A Teacher's (Un)Guide to Surviving Graduate School: When "Don't Panic" Just Isn't Enough

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Seven
  In Roundtable Session: Educators and Graduate Students: Simultaneous Education and Academic Work in Whiteness Environments (Table 11)

Abstract

Context & Purpose
Pre-COVID, one national survey reported that an overall 67% of graduate students are satisfied or very satisfied with their higher education experience, with factors like financial aid and course load as well as identity factors (race, gender, age, etc.) impacting this level (RNL, 2018). Individual institutions may also be seeking specific “satisfaction” results from their student populations, especially as higher education continues to adjust “post-COVID” (Rapanta et al, 2021). The experiences of students who are also educators in some capacity could further complicate this role dichotomy and should be taken more seriously across university contexts. Another important contextual factor is that Iowa was one of many states that passed a “divisive concepts” bill (“Educational Gag Orders,” 2022) that focuses specifically on preventing educators from teaching about systemic racism and sexism. Not only does this education policy, called H.F. 802 (2021), complicate my personal journey as someone who is using Critical Race Theory and critical whiteness within their dissertation, and thus trying to learn more about these and other critical theories, but this also impacts me as someone who teaches within an education preparation program. What then is an educator and student to do when these institutional powers contradict themselves through policy and practice, enact barriers, and/or expect my complicity in these policies? How can we encourage our higher education institutions to reimagine their “new normal” within an already complex situation (Love, 2020)?

Theoretical Framing
I am one of those stereotypical white, female, middle-class folks who became a K-12 teacher (Leonardo and Boas, 2013), even though I was still struggling with concepts like a deficit mindset and race-evasiveness (Bonilla-Silva, 2017). However, as I started to learn about how much I didn’t know within my graduate program and time as teaching faculty, I started embracing the idea of being a teacher-academic. As I continue through my PhD program, I recognize that the ongoing process of my social justice journey is just getting started; however, despite the exceptional experiences I’ve had with individual faculty members, multiple institutional obstacles have made both my effort to grow as a social-justice minded teacher and as a critical scholar difficult. Therefore, this conceptual presentation will use a power-conscious framework that emphasizes institutional levels of power as well as “dominant group members’ investment in power” (Linder, 2018, p. 15) to better understand my experiences with both individual and institutional barriers and hold myself accountable to fighting for equitable change.

Scholarly Significance
Beyond the basic logistical needs of funding, course availability, etc., I will engage in conversation with fellow panelists and the audience regarding how I have both successfully and unsuccessfully asked for what I and fellow graduate students need, taught preservice teachers about systemic oppression in an era of H.F. 802, and how we can all encourage each other to push for more as both students and educators. Thus, this conversation will build on previous research regarding educator and graduate student experiences within this panel’s conversation of community and individual growth.

Author

• Sarah Chase, Iowa State University
  Presenting Author