Michigan State University is fortunate to have passionate educators who are committed to enhancing the experience of their students and who help to provide the best education possible.
The Graduate School is featuring some of these educators – graduate and postdoc educators – every month to share their unique stories and perspectives on what it means to be a dedicated educator, how they’ve overcome educational challenges, and the ways they have grown through their experiences.
For March 2024, we are featuring Lee Melvin Peralta, a doctoral student in the Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education (CITE) program and the Department of Statistics and Probability. In his writeup, Lee Melvin draws on the word “sharing” to explain his approach to education.
What does it mean to be an educator at a university?
Being an educator at a university can take many forms, including serving as a mentor for others or helping grow the life of one’s community. I draw inspiration from the words of bell hooks, who wrote that the work of educating “is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students”. For me, this means that being an educator is about a passion for learning alongside others, a commitment to continual personal and pedagogical growth, and an understanding that learning is more than the transmission of knowledge within the four walls of a classroom.
I am particularly interested in how bell hooks used the word “share” in the quote above. Instead of education as a matter of sharing what we already know or possess, I interpret her words to mean that what educators and students can share with one another are new possibilities for knowing and being in the world.
Many of these ideas about being an educator at a university were informed by my time teaching middle school mathematics for six years and then continuing to teach courses for and work with teachers during graduate school. Teaching has been a unique privilege that has enabled me to be a part of people’s lives in ways that would not have been possible in many other lines of work.
Borrowing the words of Octavia Butler that “the only lasting truth is change”, I believe that education is a matter of contributing to change—not only in terms of changing what students know or how they see themselves, but also in terms of societal change. I like to imagine that changes in institutions and culture are, at least in part, the result of many small educative moments across multiple settings that have led to shifts in ideas about what is considered “normal” or possible in society. Being an educator in a university, therefore, is about helping people flourish in the present and strive for a better life for themselves and others in the future.
What challenges have experienced and how have you grown from them?
Being an educator is messy and complex work. Recently, I encountered this when I had the privilege to collaborate with Dr. Louise Jezierski, a sociologist at MSU, to design and teach an interdisciplinary course for early undergraduate students about data and storytelling, which in turn has become the context of my dissertation study. The course was made up of nine first- and second-year students who were incredible people and scholars, and I would be remiss not to shout them out.
My biggest challenge as an educator has been to try to live up to the expectations that I have created for myself, the ideals that I espouse for education, and the things that I know my students deserve and that I hope I have been able to provide.
This work includes getting to know your students, identifying and lifting up their strengths, being mindful of their individual and collective needs, fostering a sense of community, and addressing power dynamics that arise within the classroom, among so many other things.
Other systemic challenges that I have encountered as part of the complex and messy work of teaching have been widely discussed and well-documented. These include a persistent culture of testing, inadequate diversity within educational spaces, mental health concerns among young people, and inadequate pay for educators, particularly graduate assistants.
Broadly, while no individual alone can solve the challenges that persist in education, I have come to learn that being an educator at a university is not just about addressing the immediate needs of your students, but also about seeking out changes that can make the university a better place for all students, particularly those who have been historically marginalized or underserved by academic institutions. Put another way, my growth as an educator has included the realization that educating is a political act just as much as it is an interpersonal one.
What value do you see in Teaching Professional Development?
There is always something more to learn when it comes to being an educator. I was fortunate to have become a middle school teacher through a professional development organization called Math for America. The organization provided compensation that reflected the serious work that teachers engage in, along with professional development opportunities designed and facilitated by teachers as well as researchers and other education stakeholders. These opportunities, which I have been able to nurture during my time as a graduate student in MSU’s College of Education, have offered me ways to grow in my ability to elicit and respond to student thinking, develop clear pedagogical goals for my classroom, align my instructional activities with these goals, and facilitate conversations that position my students as active participants in the classroom instead of passive recipients of knowledge.
In the past few years, I have begun thinking about my own teaching and learning through practices such as journaling and the use of the arts, which I consider to be alternative but equally legitimate forms of teaching professional development.
Several years ago, I received teaching professional development and mentoring through my participation in MSU’s Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Teaching Fellowship, where I was paired with my now colleague Dr. Jezierski. She generously gave me opportunities to try out ideas within her courses at James Madison College. I met and learned from many wonderful JMC students during this time. Since then, I have continued to receive incredible guidance and mentorship relevant to my teaching professional growth from my advisor Dr. Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, as well as other faculty, peers, students, and staff within the College of Education and the Program in Mathematics Education. These experiences have taught me that being in engaged community with others can also be a powerful source of teacher professional development.
Over the years, I have learned that teacher professional development should not be limited to learning discrete skills or techniques, though these can be useful. It is also important for educators to develop empathy for students, a vision for one’s approach to education, and the ability to navigate the many tensions that arise within the everyday work of teaching. Teaching professional development can provide an invaluable space to do the necessary self-work and have those conversations.
What is one piece of advice you would give other graduate educators?
Depending on the situation, being a graduate student educator can mean getting the chance to play with different teaching approaches and share ideas with other graduate students who are in a similar position. Being a student also means that we can empathize with our students in ways that full-time faculty may not be able to, including understanding the challenges that students face in making sure their needs are met; in balancing their academics, extracurricular activities, and personal lives; and in dealing with a campus climate that may not be supportive of their identities or personal circumstances. Based on this, my advice is to be transparent with students about some of the challenges we face as students, so that our students can understand us as people who they can relate with and turn to for mentorship and advice.
Related to this, I have found that it can also be tricky to be a graduate student educator because of the relative success that many of us have experienced to get to where we are. Although not all graduate students share the same experiences, many of us possess a savvy with and commitment toward academic life that may not necessarily be shared with all of our students. So while graduate student educators can empathize with students to a certain degree, I have also had to remind myself that my students come to the university for a variety of reasons and that some of them face challenges on account of being at the university that I have not experienced and cannot fully understand. This is why deep listening and fostering trust is such an important part of teaching and learning.
What do you enjoy in your free time?
My cat, Jojo, occupies a lot of my time and attention. Beyond spending time with her and other family and friends, I have recently rekindled my interest in music, with which I have had an on and off relationship for most of my life.
