Futures-Oriented Thinkers

The following is a vignette I wrote for a book, Dignity of the Calling, (in press), which is a compilation of chapters from scholars world wide about their first year(s) in Academia.

_______________________________________________

In October 2009, I responded to an ad seeking “innovative, futures-oriented thinkers to join our visionary team”, specifically “a research active academic with a demonstrated commitment to teaching and a capacity to contribute significantly to the Faculty’s Research Centres and programs” who would have “a strong social responsibility ethos.” The Faculty of Education at the university was seeking eight new Assistant Professor academics, a typical entry level job in academe for an American, but an innovation in the Australian university system. This seven year “accelerated career path” would surely be demanding, but I had just completed my Ph.D. while working as a part time graduate assistant at the university and as a full time literacy coach at three high schools. Understandably, then I thought I could cope with the demands of an “accelerated” academic position.

When I landed in Australia on the morning of 18 January 2010, I was greeted warmly by my Head of Discipline. As my husband and I walked with our bags to his car, I felt excited by the possibilities that lay ahead. While I still had no idea which classes I would be teaching, I felt sure that my questions would soon be answered. The trip to campus straight from the airport still plays in my mind. The brown, ruddy landscape, baked hot in the summer sun contrasted the record low winter temperatures of the southeastern United States I had left behind. Despite the lacklustre surroundings of the campus, I remained positive that this would be the place where I would make my mark as an educational researcher and university professor in Australia. Returning to our university sponsored lodging, my husband and I were left to unpack, debrief, and acclimatise to our new country as I awaited the next morning’s faculty welcome morning tea.

Four days later, some of my curiosity was quelled; I would be teaching a projected 300 undergrads in a first year compulsory unit, Education Foundations. I was further asked to teach 60 Graduate Diploma students – the idea being that the learning outcomes were identical and the additional student numbers in the unit would be small. If only. 660 students enrolled.

The first four weeks were a haze of 12-16 hour days, seven days a week. It appeared my department believed me to posses the stereotypical American work ethic, plus it was said that I “didn’t complain”. As the weeks wore on, I struggled to find my place and became more and more inundated with work. I was provided with little support, treated kindly by some colleagues, and ignored by the others. It was a lonely time. My dreams of making time to research evaporated and were displaced to some distant future known as Semester II, when I was assured my workload would be “more balanced”. This issue of balance would continue to haunt me.

So did my students. Many appeared to harbour ill feelings toward me, and others refused to show up to classes, then complained when I would not bring them up to speed via email. During the first week, my office computer had been set to US spelling, which provoked an email response from a student that “Our spelling reflects our cultural heritage and we weren’t colonised by Americans.” A few days later, upon the advice of Senior Staff, I posted the University’s Student Conduct Rules on our unit’s website, to which a student responded, “Were you advised by the Dean of the Faculty to put these up or did you do [sic] without consultation with other academic staff? Or have you made some assumptions about Australians based on your experiences in the Bronx? Perhaps you should get to know us first and our education system first before making assumptions about us.”

Comments like these did little to help me find my place or help me understand the new culture that enveloped me. Rather, it did much to distract me. The distraction was one of concern: how were students like these going to operate in the ‘real world’, full of immigrants and peoples of ‘other’ cultures? Such outspoken attitudes from students claiming they want to teach “all children” disturbed me. I can only hope that with time, education, and exposure to the world, such attitudes change before they are able to impress their prejudices on the next generation.

Nevertheless, I pressed on, engaging in uncomfortable conversations with as many of my students who would participate, and we worked on establishing cultural understandings and mutual respect among each other. I attempted to promote the importance of critical thinking, global awareness, global citizenship, and global interconnectivity (Crawford & Kirby, 2008; Noddings, 2005; Rizvi, 2007). Fortunately, I found more students open to diversity, global thinking, and the notion of cultural competency than not.

These distractions didn’t help bring me greater balance. But when I asked how I might balance 600 students in 21 tutorials while house hunting, settling into a new country, being without a car, or my personal possessions, which were still in transit from the US, the best colleagues could offer me was “don’t answer your emails” and “take the weekends off”. Having just run my first half marathon in September 2009, and been a yoga practitioner for four years, I had fallen into terrible physical shape; I was now moulded to my desk chair, my eyes glued to the computer screen as I poured over ways to engage two lecture theatres full of preservice teachers.

One Saturday in April, whilst bending over to pick up the phone/internet bill, I sprained several ligaments in my lower back. The pain was worse than anything I’d ever felt, but it was a circuit breaker. I realised that I had to change before this job literally landed me in hospital. I had to make time for my recovery – and me. So I did.

I started out by taking that collegial advice to heart. I did not answer email after 6pm or on the weekends, and I began to take a day off on the weekend to spend some time with my husband, whom I had neglected since embarking on my new position. This alone reduced my workweek from nearly 80 hours to a much more feasible 60, which gave me time to see a physio for my back.

Over a year in, I have learned much. I hired most of my tutoring staff before Christmas 2010 in preparation for Semester I 2011. We met, all got to know one another, discussed our goals for our students and how we wanted to achieve those goals. There was ample opportunity for input from and collaboration with my tutors, all classroom teachers. They were keen for the opportunity to work with first years and to be a part of some of the innovations I was attempting with this cohort. Since I knew my units in advance, I tailored the instruction and assessments to a style that better suited my students and me.

As I brought some of my Australian students together online with some of my colleague’s students in the US, some of them engaged in critical thinking and challenging assumptions about the other culture. Although this examination did not go as deeply as I would have liked, it showed all of us of the power of one medium to ‘shake things up’ for each other. Since I had learned so much about my position in the world by leaving my “home country”, I wanted to share a bit of that experience, and the revelations that followed, with my fellow students.

Today, I feel more at home and a less alien than I did four years ago. I feel better acclimatised to my new home and have become a more critically reflexive person (Rizvi, 2007). Students seem to feel more comfortable knowing that I have not just arrived “off the boat”. This for me, took leaving everything and everyone I knew in order to find out how I fit into the world. This is a powerful lesson that I would not have learned had I continued academic life in the United States.

_____

Crawford, E. O. & Kirby, M. M. (2008). Fostering students’ global awareness: Technology applications in social studies teaching and learning, Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 2(1), 56-73.

Noddings, N. (ed.) (2005) Educating the Global Citizen, New York: Teachers College Press.

Rizvi, F. (2007). Teaching global interconnectivity. Paper presented at 21^st Centruy Cutticulum Conference, Sydney, 12-13 November.

—–Photo by author: Sunrise on NSW South Coast 18 Jan 2016

#BetterTogether #BuildYourTribe