In my first year at UTK, I had the opportunity to work with first-year students and discuss primary sources. I really wanted to talk with them about why we use primary sources and how they could use them effectively, so I created a group activity. I provided a broad topic and five different sources for the students to look at. I then asked them to simply pick the three sources they thought were the best. I asked each group to tell me the three sources they picked and why they picked them; I also documented their responses on the whiteboard as they spoke.
I saw that there was one source none of the groups picked, so I started asking questions. What followed was a fascinating discussion about bias and emotion in creating information and the impact on credibility — considerations that I usually don't think about with primary sources. But these were aspects that my students saw, and they had many perspectives to contribute as we discussed why we might choose one source over another. A number of the students in that session were adamant they would never use a primary source that involved emotion because it was biased, and that was bad. Other students shared that emotional bias could be useful for the topic they were researching.
In that class period, I learned a couple of valuable lessons. One, that students are often taught a blanket set of requirements for deeming any kind of information trustworthy, and they aren't always asked to consider why they're using information. Two, that students are brilliant, they continue to surprise me, and they make the hard work of teaching worthwhile.
My approach to teaching is based on three core values: I want to teach information in context; I want to make space for feeling, sharing, and collaborating; and I want to center students' knowledge and experience. It's exciting when all three of these values come together so pointedly in the classroom, as they did on this day, but it's okay when they don't. This just leaves me space to grow as a teacher.
I strive to be a teacher who helps students build on their existing capacity for critical thinking and asking questions. I also strive to give students agency and confidence in their research and information seeking. I want to meet them where they are and then challenge and encourage them to grow. I see teaching as a balance of meeting students' immediate needs while also trying to build on skills that will help them outside of the academic context. Even though I only get a short time with students, I want to use that time to empower and support them.
In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks says, "The engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself." I saw this engaged voice in these first-year students. I want to be this engaged voice. And I want to continue growing this voice in myself and others. I want us all to use the classroom as a space to learn together, learn from each other, and continue evolving by listening to the world beyond ourselves.