Sara P. Díaz

Teaching Philosophy

My highest goal as an educator is to provide my students with the kind of transformative, interdisciplinary, and empowering experiences I have benefitted from in my own education.  A transformative classroom encourages students to not only learn about the interconnectedness of gender, knowledge production systems, social structures, and lived social experiences, but to be able to integrate their learning into their own lives by recognizing and analyzing the relationships between gender, science, and society in the world around them.  When I do my job well, no matter where my students go, they and in turn our whole society, will benefit from the deep critical thinking about the social structures of power, privilege, and oppression they develop in the short time we are together.  Perhaps the most rewarding part of teaching for me is that the intellectual transformation I help my students to achieve will stay with them for the rest of their lives and is crucial to a functional, liberatory, democratic society.

Pedagogy

My primary pedagogical objectives are critical reflection and analysis.  I use three approaches in conjunction with one another to create a transformative learning experience for my students.  First, I demonstrate the many options that exist outside of the standard right-left, nature-nurture, masculine-feminine, black-white, us-them discourses students have primarily been exposed to in their K-12 educations.  I provide my students with models of alternative logics which I present to them in readings, films, lectures, and discussions.  Second, I teach my students skills they can use to break down complex ideas without submitting to the temptation to simplify or reduce them.  Finally, I foster reflection through dialogue in class, online, and one-on-one during office hours.

I use the “tell-show-do” model of education to ensure that students are exposed to the course content multiple times and in multiple ways.  This allows students with a wide range of learning styles to be actively engaged in the class.  I carefully select course materials that both “tell” students about alternative worldviews and “show” them how to think critically about knowledge production, power, privilege, and oppression.  I approach lecturing as a demonstration of various strategies for analyzing gender, race, and sexuality and our relationships to them.  I often announce to the students, as I am lecturing, that the analysis I am presenting is an example of how they might approach their analysis in their papers or exams.  Then, the students are required to “do.”  Students practice articulating their knowledge and analyses verbally in structured small and large group discussions, and in writing through an online discussion board, in papers for small seminars, or exams for larger lectures.  In order to provide my students alternatives to reductive discourses, I carefully choose materials that present the social world in its full complexity.

Skill Development

One of the most important skills students develop in my courses is critical reading based on a structured, systematic model for breaking down the assigned texts.  This is essential in interdisciplinary contexts because students frequently encounter texts from disciplines with which they are not familiar.  I teach my students to dissect a reading by identifying the thesis, arguments, evidence, and assumptions.  Students often find this frustrating at first because it seems overly simple.  However, after following the model for several readings they quickly learn that they frequently misidentify the thesis or the assumptions.  In order to help students through this frustrating period, I create a collaborative environment in the classroom by encouraging students to help each other articulate the main arguments of the piece we are reading.  We practice through repetition in class, homework assignments, and small groups.  I spend a good amount of time following this format at the beginning of the term until the students have mastered the ability to accurately distinguish between arguments and assumptions, the thesis and the counter-arguments.  The beauty of this model is that while we spend time mastering what seems to be the basic skill of “reading” we also discuss the content of the readings in-depth.  Quite a few students have commented to me how funny they find it that they “learned to read” in college while taking my class!  Students leave my class with improved critical reading skills (useful in any subject), a deep understanding of the course content, and as more refined connoisseurs of knowledge.  In this way, my classroom is a space for a multifaceted and holistic transformation for my undergraduates.

Technology

Recently, I have refined a strategy to foster dialogue and to promote critical reflection using a technology that is often quite familiar to today’s students – online discussion.  While technology is rich with pedagogical potential, I find that it is most effective when it is fully integrated into the course.  My goal was to provide a space for students to put course concepts in conversation with their own social world by engaging in self-directed dialogue outside of class, using my university’s discussion board technology, called Go-Post.  The challenges lay in 1) motivating students to participate beyond the required minimum number of posts and 2) connecting the online dialogues to our in-class discussions.  I required my students to post to the board every-other-week, according to a predetermined schedule.  During Autumn quarter, the students completed their assigned posts, but rarely engaged in additional dialogue.  By Spring quarter I found the discussion board operated most successfully when I announced at the beginning of the term that any additional comments or post the students made, beyond the minimum requirement, counted towards their participation grade for the class.  Suddenly, the Go-Post became a vibrant space in which students were able to apply many of the course concepts to their lives outside of the class, primarily in the form of discussions about current events, media, their other courses, and occasionally personal experiences.  With close monitoring of the Go-Post, I was able to integrate the online discussions into my lectures using examples that were particularly salient to the students.  Because the board was driven by the students’ interests, I found that it enabled them to see how the concepts presented in lecture applied directly to their intellectual and personal lives, deepening their commitment to critically reflect on, analyze, and understand the social meanings of their engagement with systems of knowledge production, power, privilege, and oppression.

Assessment

Students’ improvement in the areas of critical analysis and reflection are difficult to quantify.  However, I have developed several formal and informal tools for student assessment.  Short written responses to the reading for each class session allow me to assess the students’ progress in developing their reading skills.  I do not grade the students’ process, so these daily responses are not assigned a grade or score.  Students do receive written feedback regarding their comprehension of the reading suggestions about how to improve.  In small seminar courses, I assign papers that require the students to place themselves in the readings in conversation with one another.  I give students structured yet open-ended paper prompts.  This allows students to engage with the required readings, films, and concepts and make them relevant to their own intellectual interests.  I have developed a rubric that assesses understanding, reasoning/analysis, and critical reflection to grade student writing.  When time allows, I provide students with the opportunity to revise their written work as the deepest learning comes through revision.  In small classes, I also require students to present on the readings several times during the term.  This helps the students develop verbal skills and provides another modality for the assessment of critical thinking and reflection.  Using a combination of informal assessments, like reading responses, and formal assessments, such as papers and presentations, I am able to give feedback to guide students and help them to deepen their critical perspectives.

I continuously assess my own teaching by building feedback into the course design.  For example, I determined that two of the readings I had assigned in one class were too advanced for the students when their daily written responses reflected a sudden drop in reading comprehension after they had previously demonstrated their mastery of critical reading.  The reading responses gave me information necessary to make adjustments to the course schedule to spend more time on these challenging pieces.  While many of the students were initially frustrated by the difficulty of those readings, they expressed immense satisfaction after working through them in class.  In addition, the discussion board, described above, allowed me to assess the effectiveness of my lectures, the selected readings, and in-class discussions and address any points of confusion on a weekly basis.  I also require the students to write a short self-evaluation at the end of the term.  While many students benefit from the activity, I have found the students’ self-evaluations to be a vital tool in the assessment of my teaching.  Student self-assessments help me to know at the big-picture-level which of my student learning goals were accomplished and what to work on during the next term.

Course Taught as Instructor of Record

WOMEN 300/AES 322: Race, Class, Gender, and Social Stratification

Small undergraduate seminar required for Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and American Ethnic Studies majors.  Developed syllabus and overall course structure, guided seminar discussions, and administered all grades.

Course Description: In this course you will have an opportunity to develop your own questions and to hone your abilities to think critically about the intersections of race, class, and gender with respect to a wide range of issues in the United States and in relationship to the transnational context. While the emphases of this course are race, class, and gender, other categories of difference will be woven throughout (sexuality, gender identity, disability, etc). We will use an interdisciplinary lens to deepen our knowledge about the following topics: social stratification; globalization and neoliberalism; the historical process of racialization; and social class, sex, sexuality, and gender across time, cultures, gender ideologies, and feminisms. We will analyze how race and ethnicity are reproduced, maintained, contested, and resisted in social relations, institutional structures, and cultural practices.

Evaluations: Student evaluation of course as a whole: 5/5 (Excellent)

Website: WOMEN 300, Race, Class, Gender, and Social Stratification

WOMEN 200: Introduction to Women Studies 

Mid-sized undergraduate lecture course open to all students but required for Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies majors.  Developed syllabus, overall course structure, lectures, quizzes and exams, coordinated with service learning office, and administered all grades.

Course Description:  Using an interdisciplinary feminist perspective, this course will examine the construction and practice of gender in various contexts, with an emphasis on the intersection of gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and (dis)ability in the lives of women. Topics include women’s rights, sexuality and health, family life and work life, militarism, globalization, environmental issues, representations, and social change.

Website: WOMEN 200, Introduction to Women Studies

Evaluations: Student evaluation of course as a whole: 4/5 (Very Good)

ENGL 298O: Writing for Masculinity Studies

Small undergraduate workshop-style writing course linked with WOMEN 255: Men and Masculinities.  Developed syllabus and paper topics in conversation with linked course content, guided student writing through conferences and in-class instruction, and administered all grades.

Course Description:  The products of writing are intended to communicate thoughts, ideas, experiences, and information to others. However, the process of writing is fundamentally a process of coming to know what we think and why. Therefore, there are three key components to writing – knowing what you think, why you think it, and then saying it. In this class we will engage with material presented in Women 255: Masculinities: Contestation, Circulation, and Transformation and practice developing our critical thinking and communication skills.

We will develop an understanding of our own thoughts in the following ways: 1) critically and systematically analyzing the thoughts of other writers from the text-book and other assigned readings through honing our reading skills, and 2) dialoguing or “talking out” our ideas in class and in short writing exercises. Then we will work on the technical skills of communicating those ideas to others by: 1) carefully outlining and drafting two papers, 2) giving and receiving constructive feedback to classmates, 3) conferencing (discussing drafts in detail) with the instructor, 4) rethinking, rewriting, and revising our papers, and 5) learning how to apply these skills to writing in Women Studies.

Website: ENGL 298O, Writing for Masculinity Studies

Evaluations: Student evaluation of course as a whole: 4.2/5 (Very Good)

ENGL 298K: Writing for Feminist Studies

Small freshman workshop-style writing course linked with WOMEN 200: Introduction to Women Studies.  Developed syllabus and paper topics in conversation with linked course content, guided student writing through conferences and in-class instruction, and administered all grades.

Course Description:  The products of writing are intended to communicate thoughts, ideas, experiences, and information to others. However, the process of writing is fundamentally a process of coming to know what we think and why. Therefore, there are three key components to writing – knowing what you think, why you think it, and then saying it. In this class we will engage with material presented in Women 200: Introduction to Women Studies and practice developing our thinking and communication skills.

We will develop an understanding of our own thoughts in the following ways: 1) critically and systematically analyzing the thoughts of other writers from the text-book through honing our reading skills, and 2) dialoguing or “talking out” our ideas in class and in short writing exercises. Then we will work on the technical skills of communicating those ideas to others by: 1) carefully outlining and drafting several papers, 2) giving and receiving constructive feedback to classmates, 3) conferencing (discussing drafts in detail) with the instructor, 4) revising and rethinking our papers, and 5) learning how to apply these skills to several different styles of writing important in Women Studies.

Website: ENGL 298K, Writing for Feminist Studies

Evaluations: Student evaluation of course as a whole: 3.7/5 (Good/Very Good)