Fourth-year psychology and English literature student Aatisha Avasthi has always been interested in social justice.
“Even within my psychology major, I learned a lot about how there [are] issues within psychology, and how psychology as a field needs to be critiqued and needs to be reformed,” she said.
Entering the throes of the second term and starting a new class can be daunting — especially one you’re running.
For Avasthi, starting her own student-directed seminar was a way to ease some of her career anxiety and satiate her academic interests — making psychology more inclusive, feminist and anti-colonial while understanding how these approaches can work together outside an authoritative and institutional framework.
Prototyping being an educator
The idea for this class — anti-colonial & feminist frameworks for undergraduate studies — was two years in the making, originating from Avasthi’s experience in the Faculty of Arts’s Career Design Studio (CDS), where student cohorts are guided through workshops about career development after graduation.
“I was very inspired by their model because it was very radical to think about how you could decide your career … [and because] academia is constantly pushing students-to-be or undergraduates to become researchers,” said Avasthi, describing the opportunity as “a great way to prototype being an educator,” something she hopes to pursue in the future.
“The essence of research is about being critical, and as long as that's something that I can achieve within the course, — being critical consistently and being reflexive consistently … I think that would be the biggest goal that the seminar would achieve,” she said.
On her first day, Avasthi walked into her class of nine students to fill the position of a coordinator as opposed to a professor.
“I can't be someone who's taking a position of hierarchy or expertism, because I'm not an expert at all,” she said.
“I can't be someone who's taking a position of hierarchy or expertism."
It fits the framework of her course about reworking and changing traditional pedagogies to anti-colonial and feminist frameworks, disrupting the traditional hierarchical structure of classrooms. It’s something Avasthi has been looking forward to disseminating.
“[T]he class is a mix of an inquiry into undergraduate pedagogy and how it's structured at UBC and also beyond, as well as a place where we can all come together to design a way to teach and a way to learn that's a little bit more anti-colonial in its conception and is feminist,” said Avasthi.
'Not like a traditional classroom'
Being inspired by the mentors and models from the CDS program, Avasthi put together a proposal that combined her academic interests. On her first try submitting to the program through the Centre for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL), the proposal was unsuccessful because it wasn’t academic enough. On her second try the next year, she received more support from CCEL than she could’ve imagined.
“[T]he second time I was applying, the program coordinator saw my name, and they were like … ‘I know that you applied last year and it didn't go through. So we want to help you put your best foot forward this time,’” she said. “It was really nice because they really helped me through it all.”
This wasn’t the only hurdle in Avasthi’s way — student-directed seminars require a minimum of eight students. But as the term approached, her class wasn’t reaching the required quota.
“[CCEL’s] marketing team really pulled through because I actually ended up having … nine students now so that's one more than I needed … which was really nice,” said Avasthi.
“I don't necessarily see them as my students, it's more like — and I make this joke all the time in the class — [that] this is my personal book club.”
After overcoming the various hiccups, Avasthi finds the course “rewarding,” especially when the whole group is on the same page.
“[E]very time I go to class, I'm just very excited for the discussions that we're going to have because the whole class is very discussion-oriented, and … it's not me teaching anything necessarily. It's not like a traditional classroom,” Avasthi said. “I don't necessarily see them as my students, it's more like — and I make this joke all the time in the class — [that] this is my personal book club.”
'Brewing community'
Since the class is about anti-colonial and feminist frameworks, Avasthi avoids taking a hierarchical position. Instead, she strives to create an open community in her classroom where the group interacts as colleagues, rather than reinforce a student-professor relationship. She appreciates and encourages the support students show each other when getting ideas across in their discussion.
“I think we're all holding space for each other, enough to slightly start opening up and talking about difficult topics,” said Avasthi. “There's definitely a sense of brewing communities, it's coming up and I can feel that which I really appreciate.”
As she starts to prepare for graduation, Avasthi feels confident in her career path and hopes her experience as a student educator can inform a career in history or philosophy of science programs, and later as an educator where she can continue to explore the kinds of pedagogical frameworks she is currently experimenting with.
Avasthi advised those wanting to run a student-directed seminar and experiencing career anxiety to prioritize self-reflection as a way to identify how to approach a career, and to “evaluate their own time."
“Because you're not just an educator,” Avasthi said. “You're also a student, and that requires work, being able to do both things at once.”
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