three digits, and still I’m having hot tea. And I’m having a hibiscus with pu’erh blend that I make to kind of keep me caffeinated. But also bring in a little bit of freshness with the hibiscus. And the pu’erh is always really grounding and earth-like tasting. And for some reason, hot tea cools me off, so it works for me both in winter and in the summer.
Rebecca: I’m drinking Prince of Wales. I mean, not the actual Prince of Wales, but…
Jesica: That sounds really funny [LAUGHTER].
Rebecca: That might be weird [LAUGHTER].
Jesica: Yeah [LAUGHTER].
John: There might be some laws against that. And I am drinking spring cherry green tea.
Rebecca: Well, that sounds nice, John.
John: It is.
Jesica: Nice and fresh, yeah.
John: Well, it was probably fresher in the spring. Now we’re moving into late summer, early fall.
Rebecca: So Jesica, we’ve invited you here today to discuss your chapter in Picture a Professor entitled “Critical Reflexivity As a Tool for Deconstructing Student Biases About What a Professor Embodies.” Could you tell us a little bit about this chapter?
Jesica: Yes, of course. So this chapter focuses on a teaching and pedagogy activity that I typically implement and facilitate on the first day of class. And I’ve been practicing and integrating this activity for more than 10 years since I started teaching. And what inspired me to integrate this activity on the first day of class was really inspired by an experience I had as an undergraduate student at the University of California in Santa Cruz where, for the first time… this is my fourth year as an undergraduate student, it’s my, I think, first or second quarter of the academic year, and for the first time, I have a professor with whom I identify. She’s a woman, she’s a woman of color, she’s Mexican American, she comes from an immigrant family. And I had never had a professor like her before. And she started asking students all these questions about what we thought of her in a very sort of open, transparent, non judgmental kind of way. And she generated this long list of what we said as students, our assumptions of her and who she was, trying to kind of figure her out. And then she started to share a little bit about who she was, what she did, and her journey. And I have to say that that was the first time that I felt seen and heard and affirmed in a college classroom, higher education experience. And it made me feel like I belonged, that me going off to college was not a mistake, that I was not an error on campus, but that I had a place there. And it stayed with me. And it’s always stayed with me. That first experience was one of the motivations for me going off to pursue a PhD, because then I started to realize that, “Oh, this is a career, I don’t have to just be a high school teacher, I can be a college teacher, I can do both. I can teach high school students and I can teach college students.” So it just opened up my mind in terms of what was possible for me. So when I went off to grad school, and I started being a teaching assistant, mostly of undergraduate courses, and a teaching aid, I started to incorporate elements of that activity, that exercise, into my teaching. And then when I went off to teach, after receiving my PhD, both as a adjunct faculty, lecturer, and contingent faculty, and then now as an assistant professor, I’ve modified that activity and I’ve integrated it, and I’ve called it, as I do in the chapter, “Picture a professor, or what does a Professor look like?” And it starts with that question of having students close their eyes, tune in to their breath, their body, and then I asked them to imagine what does a professor look like? Who, what comes to your mind? And I have them imagine and visualize that person. I asked them, What is the gender of this professor? What is the race, ethnicity? What are some cultural representations, what is their sexuality? All of these external characteristics of a quote unquote, professor. And then I have students open their eyes, and then as a class, I asked them to say out loud, if they’re comfortable, who or what came to their mind in terms of the characteristics that they visioned and visualized. And at the beginning, about, maybe more than 10 years ago, the majority, most all of the students, would say that it was a white male, old person with Oxford’s, and a leather briefcase, and a suit with a bow tie. They became really descriptive. But recently, I would say maybe in the past five years, those descriptions have really changed in ways that I find really radically helpful and encouraging. They’ve said that they imagined a woman, that they imagined a woman of color, or faculty of color. So now, it’s just much more diverse. And so that really excites me. So I wanted to write about that process, that experience, and how I’ve facilitated and integrated this activity into my teaching on the first day, if not, the first week of classes, to really get students to shed any assumptions and expectations about who a professor is, or who a professor can be. And then, situating myself in relationship to those assumptions as what I am and what I am not. I am a first-generation high school, college graduate, I am a woman of color, I identify as Mexican American, as Latina, cisgender person. So all of these things. And then, I say that who I am is very tied to my teaching approach and pedagogy. And so, that’s how we begin to kind of uncover the layers of who we are and what we bring into the classroom, and what are the schemas, or visual representations, that might not necessarily be resonating with where we are, and who we are, and who we want to be in community and in relationship with. Because ultimately, to me, that’s teaching right? Fostering a relationship of collaborative forms of learning in community. So that was a long answer to your question [LAUGHTER]. But I think it provides an overview of the chapter and really my motivation and intention for writing about this.
John: What level are your students? Are they mostly freshmen or upper-level students?
Jesica: I teach at a small liberal arts Jesuit institution here in the Silicon Valley, and the majority of them are undergraduate students, mostly first-year students. I integrate this activity in all of my classes, both the lower-division courses and the upper-division courses with both Ethnic Studies majors and minors, and non majors and minors. So I do get a range of students in terms of the diversity of demographics in the classroom. Many students who are in the STEM fields take courses in the Ethnic Studies Department to fulfill the one diversity requirement needed for graduation. And it is typically those students who will often describe the more conventional assumptions of a professor, given the demographics of the faculty in our School of Engineering, and in the STEM fields. But then students who are in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Social Sciences and Humanities, they describe much more diverse faculty when asked to describe who comes to their mind.
John: Because I was wondering what might have caused the shift in perceptions. And I was wondering if some of it might have been tied to increasing diversity in the faculty, or if it may perhaps relate to changing cultural stereotypes, which might be even more encouraging.
Jesica: I would say it’s a combination of both, and both, I think, are very good news for us in higher education. To see the diversity of faculty reflected and represented in our student demographics is really important. And also very much these cultural shifts in who a professor is or can be. I think there’s the Netflix show or a TV series, a very short one that’s called The Chair. And it’s about a faculty department chair who’s going through the sort of politics of academia that we’re all very familiar with, and she’s a woman of color, and so I think the media also plays a huge role in shaping these messages of who a professor is or can be, so it’s all, I think, hopeful knows.
Rebecca: One thing that I was thinking about as you were describing your motivations for the chapter and your experiences is that we often think about or talk about student belonging, and needing to facilitate that at the beginning of the semester. And this activity certainly can aid with that but it also seems like it establishes a sense of belonging for the faculty member as well.
Jesica: Yes, it does. For me, it does and it has worked in that way. Because it allows me to be very authentic about who I am and what I bring into the classroom, because inevitably many of the topics that we’re going to be learning about, while they are rooted in a socio-historical analysis and discourse, as well as empirical and theoretical evidence, it’s also very tied both to my own lived experiences, as well as the experiences of many, if not all, of my students in various ways. Especially when we’re talking about topics of immigration, or when we’re talking about experiences with misrecognition, either because of the intersections of race, gender, and ethnicity, or other social categories. There’s always a way for us to bring in what we’re learning into the experiential knowledge. And I try to cultivate that through this activity by creating a space where students can bring their whole selves into what we’re learning, and to see learning as something that is relational and reflexive.
John: What do students take away from this experience?
Jesica: After we do the activity, and I ask all these series of questions, then I ask at the end, “Now, has your perception of a professor changed? Has it made you rethink what you initially thought?” And most students will say, “Oh, yeah, now I remember I had a fill in the blank professor that was different from whom I originally envisioned,” and when they are able to reflect back to their initial visualization, or memory, or thought, and then begin to unpack that and deconstruct it, and compare and then contrast it to other examples and representations of professors that they’ve had, or professors that they know. Then what that does for me is it indicates that they are capable of reflecting and unlearning and then relearning in a different way, in a way that allows them to not judge or feel guilty or bad for what they thought before, but that there’s like an aha moment or “hmm, that’s interesting, like, oh, okay, I can change my way of thinking.” And that, to me, is gold [LAUGHTER]. Because when we’re gonna be talking about race and ethnicity, and all these structural forms of oppression and inequities and injustices, it’s important for us to remain really open and humble and expansive of what we don’t know, what we think we might know, but will inevitably often find ourselves unpacking and deconstructing, and then learning in a different way. And we do this together. So that’s typically what students take away. And then I can go back to this particular activity or example or moment of this, like, hmmm, aha, to then connect it with other topics we’ll be engaging in class that will be of course much more challenging and difficult for us to talk about, like immigration, like police brutality, and other topics.
Rebecca: Are there other ways that you build in similar kinds of activities throughout the semester that build on this particular activity? You mentioned referring back to this, because you’re doing some similar processes, but are there other activities that you do on a regular basis that help facilitate this kind of reflection throughout the semester?
Jesica: Yes, so I have similar variations of this activity that I integrate into my courses based on a particular topic. I also use similar prompts, questions, and visualizations and reflections in both my community-based research methods course, as well as my youth activism and social movements course. In the methods course, I ask students to describe, imagine, and visualize what research is, and we create a list of what do we associate with the word research? How does that make you feel? What does that involve? And many students come up with all kinds of things, research as experiments, as hypothesis testing, as manipulating variables, as looking through a one-way mirror glass, these very conventional understandings of research. Someone with a white coat [LAUGHTER], who looks like a doctor and has a beaker and is like, testing things. So then we begin to unpack, okay, well, community-based research is not that. It’s something that’s very anchored and rooted in community experiences, community narratives, community stories, ethnographic work, so on and so forth. And so that’s how we began to acknowledge what we are bringing into the classroom space based on our experiences and assumptions wherever they might be rooted. And then how does that compare and contrast with what we’re going to be learning together? And I ask similar questions in my other course, particularly around youth: “Who comes to your mind when you think of youth? Who do you imagine, who do you visualize?” So then at the end for that activity, when I say “Well, many people will consider you youth,” many of them are sort of taken aback, and some of them get upset. They say, “Oh, but we’re not youth, we’re adults.” And so then that’s where the work begins of: “Okay, well, now let’s unpack this social construction of youth hood and childhood and what is adulthood? And what does that mean? And how does that support or constrain you in your own agency?” and so on, and so forth. So for many of my courses, many of these topics that are rooted in social constructivism perceptions that we unconsciously may not have been aware of, but are inevitably shaped and informed by, to me serve as the focus of what we’re going to unpack and deconstruct through reflection, through dialogue, through the course material, and then in collaboration with each other’s experiences as a source of where these concepts might be surfacing, or can be applied.
Rebecca: It sounds like a great strategy in a lot of different contexts. As you were talking, Jesica, was imagining various places where I could use a similar strategy in my classes, even though I don’t teach the kind of subject matter that you teach. I teach in design, but there’s a lot of places where having a moment to reflect on our stereotypes of who we expect an audience to be, for example, would be a great time to maybe do one of these exercises.
Jesica: Thank you for that, I find that reflection is a very opening and welcoming way for students to connect with material and topics that might be difficult for them to articulate or voice out loud, because it’s in their experience, it’s in their mind, it’s in their memory, it’s in their dreams. And so if I can get them to connect first with their thoughts, then we can begin to move into the thinking, into the articulation, the dialogue, and then the action, which is really important as well.
John: What are some other ways in which you tie in to your students’ lived experiences and their identities?
Jesica: Several of my assignments integrate experiential knowledge and learning. For example, one assignment that I had developed previously, before the pandemic, and in the context of the pandemic, I modified it and assigned it again, and it became a very useful assignment, not only to support student critical thinking and learning, but also to facilitate, or help support, a sense of healing… a testimonial assignment where students are asked to conduct a testimonial structured interview with someone in their family, community, or in proximity, to someone they feel connected and comfortable with. And there’s a series of questions or prompts that I offer students, it’s usually maybe four or five, it’s about, you know, how does this person identify, what is their lived experience, what is something they’re radically hopeful about, or something they are currently being challenged by and so on. And then students can integrate their own questions too. But the purpose of this assignment is to have students reflect on how this methodology, that is very much rooted in community organizing strategies, is also part of the ways in which different groups and communities have authored their own histories in ways that generate forms of decolonial knowledge and help support movements for transformation, for justice, for equity and social change, and so on. So testimonial, both as a method, but also as a strategic tool for movement building, and then in the context of my class as a pedagogy. So students conduct these testimonial interviews, and they are encouraged to connect that material to readings in the course. And that’s one way in which they are able to bring, not only themselves in their lived experiences in connection to what we’re reading and learning, but also bring another person into that learning experience as well. To offer an example, one student conducted her testimonial interview with her mother and this is in the context of the pandemic, and for that week, we had been talking about the United Farmworkers movement, and so Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta. The student had a series of questions, and in the course of conducting this testimonial with her mother, and as her mother was reflecting on the challenges of COVID, and the economic precarity, the mother also shared that she was making masks and selling masks to help support her family financially. And that she was doing all kinds of forms of social entrepreneurship to support her family. And this student was able to connect her mother’s testimonial with the various ways in which, in the context of the United Farmworkers movement, several other communities were engaging in, not only forms of social activism, but also social entrepreneurship, to support themselves and their families. And this is something that is characteristic of various Latinx communities who may be of mixed immigrant status and may not have the resources to be able to seek employment in lawful ways, but are nevertheless able to contribute to their families, their communities, our economy, in ways that are often invisiblized and unrecognized. So that’s one example of an assignment and how I integrate students’ lived experiences, community lived experiences, into what we’re learning in connection with a social and historical understanding.
Rebecca: That sounds like a lot of really great assignments, when can I sign up? [LAUGHTER]
Jesica: [LAUGHTER] Thank you, some students really do dive deeply and with heart into these assignments. And then, of course, other students are really just looking to fulfill a requirement. But I would say that even those who are just taking this to fulfill the requirement, these courses to fulfill a requirement, it is always my intention and my goal to have them walk away with a more humanizing understanding of themselves and others, so that they can bring in those values and principles into whatever industry or workplace they’re gonna be in.
John: You mentioned community research, and the testimonials that you’ve had students do would be part of that. But do you do any other community research projects in your classes?
Jesica: Yes, students in my community-based research methods course have to develop a research project proposal that is of their own making and imagining, it’s an independent research project. And that course serves as the foundation for the capstone project, and for some students, even their honors thesis. So it’s a foundational course for what will continue to evolve and develop as they pursue their research. And most of the projects that students develop are anchored in a particular issue or topic that is of significance and of importance to them, and/or are impacting them or their communities in some form. One of the first assignments that I give the students to help them develop their research project and topic is a brainstorming activity where again, I’m asking them to reflect on a memory of a circumstance or a situation where they or someone in their community, someone they care about, was impacted in some form. And many students reflect on their own lived experiences and the challenges of being on our campus. Our campus is a primarily white institution. Many of the students in our ethnic studies department are students of color, or students that identify as students of color. And we also have a growing number of white students who see themselves as allies. And so many students reflect on their college experiences to build and construct their projects. Many students have engaged in project topics that focus on the role of white allies on our campus, and how to be a white ally when students of color are being impacted by some of the hegemonic discourses on our campus. And this was particularly salient in the context of the Trump administration, many students were really struggling to want to respond to the forms of racism that were surfacing on campus. And so as bad as that global and national context was, in my experience, served as a reckoning, and as a critical opportunity to engage in these forms of allyship and solidarity. And students saw this as an opportunity to pursue that through the development of their research projects. So that would be one example of the ways in which student experiences are integrated into the projects that they developed. I had another student, shortly after the murder of George Floyd, who experienced racial profiling with our Campus Safety Office, and then developed a project that focused on that. Conducting Interviews with the primarily black students on our campus who had been profiled in various ways. And then engaging in conversations with our campus safety department and as well as other administrators on our campus about how can we create a safe and inclusive campus community for all students and especially for our black students where our student demographic population on our campus is less than 3%.
Rebecca: That sounds like great projects, for sure. Speaking of great projects, you recently released a book entitled Growing up Latinx: Coming of age in a time of contested citizenship. Can you talk a little bit about this book and maybe its relationship to your work in the classroom?
Jesica: Yes, I still find it really hard to believe sometimes that I wrote a book
[LAUGHTER].
Rebecca: [LAUGHTER]
Jesica: But it’s very exciting. I mean, the book took 10 years and people are asking when is the next book? I’m recovering from this one. [LAUGHTER] You have no idea. [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: Well, it’s here, it’s out there.
Jesica: It is, it really is. So writing a book is no easy thing. So much admiration for those that do. This book, as I said, it’s been more than 10 years in the making. It focuses primarily on work that I engaged in with young people in the context of a youth participatory action research after-school program in an unincorporated, predominantly Latinx immigrant community in the Central Coast as part of my graduate studies, as part of my dissertation work. And this work was also very much a collaboration between my advisor, Dr. Gina Langham, and several of us who are graduate students of hers during that time period. And the main purpose, and I would say, vision of the book, is to invite educators, to invite those of us who engage with, connect, learn from, and build with young people, to have us think more critically and reflexively about the ways in which young people develop socio-politically. How do they develop a social and political subjectivity, a socio-political understanding of themselves, as capable of making and leading change to better their living and learning environments. And to advocate, in many cases, on behalf of their families and communities, especially when these communities and families are under threat, and are experiencing forms of violence due to anti-immigrant discourses and policies? And so how is it that young people come to an understanding of these discourses that are inevitably impacting them and their families and communities and then develop language to speak back to that? And how do they begin to act in ways that resist and refuse being seen as young people who are naive or unworldly or ignorant about these broader, big political issues that we often think or assume they don’t know about or care about, but they very much do. And so, it’s a story about what I learned in the context of this after-school program, what we learned together, and what we sought to create, through the development of this space where those conversations could be had. And then where we could imagine something different through the creation of art, through having them author and tell their own stories, and sharing those publicly through the creation of a school-based mural. So the book is very much rooted in this desire and intention to invite us, as adults, whoever we are in whatever identities we share, to really listen with an open heart and an open mind to the stories of Latinx youth, and what are we cultivating that is going to allow them to thrive and flourish, particularly when they are, and will become, one of the largest demographics in the US. So to not include them is devastating. As we think of our democracy, and our ways of pursuing justice and freedom and liberation, well, what does that mean? What does that gonna look like when a significant portion of our rising demographics are not going to feel included or that they belong? When in reality, they do belong. And so how can we create spaces and conversations and different perceptions for that to be?
John: You mentioned that you were working on this for the past 10 years. What was it like working on this during the age of Trump?
Jesica: Oh goodness [LAUGHTER].
John: [LAUGHTER] I was just imagining it had to be really challenging.
Jesica: It was very challenging. It was very challenging because things were constantly changing politically, in terms of political discourses, DACA was in Supreme Court still in the Supreme Court. So politically, being able to capture the moment was difficult, because the ground was always constantly moving. However, because the bulk of the data collection took place before Trump, and in the context of the Obama administration, actually, I was able to instead frame it during that time period, to then focus on the socio-political landscape and political climate between 2009 and 2012. And then be able to say in my conclusion and in later chapters, how the Trump administration is really begging for us to challenge these anti immigrant discourses and the racist nativism that began to form and unfold even before Trump was president. Because under the Obama administration, we had many families be deported, especially under the Secure Communities deportation campaign, and many of the stories featured in the book that talk about young people having family members deported was not under the Trump administration, it was under the Obama administration. So yes, it was challenging to write about this in the context of Trump, because what started and happened under Obama was exponentially taking place under Trump. And so the book offered me a way to be able to make those links and those connections. And if anything, it gave me even greater motivation and push to see this book out. Because now is the time, as is always the time to center youth voices and experiences, especially when they’re being targeted and impacted in these very public and, I would say, violent and dehumanizing ways. So it was challenging, and it also provided a much needed fire to bring this into the light.
Rebecca: Although it may be difficult, could you share one key story or perspective of youth that you captured in this book that might be particularly useful for college educators to be thinking about as they’re prepping classes and working with students across a wide range of ethnic backgrounds and experiences?
Jesica: That is a very deep and profound question. [LAUGHTER] Thank you for that, because it’s a question that I have been thinking about consistently, as I prepare to start the new academic year. And as I feel deep, heartfelt gratitude that my book is out. And I am wondering, regularly these days, frequently, how is it that this space of affirmation and of humanity, and of care and community that we were able to cultivate with the youth featured in the book, how can I bring that more intentionally into the classroom space? I’ve always thought about this and I try to do this all the time when I teach my college students. And I think that right now, because of the political discourse and political climate, we need spaces of bridging and of connection, more and more, not just in the classroom, but in other spaces as well. And so one of the ways in which I have been thinking about integrating that is by fostering moments of play and curiosity. In the context of our after school program with the youth, we did a lot of community building activities. We did a lot of games and icebreakers that helped them learn these core concepts like power and agency and structure through play. We did Theater of the Oppressed, in some of our after school program sessions. And so I’m thinking about integrating that with my college undergraduate students bringing art, bringing curiosity, bringing play, because for the past more than two years, we’ve been engaging in forms of learning that have not been very multidimensional, that have been on screen. And so how can we bring our whole bodies into the flow of learning, bringing our whole selves and so I have been imagining and envisioning a classroom where we are meeting outside, where we are moving our bodies, where we are feeling, where we are reflecting, where we are bringing our whole selves into the classroom. Especially because over the past year, we’ve had some very difficult challenges with student mental health. And so I’m integrating into my courses, practices for community care. And so for my educators out there, and for myself as well, if I forget, [LAUGHTER] I want to remind all of us, teachers, students, educators, lifelong learners, that our first introduction to learning was their curiosity and play as children, as youth. And so how can we activate and bring that into the various teaching and learning spaces that we inhabit? Perhaps, it will make us feel foolish, but we surely will have a lot more fun. And I’m most certain that we will definitely learn along the way. And it’s good for the soul. [LAUGHTER] It’s good for our health and our body to bring that into activation as well. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m very, very curious to integrate curiosity into my teaching,
Rebecca: See, you’re already practicing it.
Jesica: [LAUGHTER] We’ll see how it goes.
John: We always end with the question, what’s next?
Jesica: In terms of what’s next, I am feeling radically hopeful that we will be going into our last academic year of pandemic doings and undoings. [LAUGHTER] And that we will be able to feel a little bit more grounded in the activities that many of us had scheduled and imagined and visualized during teaching academic years. And I am also feeling radically hopeful that teaching will be completely different, again in ways that are a little bit more humanizing, grounded in community care, and in relationality and, in community building as we move into the physical dynamics of the classroom space. So in terms of what’s next for me is taking it one day at a time remaining humble and grounded in caring for and supporting my students’ socio-political well being and development, that the teaching and the learning that I facilitate and cultivate leaves the classroom, that they’re able to apply what we learn to the real world, to their professional pursuits, to their community work and service. And that’s for teaching. And that’s very integrated and aligned and interdependent with my research as well. In terms of what’s next for my research, I’m very excited to return back to youth after-school programming spaces. Last year, I had the privilege and the honor to develop a collaboration with a local middle school, in proximity to the community here where I live and work. And I’m very excited about continuing that after-school program collaboration with young people from communities of color, engaging in topics of racial and environmental justice, and supporting them in their learning of community based research methods and tools so that they can be the researchers who are documenting these forms of precarity, and injustice and inequity in their community, and then also be the visualizers, and advocates, and organizers for the kinds of changes they want to see. So I’m very excited about that. And having my undergraduate students be a part of that space, after-school program space, it’s called the project, so that then we can really begin to apply what we’re learning to the very, very real world with young people. So that’s what’s next, and always remaining fluid to anything that comes my way. [LAUGHTER] Because change is a constant. We plan for something, but you never know what’s gonna unfold.
John: If we didn’t realize that before. COVID has certainly brought that to the forefront for all of us. Well, thank you. It was really nice to chat with you, and you’re doing some great work. Thanks for joining us.
Rebecca: We look forward to celebrating some of your what’s next in the near future.
Jesica: Thank you so much for inviting me. This is the first time I’ve ever been a part of a podcast. And so I really enjoyed the opportunity to have a conversation with both of you. And thank you for allowing me to reflect on the questions that you posed, which, as academics and scholars, we rarely have an opportunity to think about what we’re doing and the impact. So, thank you very much.
Rebecca: Yeah, thanks for taking the time.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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