Annemarie Pérez

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Category: Teaching

FLC: On Quitting TurnItIn – Week 2

Posted on February 7, 2021February 7, 2021 by Annemarie Perez

This week’s readings:

From: Teaching to Transgress – by bell hooks – Introduction & chapter 1

From: An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel

Foreword and Introduction

“Critical Digital Pedagogy: a Definition”

“A Guide to Resisting EdTech: the Case Against TurnItIn”

I got to select our FLC readings for this week and chose the essay “A Guide to Resisting EdTech: The Case Against TurnItIn” because it’s an area of digital pedagogy where critical pedagogy has had a significant impact on how I foster classroom community in my courses.

When I first started teaching my own courses in 2012, I’d heard of TurnItIn, but didn’t think about or use it because the university where I was teaching, Loyola Marymount, didn’t offer it. It wasn’t until I came to CSUDH that I was made aware of it. Plagiarism hadn’t ever been a problem in my classes. Instead, TurnItIn was sold to me as a way around Blackboard’s poor and limited grading annotation tools. Specifically, I’d been using Garage Band to record comments and emailing students the mp3 files. TurnItIn offered recordings of up to 3 minutes as one of its features.

So I had students submitting their work by uploading it to TurnItIn for three years without really thinking about it. When I did hear negative things about the company and its lack of respect for student copyright, I justified my continued use by rationalizing that I’d disabled archiving and wasn’t using the similarity check.… Read the rest

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Current Teaching Philosophy

Posted on January 29, 2021January 29, 2021 by Annemarie Perez

This is my current teaching philosophy (January 29, 2021). One of the goals of the Faculty Learning Community I’m leading this semester on critical digital pedagogy is for all of us to rethink and rewrite our documents.

U.S. Latina and Chicana feminist practice inform my classroom and research pedagogy, one of decolonialism and community building. Based on Gloria Anzaldúa’s conceptualization of mestiza consciousness, this transformative pedagogy proposes ways in which my students and I can enact a practice that tries to undo dualistic thinking, bringing their knowledge and experiences together with the course materials. In examining literature, films, and popular texts through close reading, I encourage my students to question notions of objectivity and to understand that we can and should hold a multitude of positions simultaneously, using this multiple positioning to inform our reading, writing, and thinking. This critical pedagogy practice of constant re- centering privileges students who have had nontraditional opportunities and experiences, encouraging them to create and support community both outside and within the classroom. In constructing courses, my classes reflect this critical pedagogy, focusing on radical kindness and fostering connections between students, enacting my belief in bell hook’s expansion theories of the classroom as a teaching community, creating a space of hope, care, and commitment. It’s also increasingly focused on my students and I collaboratively creating digital spaces where we can express enthusiasm and take pleasure in our community’s intellectual discoveries.

 

In the past two years I’ve experimented with using technology to bring students together so they can listen to and learn from each other.

… Read the rest
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Introduction: Faculty Learning Community – Critical Digital Pedagogy

Posted on January 26, 2021January 26, 2021 by Annemarie Perez

This Spring semester, as part of my work as an online teaching fellow, I’ve been asked to lead one of our campus groups of faculty working on a specific topic — what my campus calls “Faculty Learning Communities.” I got to propose a topic, so I proposed “critical digital pedagogy,” putting at our center bell hooks’ work Teaching to Transgress and Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s An Urgency of Teachers.

The call included:

“If students live in a culture that digitizes and educates them through a screen, they require an education that empowers them in that sphere, teaches them that language, and offers new opportunities of human connectivity.”
“Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media” – Pete Rorabaugh

This Faculty Learning Community will be a collaboration of teachers discussing digital pedagogy as a liberatory practice through self-reflection and public writing. We will center critical pedagogy, using it to discuss and evaluate our online classes and tools, and working to align our teaching philosophies with digital learning. We will do this through collectively reading bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress and Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s collection An Urgency of Teachers, using these writings to reflect on our Spring 2021 courses through writing weekly blog posts. We will experiment with digital tools both with our public writings and between ourselves with an eye toward including some of these tools in our future classes.
The deliverable for this FLC will be our revised teaching philosophies and our networked blogged reflections.

… Read the rest
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Teaching Fall 2020: Week 4-5

Posted on September 21, 2020 by Annemarie Perez

[This post is part of my attempted practice this semester of writing a reflection on my teaching each week. This semester, CSUDH, like all the universities in the California State University system are primarily online.  I am teaching a freshman seminar (synchronous) and an upper-division interdisciplinary studies course (asynchronous), both on reading Harry Potter and digital fandom. My motivation to do these blogging reflections came out of a summer workshop on supporting first-generation college students and its requirement that we reflect regularly on our teaching practices this semester.]

Do I need a new category for angst?

I’ve had a week that’s made me realize I need to revise the syllabi for both my classes. Although I’ve taught with Slack online before, I’ve only used blogging with students in face-to-face classes. Those classes allow me to do workshops teaching the tool. Instead, my students are trying to learn to use the software via Zoom and screencast videos I’ve made. They’re getting it, but it’s taking more time. Likewise, in my upper-division class, I asked my student groups (they are divided up based on sorting them into the Hogwarts houses) to produce a video presentation for the class. In both cases, the blogging and the presentation they’ve done it, but it’s clearly been a struggle and taken them a week longer than I planned. I don’t mind the extra time or the need to now rework our syllabus — that generally happens when I teach courses for the first time. I even like it because it gives the students a chance to give me input on what they find interesting and important.… Read the rest

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Teaching Fall 2020 – Week 3

Posted on September 8, 2020September 21, 2020 by Annemarie Perez

[This post is part of my attempted practice this semester of writing a reflection on my teaching each week. This semester, CSUDH, like all the universities in the California State University system are primarily online.  I am teaching a freshman seminar (synchronous) and an upper-division interdisciplinary studies course (asynchronous), both on reading Harry Potter and digital fandom. My motivation to do these blogging reflections came out of a summer workshop on supporting first-generation college students and its requirement that we reflect regularly on our teaching practices this semester.]

Today is the first day of #scholarstrike. I did teach my freshman Harry Potter course today, but it met at 8:30 AM, before the strike officially started, and we devoted the class to issues of race in the books and films, especially to the “what if” proposition of how their reading of the novels would have changed if, instead of Emma Watson,  a Black actress had been cast as Hermione.

This was always going to be a difficult semester. The national and global situations are terrible and produce anxiety every day when I read the paper. My teaching is all online this term, as is almost all of the teaching in the CSU system. I’m teaching a course that’s all freshmen for the first time at CSUDH. And both of my classes are on Harry Potter.

That last one needs some explaining as I’ve taught Harry Potter before. However, this is the first class I’ve taught on the series since J.K. Rowling has started tweeting and writing anti-transgender social media posts.… Read the rest

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2020 Has Been a Long Decade

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Annemarie Perez

I opened this blog today and realized I haven’t blogged here in 2020. That’s a bit slow even for me. My excuse is probably everyone’s excuse. This year, which is just a month more than half over, has felt longer than most decades. The current political situation, the global pandemic, changes to our lives due to the pandemic. Me needing emergency surgery last week and having to jump out of my academic responsibilities at a moment’s notice and spend four days in the hospital (complete with needing to be moved due to a COVID case on my floor). And, hardest of all, my mother’s cancer worsening so that this month we had to begin hospice care for her. Writing an occasional Tweet has felt like all I could handle. But here I am blogging today.

The first thing I want to note is the incredible generosity of my students. I held off opening my Spring 2020 evals, finally biting the bullet and doing it. Their understanding of the disruption we’d experienced and appreciation of the various ways I tried to keep in touch with them moved me deeply. So many of them are “frontline” workers, coping with having children and elders to care for through all of this, trying to keep everybody safe and fed. That they found space in all that for compassion for me was deeply moving.

For this Fall (and I’m guessing likely this Spring) almost all California State University classes are online. To help faculty with this move to online-only courses, I’ve become one of my college’s teaching fellows working with online instruction.… Read the rest

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The day after, pt. 2

Posted on November 10, 2016November 10, 2016 by Annemarie Perez

Follow-up to The day after.

My students came, even after them being told they could take a mental health absence. They came.

I started off the class nervous. Very nervous. I reintroduced myself, reminding them that I am a Chicana feminist scholar and what that means about my academic and personal politics. I told them Chicana/o studies is not neutral on issues of race, gender, sexuality and economic justice. I told them I was not neutral on this election. I also said that this was a space they could talk about the election, any fears, any plans, any questions.

There was nodding, but silence. So I went into my lecture on food and The Hunger Games. But in addition to the focus on food, we also looked at reality TV. Its cruelties and attractions. The discussion and lecture (I mingle the two) had gone on for forty five minutes, and had included discussion on the ways the United States was Panem when I got to my last slide. It asked them to talk about Donald Trump as reality TV star and how this image he had constructed informed the support for his run for the presidency.

Discussion came alive. Everything about the election, about Trump, about his personality and persona and his views was discussed. The students looked at the intersections of his support and what it meant and what it would mean. Their ideas were powerful and informed.

Then we took our break and the students started their presentations.… Read the rest

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The day after

Posted on November 9, 2016November 10, 2016 by Annemarie Perez

I woke up shaken from the election results. Although I have cried, especially when faced with any kindness today, I mostly feel and have felt hollowed out. As I’ve spent the day in meetings at CSU Dominguez Hills surrounded by people of color, mainly African Americans and Latina/x/os, I’ve wondered if everyone was feeling what I am. More people that usual said “how are you today?” (one said “How about those Yankees?” but meant the same thing) to each other, with each of us replying “I’m okay.” I said I was okay too because what else can I say? I’m not. This reality is about as far from okay as anything I can imagine.

Tonight is my evening class, an interdisciplinary study course on American society. This semester it’s a class on food and culture. Although the semester is in full swing (maybe even winding down) this class only started three weeks ago. It’s a hybrid course, meeting online and in person for eight weeks. My students are only just beginning to know each other. Last week we celebrated Día de Los Muertos together at Self HelP Graphics. It was a wonderful event I loved sharing with them. This week we are scheduled to talk about The Hunger Games, share food and learn a bit about WordPress.

But this morning I sent an email to my class letting them know we are meeting, that I understood if they couldn’t come but that if they did, we would have space to talk about what’s happened and to try and understand what it means.… Read the rest

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Teaching Chicana/o Studies Online

Posted on August 27, 2016April 4, 2018 by Annemarie Perez

This semester has a lot of firsts, a lot of new work. First, as I mentioned, I’m working full time at CSU Dominguez Hills as coordinator of the humanities program and instructor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Chicana/o Studies. I am not teaching anywhere else, so rather than having multiple bags for three different campuses I’m spending my days at Dominguez Hills. I have an office (pictures when it gets set up) of my own and am responsible for making sure other instructors have what they need. I’m trying to get to know the how administration works at CSUDH, learn how to make good administrative choices and understand the history behind the program I’m responsible for leading.

A lot of changes, but that’s not what this post is about.

Because the other new thing I’m doing is teaching a Chicana/o Studies course on the family and gender issues online. This is something different. It’s the first Chicana/o studies class I’ve taught online and the first time the Chicana/o Studies department at CSUDH has offered an all online class.

I confess, after I said I’d do it, I had a bit of a freakout.

Here’s why: first, on a pedagogical level, I wondered how to move Chicana/o studies pedagogy online. How to, within the LMS Blackboard (which I found out I have to use at CSUDH), create an environment where learning could come from the students to each other. So much of how Blackboard works seems to rely on the idea of the transactional classroom where the knowledge and assignments all come from the instructor.… Read the rest

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Control and Content Warnings

Posted on August 25, 2016August 25, 2016 by Annemarie Perez

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I confess, I’m angry. I’ve been angry since yesterday when I read the letter written to first year students by the University of Chicago negating the idea of trigger warnings, safe spaces and student protest.

Kevin Gannon at the Tattooed Professor posted “Trigger Warning: Elitism, Gatekeeping, and Other Academic Crap” which explains in detail why the letter is bad policy and represents institutional elitism.

More pithy but on point is a tweet by Saladin Ahmed that captures U of C perfectly:

honestly U Chicago — a highly policed little white enclave in a city that’s mostly Black and Latino — has no place tsk-tsk-ing safe spaces

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) August 25, 2016

What I have to say is that trigger warnings, which I call “content warnings” make it possible for some students to take classes from me who otherwise could be hurt by them.

Why? Because some of the texts I work with are disturbing as hell. Not only that, but unlike the case of disturbing content in Antigone or other classics of Greek literature, there isn’t a corpus of secondary literature out there to warn, for example, that Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Calligraphy of the Witch has brutal scenes of rape. Why would I begrudge someone fair warning that they’re about to read a dark and violent novel?

I can’t say I always thought this way. I didn’t think about it at all. But then I taught a darkly beautiful autobiography by Josie Méndez-Negrete, Las hijas de Juan, with sustained accounts of abuse, sexual assault and neglect.… Read the rest

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