Students teaching Students

In having dinner tonight with a friend of my fiance, we began talking about her education. She is a senior level student in her undergraduate program at UCSB. While definitely a hippie with the utmost respect in using the term, she's a world traveler and has been many places in her 20 years on this earth.

This was my first time meeting her and I have been anxious because I love her mom who I recently visited in Colorado (see earlier blogs). She has a passion for making change in the world but shuns the idea of teaching because she does not want to conform to the Western World's view of education. She doesn't want to become a professor and simply have knowledge that proves to be less useful than going into the world and changing it. She has aspirations to work with those who are less fortunate in countries she has already traveled to and intends to go back and help... she simply has dreams that many people keep in the closet.

Since we've been learning about progressive education movements throughout OMET thus far, it was interesting that she brought up an upcoming opportunity at UCSB. Apparently, there is this program that allows students to teach classes about essentially anything they want. Now, they have to be sponsored by (I think) another professor in the school or at least within her department of study and it has to be legitimate. When I asked what class she planned to teach (they get credits for teaching too), she said very quickly "How to Change the World" as if she'd been planning this her entire life.

I asked about her curriculum and she told me that she was hoping to have speakers come in from different organizations and different scholars come in to express needs within our world for the first portion of the class, and for the second half, to create a "project" collectively as a class to change the world... could be an excursion, something. She also expressed this idea of having her students interview their professors (who are researchers) about their research and ask them how they could use the information they teach in their class to better the world or make a difference in some way. In this "homework" assignment, students would learn from their professors and open their eyes to new ways to rejuvinate their own brains to hopefully making a difference. I found this to be awesome. I took multiple classes in my undergraduate years that added no value to my brain or to the world. I would've rather spent time at least seeing the world through other's eyes and opening my eyes to the world of need around me. Although such a typical hippie thing to want... I still loved the idea.

Finally, she talked about a professor she had who spent half of the year in India and the other half teaching at UCSB and said that the reason he continues to come back and teach (besides the $) is because he feels that if he can even steer 1 or 2 students to proactivity, he feels it is worth the while. She brought up a good point and talked to her professor about raising his bar. What about wanting 50 students to become proactive?

Even more profound from a 20-year old... she mentions that since she used that "homework" assignment with herself to talk to her own professors about ways she can use the information they teach to better the world, she was able to speak openly with her obviously intelligent professor who may have been living in research (but no application) land and needed to have the fresh mind of a young adult to free him from his stagnance.

Finally, thanks Todd. I posted the music onto my website and it can be found here: http://students.pepperdine.edu/blfoster/OMEThome/fall07/index.html