Geoffrey Dunn–Teaching Statement 2000-01
Lecturer, Community Studies

When I was first hired as a lecturer at UCSC nearly a decade ago, it hit me like a falling meteorite that I had received virtually no pedagogical training during my tenure in graduate school to prepare me for the task I was facing. While I had encountered some wonderful mentors along the way, no one had ever prepared me for the classroom, for the row upon row of eager, expecting faces, for the vacuum of energy that I was now required to fill; no one, indeed, had ever taught me how to teach.

During the three-year interim following my graduation from UCSC and preceding my subsequent admission to graduate school, I reflected a good deal on my previous 17 years of education, particularly on my preparation for college in local public schools. I was angry, in due candor, about my childhood schooling, about the daily boredom I experienced, the political and cultural irrelevancy of most curricula, and the casual indifference of most teachers in the classroom. I began to read the works of critical thinkers on the issue of education-Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Education For Critical Consciousness. I recall being particularly struck by a rhetorical question posed by Freire about teaching: Do you want to fill the bucket or light the fire? The vast majority of my teachers had attempted to fill my bucket, and they had, for the most part, left it empty. My fires had not been stirred.

It was with this consciousness, and little else in the way of pedagogic direction, that I approached my first teaching assignment in a Social Documentation class of nearly 200 students, without the benefit, I should note, of a single teaching assistant; I was, to put it mildly, overwhelmed. I was faced with two alternatives: teach these young beings as though they were a faceless, nameless crowd and hide behind the podium (an alternative I had encountered more than once during my undergraduate days) or do my damnedest to connect with each one of them, on some personal or intellectual or emotional level (as my most successful teachers had done). While tempted by the facility of the former, my conscience demanded of me the challenges of the latter. I set a goal for myself to learn the name of every student in the class and to find out where they were from, who they were. I set up special sections and projects, coordinated field trips, worked exceedingly long hours, and much to my joy, the enthusiasm caught fire. Students produced an incredible array of social documentary projects-films and videos and photo essays and radio programsÑfor which I secured public presentations throughout the community. I found that they brought joy and enthusiasm to their work because I had projected joy and enthusiasm in the classroom. They were, in fact, contagious.

I'd like to report that all of my courses since then have been as successful, but they haven't. Once, several years ago, I found that my enthusiasm (and the implicit expectations thereof) could overwhelm some students, particularly in a small seminar setting. It was a difficult, even painful, revelation for me. The more I pushed, the more they resisted, to the point of resentment, disengagement, anger, and failure. What I learned from that experience and the student evaluations I received-or what I was reminded of, I should say-was that for all their swagger and apparent confidence, college students in their late teens and early twenties, are, like flowers breaking through the soil, fragile and vulnerable, and that no amount of enthusiasm and joy can replace the equally important components of gentleness and patience. Most importantly, students are also like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike. What motivates one student, may not motivate another. I realized that I needed to reach out to them as individuals, caring and tending to each.

This is particularly important, I have found, for students of color and those from working-class backgrounds. I was raised in an anti-intellectual working-class family. I was not expected to go to college, much less wind up teaching at one. My parents, aunts, and uncles have no idea what I do for a living, and they continue to exert a subtle disdain for my profession. I know the alienation and frustration that students of color and those from working-class backgrounds experience at UCSC daily. I make every effort to build bridges to their experiences, by both the content of my courses and the interactive nature of my pedagogy. If there is one thing about which I am most proud in my teaching, it is that these students have consistently acknowledged this in their evaluations of my work. I find this to be a critical challenge for professors at UCSC as the campus becomes even more diverse in the years ahead.

Each year I teach an interdisciplinary course on the Vietnam War and its impact on peoples and communities around the world. Given the size of my classes (anywhere from 150-200 students), I have used the medium of film as the centerpiece of the course and have secured several films from Vietnam that have rarely been shown in this country. I also use written texts that draw upon a diversity of experiences, including those of Vietnamese writers, African-Americans, Chicanos, and Asian-Americans. I teach diversity by modeling it in my curricula.

The response to this class has been remarkable. Students are moved and torn by the course materials. They are forced to confront images of death and destruction in ways that they never have before in their young lives. They are encouraged to engage the films emotionally immediately after they are shown, and then again in sections, with more distance and rationality. The films bring the issues alive for them, and the lectures, readings, guest speakers, and sections help to place them in a political and historical context. One of the first papers I assign is to have students write about their own family history surrounding the war. The assignment puts many of them in touch with deep, often unarticulated feelings, about which they have never been offered the opportunity to write in a college setting. This particular assignment produces some of the best student writing I've encountered at the university-because it allows students to write from their own experiences. And it allows them to build on those experiences as they engage the various political, historical, psychological, and ethical issues surrounding the war.

What is my philosophy of teaching? If I could sum it up in a single phrase, I would say that it is "tough love." That may sound trite and straight out of Stand and Deliver, but so be it. I let my students know that I care about them and that they need to care back. If they don't, then they hear about it. I set basic standards in the classroom. I let them know from the beginning what my rules are. I don't allow unexcused absences. They are to get to class on time. If they don't, there are consequences. Plain and simple.

It's my job to reciprocate. I provide a detailed, structured syllabus, with clear and straightforward weekly assignments. I select readings and films that are current and engaging. I make sure that the classroom functions properly: lights, blackboards, video equipmentÑthe basics. I get to class early and stay late. I get away from the podium and move around the class when I lecture. I make eye contact and don't read directly from a text. I prepare my lectures well in advance and impose a sense of drama and urgency and occasional humor in my delivery. And I explain to them in very clear-cut terms the performance standards on which they will be evaluated.

Most importantly, I engage my students from the very first moment they step into the classroom. I learn all of their names. I find out what high school they attended, what the geography of their lives has been. It gives us a sense of common ground and common purpose, a mutual basis for respect.

I impart the same respect when I grade their papers. I never use a red pen to write comments; a red pen, I have found, imposes a sense of authoritarian criticism. I write a formal "letter" to them, in pencil or blue ink, including a salutation, and thank them for their efforts. And I always sign my comments. I don't pretend to be some impersonal authority figure making abstract comments from a distance. I let them know I'm there with them, learning with them, pulling for them. My approach is never to make a comment on a paper that I wouldn't want on mine; I offer constructive guidance and feedback, emphasis on constructive.

I also begin each course by recalling Freire's metaphor of the bucket and the fire. They know right from the beginning my model of pedagogy: interactive discourse and critical thinking. As I look into the eyes of my students at the beginning of each quarter, they are telling me, with rare exception, that they want their fires lit. Other teachers have been trying to fill their buckets for way too long. For the next ten weeksÑand sometimes for long afterwards-I do my best to fan those flames. And in so doing they continue to fan mine.

It is one of the distinct honors of my life to have been nominated for this award. Perhaps the greatest reward to teaching is the reciprocity of the enterprise. My students deserve a similar honor.