Five Students Win Outstanding GSI Award

 

Andrew Falk	Greta Kirschenbaum	Miri Lavi-Neeman	Andrew Eliot Maul	Thomas M. Philip

Five students from the Graduate School of Education were honored with Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Awards this year.

Andrew Falk won the Outstanding GSI Award for his role in teaching an undergraduate course, Current Issues in Education. “One of the things that I think is most powerful about this course,” said Falk, “is the multiple opportunities it creates for collaboration. It is these opportunities to share successes, examine challenges, reflect on common and dissimilar experiences, and consider the ways in which we are meeting and have yet to meet the goals we have set for ourselves that allow us to continually refine and improve our work and the class. This makes this class a success more than the efforts and ingenuity of any one person. One of the basic principles of the class is that we have far greater potential for learning as a collective in which each individual has an equal opportunity to contribute, and I think it is in working to live that principle that this class has shone.”

Outstanding GSI Greta Kirschenbaum also helped teach Current Issues in Education. “It’s an honor to receive the award,” said Kirschenbaum. “I really enjoy teaching undergraduates. It’s is particularly interesting and exciting to teach a course like this one, where the students have more of an opportunity than they normally would to take charge of their own education. I’d also mention that one of things that had made the experience great has been the opportunity to work with John Hurst, who has created a phenomenal framework for the course I teach.”

Miri Lavi-Neeman was awarded Outstanding GSI honors for helping to teach an undergraduate education course called The Southern Border. Describing her teaching method, she said, “I always like to organize the knowledge and information from readings and lectures by bringing two or three main questions to class and then work with insights and controversies around the questions. A good question must be one that we can confront with more than one possible answer. It must be a critically relevant and even charged question, one that we can argue about in a friendly space. I think that when we ask questions, argue, and discuss with each other, we turn knowledge from passive knowledge to active, as Whitehead described it. It is not only more interesting but eventually the student is more prepared for the final.” Her approach also includes being available to students: “I tried to be as accessible as I could to the students, always to find time to meet with them, to discuss their grades, writing, and concerns. I always try to remember that they work hard not only in my course but also in other classes and that for some of them grades are critical.”

Andrew Eliot Maul won the Outstanding GSI Award for his work in teaching a graduate statistics course, Data Analysis II. “I understand that statistics can be an intimidating subject,” he said, “so I teach in a very practical and down-to-earth manner.” The students come from many areas of education, and Maul makes sure he understands who his audience is and what applications they will have for statistics. “I allow the students’ interests to drive my teaching style,” Maul said. Teaching this course has been a highlight of his time at Cal: “It’s been the experience of teaching this course, of interacting with the students and learning from them and watching them learn that’s taught me more and forced me to develop as a person more than anything else in my graduate life so far.”

Thomas M. Philip won the OGSI Award for his work in helping to teach a graduate course, The Philosophy of Education. He credits the course’s instructor for making this a unique teaching opportunity: “Lynda Tredway was an amazing mentor. This is one of the only courses where I have seen an instructor incorporate progressive pedagogy that we often only discuss at a theoretical level. Her example constantly reminded me of the need to translate our intellectual pursuits into concrete practices that address equity in learning and in society at large.”

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