25 And that’s a (W)rap

by Meghna Lohia

“If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings” – Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ch.3

I really struggled with deciding how I wanted to present my final project. After deliberating with my inner voice for quite a while, I decided the best way to explain the concept is to demonstrate what it might be like to put my idea into practice. Also, there is a rap at the end. Enjoy.

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Welcome to our mini baby trial workshop my lovely students, today we are going to look at x computer science problem:

*insert CS question here*

Sit with this problem for 5 minutes and read it over. Upon your initial glance, how does this question make you feel? Are you excited to solve it? Bored? Is it posed in a way that is confusing?

Close your eyes and take 2 more minutes to reflect on how your body is feeling in class. Do you feel different now than before? Is there a sense of anxiety that you feel? Are you at ease?

After sitting with the problem and yourself, feel free to write down your thoughts on a piece of paper that you will not be asked to share.

Before we finish the individual part of this baby workshop, everyone write down either a color or a question on these cue cards *hands out cue cards*. This is entirely anonymous and everyone will seem like they are writing something down, hence the color or question.

*I will go over these questions with everyone, giving a few hints about the problem and different ideas for approaches*

Now, in your small groups (five people) try to walk through the problem together. You’ll have approximately 5 minutes to do so. If you only read the question, that is ok. If you start to solve it that is also ok!

After 5 minutes, we will reconvene as a class and go over the problem.

*5 minutes later after I have explained the problem*

Alright, now that we have gone through the problem both on our own, with our peers, and with the whole class, take that piece of paper out again. How did it make you feel when you solved the problem alone? Did you enjoy that? What about with your peers?

How are you feeling now? Take a moment to close your eyes and reflect on your experience. Was that a terrible question? If so, why? Was that a great question? If so, why? Feel free to write down the answers to these questions, or simply sit with your thoughts. There is no need to share either way.

Once you are ready, fold up your piece of paper and put it somewhere safe. If you’d like to, hold on to it as a reminder of how you felt, both mentally and physically, when we had this workshop.

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This is just one part of a larger dialogue (the workshop only demonstrates the class time experience). My other idea is to include a check-in system with every student. The check ins will be a weekly time where I meet with each student individually to ask them how they are doing. There will be no formality, no important topic to cover (unless the student wants that), and no requirement to do anything but get to know each other (right of refusal is so important). I also think that this is fundamental to my idea because it is important to offer students the space to name their pain in a dialogical way. By being able to first, name their pain, and second, discuss their struggles, the student will engage in a love based dialogue where their emotions, thoughts, issues, and goals are welcomed into the classroom. It also ensures that all students are given equal space to discuss, rather than only focussing on the “high achieving students”.

My reasoning for presenting the workshop in this way is to highlight two things:

1. Even though STEM education is seen as a different kind of subject, the experiential workshop is still wholly possible.
2. This is an incredibly difficult process both to create and to engage with because we are so used to separating the whole self from the academic self.

Hopefully, workshops that centre the student experience when working on cs problems will lead to more students feeling comfortable and able to bring their whole selves into the classroom. Combining this with the check ins, I hope to see a dialogue emerge between students and between the student and teacher about how they are feeling with regards to what they are learning.

The basis of my idea comes from a few different concepts:

1. We need to create time and space within CS education for reflection
   1. Computer Science is a subject that feels far removed from me. What I mean by this is that the subject and I have no connection. There is currently minimal reflection being done after I engage in a concept. There are few ties between the subject matter and how I feel about the subject matter. By creating space for reflection, however, I feel closer to the topic at hand because I can sit with my feelings, my body, and my mind to understand what the learning process felt like to me.
   2. There is almost a push against having a relationship with your subject area because the current education system pushes us to think that education is neutral. I want to fight back against this idea because as Friere said, education is “the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
2. Naming the world is essential if we want our education to include the whole self
   1. If education is only true education when the whole self is included, naming my world and naming my emotions is necessary for true education. We need to be allowed to explore the world on our own terms and fight the oppressive systems that dictate how we are supposed to feel about our education. Once we are able to name our frustrations, our emotional self is no longer barred from entering our academic world.
3. Developing emotional intelligence is a priority
   1. When the subject itself is challenging, it is so easy to feel discouraged and unable to cope with feelings of imposter syndrome, anxiety, and hopelessness. Through emotional intelligence and regulation, however, we can learn how to understand our experience with these feelings and how that affects our learning. It requires a love of the subject, but also of the self, to prioritize one’s emotional wellbeing. Teaching this to students is something that needs to occur in the classroom.
4. If something feels bad, that does not mean a student has to feel bad about it – and naming our pain can help teach us how to do this
   1. Whenever I have felt discomfort or frustration in computer science, I have always attributed it to being my fault. If something felt bad, annoying, too difficult, suddenly I  was the problem. But by naming my difficulties and understanding them, I am slowly learning that the issue is not my fault and I don’t have to feel bad about it because I can point to the underlying reasons why it felt bad. As Alissa said during our discussion, the problem is not me but rather the situation/system/structure.
5. Conversely, it is vital that we also learn what feels good when we are engaging with an educational experience
   1. I am inspired by this quote from bell hooks: “It is essential that we build into our teaching vision a place where spirit matters, a place where our spirits can be renewed and our souls restored. We must become as articulate in naming our joys we are in naming our suffering”
   2. When we engage with a subject using love and reflection, we must also acknowledge the pleasure and passion that we may feel upon beginning this new way of learning. It is also important to ask ourselves why we feel good and excited and passionate about learning.

To end my post, I want to bring us back to the discussion we had on Thursday about our final projects. When we were in class, Sydney’s discussion sparked a really interesting thought for me. The question asks, “is it impossible to make empathy systemic” and I think this is incredibly important. It is getting at the idea that our current system actively drives away empathy, reflection, love, and the naming of our pain. However, I think that creating space for empathy in the system is possible. Through the practice of reflection and naming the world, hopefully empathy will not only become embedded in the system, but a crucial part of education itself. I want to dismantle the idea that how I feel when I engage with a subject is unimportant to the learning process, and by doing so, create a form of learning that hinges on bringing our whole selves to the classroom.

Here’s the link to me rapping the rap 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSsAs-K2Kl8JoF1NzrWJkJkk3M7ocgrw/view?usp=sharing

Out of the Cave – a rap 

When we started this class I thought

Screw it I need my area one

I wasnt thinking that reading plato would be any fun

But suddenly it became

so much more

I started looking at thursdays like less of a chore

We explored

All kinds of theory from the past to the now

Miss hooks and friere got me thinking all about how

There’s more to education than the

Shit that you learn

Ya no wonder it took me this long

For my soul to turn

And he’s right

Education’s not about a soul without sight

Its more about fighting the unexamined life

Through dialogue

Through love

And finding that delight

But honestly I think all socrates wanted was a fight

So we turned a page

In our digital books

And zoomed over to folks

Like Friere and hooks

And questioned who’s included

Who knows best

Is it only the oppressor

Pushing down on the oppressed

IS it those who love wisdom?

Is it those who love love?

Is it the individual

That we’re thinking of?

Or is it unity

Community

And naming our pain
Allowing our heart to be in touch with our brain

So at the end of the day

I feel like something has changed

Is it how i see the world

Is it something reframed

Or is it simple

Now that we have come to the end

Is it that I have 14 more folks that I call my friend

And to think all of this it happened so fast

I guess we’re out of the cave

But never out of this class