“Mr. Vilson, I’m in a doctoral program, just like you.”
One of my former students posted a picture of a quad at an established university. I inquired about her current work there. She said she was studying engineering. As she passed through undergrad, she’d check in about milestones: her applications to big universities, her matriculation into grad, then doctoral programs. By the time Columbia University conferred my degree back in October of 2024, she was well into her doctoral journey.
As I’ve recounted to her a few times, our first interaction back in her eighth grade year wasn’t as heartening. In fact, when she first walked into my classroom, she made a face that even Peppa Pig would consider cross. My deadpan face didn’t give it away, but internally, I did a “Oh, here we go.” After that moment, I recognized she had a preternatural gift for numeracy and making meaning of the math in front of her. I often found her explaining the work to her fellow students. Among gifted students, she shone brightly. I’m glad I kept reading the book beyond the cover, metaphorically speaking.
Furthermore, after she graduated from my class, one of her high school teachers is a good friend and colleague (shout out Sendy Keenan) whose insights pushed my thinking about my doctoral work. I’ve said how academia could do a better job of naming the teachers and other adults who we learn from and publish about. Academics and people with larger platforms have a responsibility to share how they acquired their frameworks. On the one hand, research methods must allow for a level of anonymity and generalizability. Naming people and places introduces all sorts of risks. At the same time, when people name ideas, they often attribute it to the writer, not the practitioner.
But a question: what do we owe students in our funds of knowledge? In particular, how do students teach us about the phenomena we’re putting out in the world?
In my dissertation acknowledgements and here, I’ve named how my teaching is a conglomerate of all the teaching I witnessed as a student, the teaching I observed in my colleagues’ classrooms, and practices I absorbed from my studies. Yet, I’m also a believer in social learning theory i.e. we learn best when we learn with others. As a sociologist, I didn’t just observe other teachers and chose what I wanted to do. I’m also a reflection of how students received my pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment.
I didn’t just learn from a select few students. I learned from all of them in ways large and small.
I’m thinking about one of my first students who couldn’t articulate that he was being bullied outside of my classroom. Me not seeing it didn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Before he left, his mom told me in a mix of fury and frustration that the school had done him a disservice. I was a first year teacher without the tools to address it then. But it taught me about my responsibility as a community-engaged teacher for both the “bully” and the “bullied.”
I’m also thinking to the brilliant student in my fourth year of teaching who’d ask “What does this have to do with real life?”. She had a reputation for whining in the school, but I went home and reflected on it. Over the next few weeks, I decided to work on giving her access to the math. As she arrived at her “oh!” moments, she asked better questions and participated more. I learned to reframe “whining” and to re-ground myself in patience.
I remember when my administration made the decision to move me back “into the classroom” from doing math instructional coaching. Some colleagues complained that I didn’t give them enough materials while others begrudged the idea that they could learn from someone younger than them. When I acquired a new class in November of that year, a few of the students were seen as thugs. People told me to fear the class. Some of those kids just needed a word of affirmation. I learned to assess my students first thing in the morning about their mental health. My door stayed open to them for the rest of that year.
Even in my book where I lay out some of the disasters in my teaching, I recognized places where I’m learning. Those losses were lessons I needed to become a better practitioner.
As the rain came down on us during Columbia University’s commencement, tam and robe drenched, I carried these memories. When I walked across the stage at United Palace Theatre, I gave them a shout-out in my mind, hoping they’d hear me (I taught a mile north of . I opened my phone and saw students who I hadn’t seen in a decade congratulate me, some of whom couldn’t believe I remembered them. I’m older, so I get it.
But I spent the last four years at Teachers College not just studying dead white men tell us about ourselves. (Yay, sociology!) I also spent it reconciling how I as a teacher understand my work against the backdrop of teaching over a thousand students. Then, I worked on how other teachers like me understand their relation to students like mine and perhaps students unlike mine.
I’m still working on learning. I can’t account for every student I’ve ever taught. It’s a miracle that many of them still want to keep contact, really. But I’m infinitely more brilliant by having 30 or so students for long periods of time to bounce ways of knowing off of. That’s culture, too. I wish more of us gave ourselves the opportunity to give credit where it’s due.
It’s funny because I reached out to the aforementioned student for this piece and she wished not to be named. Her journey as a doctoral student isn’t done. Mine is, but my work as an intellectual stewing in these nuances is not.
In that sense, we both have so much more to go. And the rest of us, too.
The post What Lessons Are We Learning from Our Students? appeared first on The Jose Vilson.
