#TrustingTheProcess through Trial and Error Inside the Graduate Classroom and Beyond

 

              I cannot believe it is already November. Week 11. The end of my third month in graduate school, and Wow! I have learned so much about myself. The most important thing, besides #TrustingTheProcess, of course, is that I should not be afraid to take risks as both a teacher and student. Not just a graduate student, but also, a student who receives navigation and travel lessons twice a week in the hopes that they will pay off. This blog post is unlike any I have done before. I will be combining my experiences with continuing in #TrustingTheProcess with my pedagogical experiences as a student in travel.

 

              One of my favorite singers, Gabby Barrett, released an album in June called “Goldmine”. One of my favorite songs on this album is a song called “Footprints on the Moon”. Basically, Gabby Barrett sings about how well-meaning individuals tell you that what you are doing is hard, but you should not stop trying to reach that goal, even when you think it is out of reach. Hence the title, “Footprints on the Moon”. You can pretty much do anything because someone walked in space, so nothing is out of reach. To my wonderful peers, you may be scratching your heads right now, asking how this relates to Pedagogy and Communication. Well, it relates to Pedagogy and Communication in the aspect that after my first staff meeting in COMM 1010 and while writ    ing my outline for Communication Theory, I thought I could not keep doing this. Listening to the wise words of Gabby Barrett’s song put my mind at ease. If people before me literally walked on the moon, I can absolutely write my final paper for Communication Theory and absolutely teach COMMe     1010, even if I am doing it virtually. I thought I was not competent enough to be a TA, and I definitely experienced feelings of self-doubt and anxiousness while writing my outline. When I recorded my welcome video for COMM 1010 way back in August, I was so nervous. What would students think of me? Would they take me seriously? Would they think I was credible? Thankfully, after reading Deanna Dannels, I figured out that there were definitely ways to overcome my communication anxiety. One of those ways is to remember that communication apprehension or anxiety is a normal occurrence. Also, butterflies on the first day of a new semester are normal and often times mean that you really love your job! I fully expect to have the same butterflies that I had in August come back in January. However, it will not mean that I am failing at teaching. Just the opposite, in fact. It will mean that I am succeeding and that I really care about the knowledge my students and I are co-intentionally building. In addition, Dannels points out that the more experience teachers (or in my case, graduate teaching assistants) gain, the easier teaching becomes, and the less nervous I will be. I take a lot of comfort in that.

 

              You may also be wondering why I took a week off of writing. It is because some significant events happened to me in my graduate career. For starters, my amazing colleagues Leah and Caitlin (whose blog posts are both amazing, by the way) and I co-facilitated Feminist Criticism. Of course, I was a little nervous about co-facilitating class because I have never done anything like that before. Also, with all due respect to rhetoric, rhetoric asks people to be pretty critical, which is something I am still getting comfortable with. Automatically, my amazing co-facilitators and I set out to make sure we were using what Elizabeth Barkley (2010) calls pedagogies of engagement, which can best be defined as pedagogical practices or pedagogies which get students engaged in the class material. We decided that we would do an activity early in our co-facilitation and allow our peers to take a break during their time in the breakout rooms. To foster pedagogies of engagement in a way that most made sense to the night’s readings, we decided to have groups look at social media accounts that promoted feminist activism. It allowed our peers to get engaged in a new way with the readings, and it paid off in a huge way. Our peers reported back that they really loved the activity. While I will not attempt to speak for my co-facilitators, I will speak for myself when I say this activity helped me #TrustTheProcess of engaging with the Feminist Criticism readings.

 

              #TrustingTheProcess is an entirely different journey when I have travel and navigation class. For those of you reading this who may not know what travel class entails, it is where an orientation and mobility instructor who is certified to teach blind and visually-impaired students how to safely and effectively travel in familiar and unfamiliar environments teaches students at all different ages how to navigate. I have had travel all my life, and only a few instructors practiced co-intentional learning with me. Freir indicates that co-intentional learning is learning that occurs when both the teacher and student learn together. Most travel instructors expected me to memorize routes and store them in my memory. However, the banking model of education did not serve to benefit me when I would go to a new destination and could not transfer those skills to that new place. I’ve been a lifelong student of travel and will continue to be, and I finally have an instructor who uses co-intentional learning and even Critical Communication Pedagogy in the way in which we learn from each other techniques that work and ones which do not work. Therefore, Joan Ghoram’s learning styles helped me figure out that in everything I do, whether it is teaching, reading for grad classes, writing, or even learning how to navigate an environment, I am a field dependent learner. This means that I externalize things to make sense of it but also need the information to be broken down into smaller chunks before I can attack a task full-on. On Saturday morning, my instructor and I tried a new technique where I asked him to stand back and let me do everything on my own, including crossing busy streets on the downtown Denton square with no help. I figured I would have no problems with this. After all, Jeff made sure I knew the Square inside out and backwards before we did this, but more than that, I wanted to challenge myself. After all, my long-term goal is to get a guide dog this summer (if all goes well with COVID-19, that is) so I have been working on doing as much travel independently as possible.

 

              Jeff and I met at my apartment and drove to the square together. He gave me directions, and I thought I had them all straight in my head. I thought it would be no big deal and I was ready to do this, so I got out of the car and strode confidently to the first street. However, instead of turning left, I turned right and ended up completely missing a critical step in the route. After a long time of me trying to figure this out—minutes or hours? Not sure—Jeff and I took a break at Jupiter House to debrief what was going well and what needed improvements. Most instructors I have had in the past with few exceptions would have used the banking model of education, where the knowledge they were giving me was expected to stick until I knew the route and could move on. I am in no way saying that the banking model of education is not the right method to use for travel. When I first learned the Socratic method of asking questions and structured discovery, where there is an almost complete hands-off approach in my opinion, I hated it. I never wanted to use structured discovery again. However, whether he realizes it or not, my new instructor and I often find we are using Critical Communication Pedagogy in the classroom (that is the square or any environment in which I am walking in that day). We especially use dialogue to critically reflect on our experiences (mostly it’s me doing the reflecting) and reflect on the language we use to describe our circumstances. When I indicated that I was struggling with spatial awareness, my instructor seemed to think it was mental mapping I was struggling with, but totally believes I can master it and get it down with appropriate time. Fassett &  Warren would tell me that we engaged in a dialogue to rename the terms, and we very well did. While I had been telling people, I have been struggling with spatial awareness, mental mapping would actually make a lot more sense. My instructor, being a true pedagogue in the field, says that there is no right term or no right way to do travel. He is open-minded and flexible, which I appreciate. Too many instructors are unwilling to be flexible or open-minded, and it holds them back from seeing their students’ full potential. In my case, I am very lucky that I have not encountered many of these instructors. That day, I did not trust that I was doing the right thing in travel. It just goes to show me that #TrustingTheProcess, of course, does not only apply to my life as a TA and a graduate student. It also applies to my travel lessons, and no matter how long it will take, I will continue to work on #TrustingTheProcess. I will continue to use Critical Communication Pedagogy and a co-intentional model of learning until I make sense. And next year, there may just be a four-legged furry graduate student wanting to sit in on a few courses with me. We will have to see, but I hope you all have enjoyed reading this blog. Remember to #TrustTheProcess.

Best,

Kendal