Remember a long time ago when I used to blog?

Phew! That was a rough quarter. Some beautiful things were born out of the magic though…For a long time, it has been a secret dream of mine to teach in higher education. Dare I even say that it has been my dream to become a professor. I remember being 7 or 8 sitting in my basement in our home in Long Island when my dad introduced me to a dear family friend, Professor Kim. I was enchanted by this smiling old man – mostly because he was the first Korean adult I had ever met who spoke English perfectly. I was so impressed by him. I mean, being able to speak English fluently is quite a feat, I suppose, but this man was also kind, gentle, humble, AND he was a professor. Not exactly Wonder Woman or the Bionic Woman, but I believe that that unassuming old man became my hero that day and inspired me to dream…

Why has my dream been a secret, you ask? Well, the only reason I kept it a secret for most of my life is that I never thought I was smart enough for that title. Part of my process these last two quarters in the SLPD program has been discovering the unique insights we all bring to our respective fields and the importance of sharing those secret dreams that we have, which may even spark a transformation in places that are desperate for renewal. Another part of my process has been learning how to share some of my insights with people I deeply respect. One way I have shared my thoughts has been through writing a teaching manifesto. It was one of our final projects for our class, Education and Supervision in Speech Language Pathology, and it was quite possibly the most challenging thing I’ve ever written. I’m sure these kinds of documents evolve over time, but here is a snapshot of mine in December 2020.

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If social media bios are the new platform on which to broadcast one’s philosophies of life, mine indicates, “Lifelong commitment to noticing. Will intervene when necessary.”  This is my general philosophy of life.  As an avid gardener, I have discovered that this is my ideal way to connect with nature – to keep a watchful eye for interactions of nature and to intervene by planting, weeding, pruning, watering, etc., when necessary. I hold this to be true for all manners of teaching as well.  I naturally lean toward a “guide on the side” kind of teaching philosophy.  Guiding takes noticing and deciding if, when, and how to intervene.  It allows for space and autonomy, for universality, yet individuality.  Of course, there are parts of a student’s learning journey that requires a lot of intervening.  With noticing and knowing your students, you can discern the appropriate moments to step back, keep a watchful eye, and enjoy the natural unfolding of learning.  

For many years and, admittedly, even now, I have felt disqualified to teach in higher education.  For nearly twenty years of working with children in various settings, I have put my head down and focused solely on these tiny learners and their learning environments.  I feel that it is now the time to emerge from the public-school battlefield and venture into the larger world of academia.  My hope is to teach undergraduate and graduate students about how school-based speech language pathologists are on the frontlines of identifying children with communication and learning difficulties, oftentimes even before anyone else notices.  Where I am located in the suburbs of New York City, it often seems that newly graduated SLPs are disproportionately drawn to hospitals and outpatient clinics, while only a handful end up in schools.  One possible reason is that public school positions do not open up very frequently and when they do, it’s a matter of who you know and how quickly you’re available.  The public school can be a very lonely place for SLPs and a rather barren environment when it comes to studying research, improving our field, and giving back to educating future SLPs.  Social media, with all of its shortcomings, can be an eye-opening sociological barometer of the general trends in our field, especially in school settings.  A newly graduated student perusing Instagram for inspiration may think that being a well-regarded SLP prioritizes the best places to download materials and how to organize with color-coded cards.  I refer to this not to discount their importance but to illustrate the point that the proverbial “road less traveled” can feel alienating in a world of kid-friendly fonts and oral motor handouts when one is trying to make “all the difference”, especially in a setting that can be seen as veering from our medical and private practice counterparts.  My philosophy of teaching and of general clinical practice is rooted in my mission for more depth in the public school setting and in our field.  I would like to inspire advanced learners to think deeply about the gravitas of the field of speech language pathology and to bring back honor to our work in public schools.

I am confident that one way to regain the respect of our field is to consider what Daniel and Poole (as cited in Fisher, 2009) regards as “pedagogical ecology.” I believe that SLPs – researchers, professors, students, clinicians – need to soberly assess the current state of learning and teaching in real-life contexts within our field.  While the sciences haven’t traditionally been at the forefront of education, the field of Mind, Brain, and Education has been advancing us towards integrating research with educational practice.  I hope to be considered a “neuroeducator” (Gardner, 2008) and perhaps even a neuroclinician, which, case in point, one might hope to be redundant but isn’t.  Considering the principles of MBE and learning theories can help SLPs in higher education to reflect on how to most effectively communicate and impart knowledge to our students. 

Adults, like children, are primed and internally motivated to learn when they feel supported.  I start every one of my sessions with my kids asking, “How’s life?” I find out about a lot of my students’ lives by just asking that casual and seemingly inconsequential question.  In over 20 years of working with children and collaborating with other educational professionals, when we start our sessions on a basic human-to-human level, there is more buy-in from them and from me to work on seemingly mundane skills. MBE supports this practice – “Support (academic, moral, or otherwise) from others (often teachers, peers, or parents) is critical for optimal academic performance, which includes learning.” (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2010, p. 79.)

I am strongly committed to my “How’s life?” philosophy.  It embodies the humanistic and cognitive constructivist structures of human connection and metacognition, which lends itself to learners taking ownership of their learning – something that learners at every level will take with them long after they have left my classroom.  I believe in balance and looking at the whole person as an academic learner, as a lifelong learner, and as a contributor to this world.  I try to live my life in this way and I try to raise my own boys in this way.  We are humans first and we all interact with the world and navigate through it as the unique people we are.  It makes sense to me that we should connect that way with one another and that we should connect with our learning environment in that way as well.  Students construct and contextualize knowledge, and their unique experiences act as individualized learning scaffolds and launchpads. 

My life and teaching align with the humanistic philosophy.  Some of my most life-changing moments in the classroom as a learner have been when teachers encouraged me to work towards my full potential and become an autonomous learner.  When professors and teachers have seen some potential in me that I did not see in myself and guided me toward that potential, I became a more flexible and open learner.  I firmly believe a teacher’s role should be one characterized by vulnerability and humility.   Providing the structures needed to allow people to learn information as uniquely as only they can learn is what I believe sets people up for lifelong learning.  MBE suggests that when knowledge is actively constructed by learners, they become more engaged and motivated to learn (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2010).

Having started my career as a resource room teacher/learning specialist, I have been trained to analyze the underlying processes and the hierarchy of learning, consistent with the cognitivist/constructivist learning theory – “how knowledge is acquired, constructed, and represented in the mind and subsequently remembered.” (Kay & Kibble, 2016, p. 19).  For my littlest students, I often verbalize connections out loud, and, I expect, for more advanced learners, I would guide metacognitive engagement with information that offers tools and constructs for future learning of new information.  As a teacher, it is my role to help my students to “learn how to learn” (as cited in Torre et al., 2006, p. 904).  I facilitate learning opportunities using induction and problem-based learning along with role play to allow students to build upon their current knowledge and engage in reflective practice about their learning.  Induction and problem-based learning align with the cognitivist/constructivist philosophy of “frequently requiring students to take active roles in their learning and to develop higher-order thinking skills” (Hadley & Fulcomer, 2010, p. 9). Though role play is not a model often used in SLP graduate programs, I agree with Bligh’s assertion that role play is important in “the development of empathy, self-awareness, and attitude change” (as cited in Hadley and Fulcomer, 2010, p. 7).   This philosophy of teaching aligns with what research in cognition and neuroscience reveals that “knowledge is based in activity” (Fischer, 2009, p. 5).  Students’ interactions with the world around them, including undergraduate and graduate programs, shape the anatomy and physiology of their brains; learning happens. 

I believe that the cognitivist/constructivist framework can work hand in hand with humanistic orientation which emphasizes self-direction.  Learning how to learn (as a teacher and a learner) with initial structure and teacher-led guidance can be the starting point for leading a student toward autonomy and self-direction in their education.  Consistent with how I teach my little students, as a teacher of undergraduate and graduate students, I would progressively lessen the amount of structure I give as students begin to build upon their current knowledge using the tools I offer them by means of metacognitive self-reflection. They would start to use and reflect upon those tools as they encounter new information, filling up their own toolboxes for future learning.  We see this confirmed in a principle of MBE that says, “the learning process does not occur in a vacuum, however; rather, it is always grounded on past knowledge and is constructed by the learner him- or herself…Because our experiences are unique, the foundations of our constructed knowledge are also different.” (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2010, p. 209).  Interacting with our learners with humanistic and cognitivist/constructivist approaches breeds diverse thought and novel approaches to our field.

The flipped classroom creates an environment for this and for active learning.  There is a level of commitment and ownership that students must take in a flipped classroom that simulates what SLPs do for their students, clients, and patients every day.  Brame (2013) challenges teachers to provide in-class activities that focus on higher level cognitive activities and that students should use class time “to deepen their understanding and increase their skills at using their new knowledge.”  For the SLP and for teachers, this is where theory and practice meet.   

Metacognition is the engine that drives deep learning and, therefore, the basis for which learning should be assessed.  If academic content could be compared to filled boxes of goods, I would say that metacognition is the vehicle by which those boxes are moved, (re)organized, and (re)combined.  When students don’t have access to that vehicle, it needs to be taught explicitly in order for the deep work to happen.  I also believe that metacognition repairs weak connections and bridges islands of thought, which additionally makes it crucial for the work of SLPs.  Assessments allow us to find these weak connections and bridge those gaps.  Low-stakes assessments and students’ competence self-inventories offer valuable information about potential knowledge gaps and future goals (Ambrose, 2010).  Specific goals and target criteria need to be clearly delineated for both the teacher and learners, not only for goal-directed practice but also for feedback.  A principle I have always tried to adhere to with my young students is giving delayed, formative feedback after a short time of practice to allow them to take ownership of their practice as well as their skills.  This is confirmed in research by Mathan and Koedinger (2005) that the time in which feedback is given is as important as the goals toward which they are working. 

Summative assessments are often the go-to type of assessment in undergraduate and graduate schools; however, from personal experience, it creates negative stress that is counterproductive to learning.  The focus begins to shift from learning to numbers and grades.  This has been my experience and has even steered me away from corners of curiosity in our field.  As a field of helping people develop or regain the basic human function of communication and swallowing, we help to build, rebuild, organize, reorganize, connect, and reconnect.  We wouldn’t be serving our students, clients, and patients well unless we foster learning beyond scores and incorporate components of self-directed learning into our therapy sessions and our classes.  Our sessions and classes would benefit from what Ambrose et al. (2010) refer to as the cyclical components of self-direction – assessing the task, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, planning an appropriate approach, applying strategies and monitoring performance, and reflecting on and adjusting one’s approach (p. 193).  I believe there are ways to approach assessment and feedback without the usage of high stakes quizzes and exams.  Process supersedes snapshot performance measures, especially in the field of speech language pathology.  Case studies, group presentations, large projects that are broken down into smaller parts are all assessment methods that can be graded and yet reveal the process of learning along the way.  Feedback given on these smaller parts can also allow students to self-reflect on how to improve their final projects.  This kind of formative feedback offers models for lifelong learning and metacognitive self-evaluation. 

I could not write about encouraging others to be lifelong learners without expressing my own goals for lifelong learning.  As I look to the future of working in higher education, I intend to answer and solve these questions: 

How can reflective practice and metacognition be explicitly written into the SLP graduate curriculum?  

We have seen again and again how the research points to the importance of metacognition and self-reflection in education.  Ambrose et al. assert that our learners may exhibit “shortcomings in metacognition” and that “these metacognitive skills tend to fall outside the content areas of most courses, and consequently they are often neglected in instruction” (Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 191).  The intentionality of incorporating structures to encourage our metacognitive skills and the reverse engineering design of the SLPD classes I am taking at Northwestern University have been so eye opening for me.  One of the most impactful parts of these classes has been reflecting on how I’ve been learning – what has worked for me, what hasn’t, and what I have needed to do to make it work.  If we were to be equally intentional for our undergraduate and graduate students, what kind of positive effect would that have on our future clinicians?  With each class we take in the SLPD program, I apply all of my experiences to the little ones I teach. Even now, 15 years after I have graduated from my Master’s program, I’m still learning.  This leads me to my next query:

How can we mentor and coach our graduate students and clinicians beyond graduation?  How effective is post-graduation mentoring for new clinicians?

Every SLP would benefit from finding a community or a cohort led by a mentor, to continue the support of learning.  We need direction and accountability at every level of clinical mastery to regularly reflect on our practice, lest we become identical reproductions from the same SLP mold. I often look back and wish that I had had a mentor when I was starting out to help me find my own voice, which, of course, is what we do for our own students, clients, and patients.  I think that early on, the intention is that the CF supervisor would fulfill that role; however, most CF supervisors are overworked with their own caseloads, and there is no real time, nor the appropriate training, for the kind of fostering of reflective practice that is so important for learning. My hope is to investigate the effects of post-graduation mentorship from the graduating institution, not just the CF supervisor.  I would love to create a mentorship program to extend beyond graduation as a way for new graduates to have additional support into their clinical fellowship year.  It is my thought that this relationship will organically carry over beyond the nine months, creating a larger network of connected SLPs throughout the country.  I hope that the effect of this network will have additional and unexpected positive effects of changing the monochromatic panorama of our field.  The blind spot of the expert, or the unconsciously competent, can have a systemic impact on our field in that the organizations making the big decisions do not prioritize this need for continued support and community.  I believe that it is the responsibility of universities, the ones who are aware of the problems of expert blind spots, to take charge of creating professional communities which will encourage accountability, healthy practice, and diversity of thought.  The universities can help their students find their unique voices and commission them to take them to their corners of the country. 

I have been increasingly disappointed by the homogeneity of the field of speech language pathology along a multitude of dimensions.  Surely there are powerful, diverse SLP voices out there ushering us away from mainline and homogenous thought that can speak into and over the resounding quick-tips and how-to trends.  And surely these voices can multiply and resonate across service delivery models and settings, sending sound waves that will carry to future generations of SLPs.  That is my hope, albeit a radical hope, and I feel in a way that it’s my duty to redeem my own bruised learning experiences by teaching in higher education.  A university position where I can teach didactically and guide clinically would be my ideal teaching position. 

Many SLPs and SLP students equate self-sacrifice, to the point of detriment, with generosity and duty (myself included).  I want to be a teacher who gives people life, not takes it away.  I want to educate in a way that adds, not subtracts from their lives.  Most SLPs I have spoken to have had negative experiences which have caused them to steer clear of investing their time to future SLPs.  This is understandable but so tragic, because I can think of no better way to promote academia than to bring fresh voices from the field and the frontlines.  I am committed to appreciate what has been given to me during my time in school and I will pass along what I have learned as I continue to try to think creatively and divergently about educating future speech language pathologists.  

References

Ambrose, S, Bridges, M., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M., and Norman, M. (2010). How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bligh, D. A. (2000). What’s the use of lectures? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.

Daniel, D. B., & Poole, D. A. (2009). Learning for life: An ecological approach to pedagogical research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 91–96.

Fischer, K. W. (2009). Mind, Brain, and Education: Building a Scientific Groundwork for Learning and Teaching. Mind, Brain, and Education, 3(1), 3-16.

Gardner, H. (2008). Quandaries for neuroeducators. Mind, Brain, and Education, 2, 165–169.

Hadley, A. J., & Fulcomer, M. C. (2010). Models of Instruction Used in Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Programs. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 32(1), 3-12.

Kay, D., & Kibble, J. (2016). Learning Theories 101: Application to Everyday Teaching and Scholarship. Advances in Physiology Education, 40(1), 17-25.

Mathan, S. A., & Koedinger, K. R. (2005). Fostering the intelligent novice: Learning from errors with metacognitive tutoring. Educational Psychologist, 40 (4), 257 – 265.

Novak J, Gowin DB. Learning How to Learn. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2010). Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Brain-Based Teaching. New York:WW Norton & Company. Chapter 4: Sorting the Science from the Myths.

Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2010). Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Brain-Based Teaching. New York: WW Norton & Company. Chapter 8: Evidence-Based Solutions for the Classroom – How MBE Science Offers Useable Knowledge to Teachers.