[Podcast Introduction]
Marisella Rodriguez:
[instrumental music] Welcome to the Pedagogy Podcast, a space for UC Berkeley educators to share their stories on teaching, advancing equity and pushing the boundaries on what it means to cultivate an inclusive learning environment. Each conversation is co-led by your hosts, one of which is me, Marisella Rodriguez, Inclusive Teaching Lead at the Center for Teaching and Learning
Victoria Robinson:
And me, Victoria Robinson, Director of the American Cultures Center and Lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies.
Marisella Rodriguez:
For this episode, we're joined by Coco Auerswald, Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences and Co-Director of Innovations for Youth. Welcome, Coco.
[Interview Begins]
Marisella Rodriguez:
Well, we are so excited to have our guest here today. You know, this podcast was really formed from this idea in these conversations that Victoria and I have around what it looks like to be an equity minded teacher, how we can do those things at Berkeley, what are the opportunities, what are the barriers? And you know, my connection, Coco, to your course in particular, the one that is titled “Seeing People: Understanding Homelessness’ Roots, Stigmas, Systems and Solutions”
Marisella Rodriguez:
a Berkeley Changemaker course, just comes to mind often about how you navigate that space on campus, and you do these wonderful things that help students feel comfortable, feel connected to the content. So I just really can't say enough about how excited I am to have you in this space.
Victoria Robinson:
And I would say ditto for all the reasons that Marisella just highlighted, but also our students tell us what's going on in the classroom and who they feel is bringing them into conversation as co-constructors, co-learners and being really mindful of the different paths that they have led coming into the classroom.
Marisella Rodriguez:
And you're one of those faculty, so very excited and thank you for contributing so much to the AC curriculum.
Coco Auerswald:
Well, I'm really, truly honored. This is one of the reasons I get up in the morning is undergraduate education. I really love it. They give me so much energy and it's really part of my mission as someone who has a lot of privilege growing up and being here as a faculty member, you know, thinking about what I can do as a faculty member to make the experiences of people who've been marginalized more seen, particularly people experiencing homelessness and teaching undergrads about that and having that legacy hopefully be out there is an incredibly energizing experience. So thank you.
Victoria Robinson:
May I ask to get us going, you, in some ways hold a unique relationship to being at Berkeley, doing this work in that you came from UCSF and that medical practitioner background is a unique set of skills and experiences that comes into perhaps how you do think about the space you're creating. Could you share a little bit about that path from UCSF to Berkeley?
Coco Auerswald:
Well, the fun thing about that path is that path started at Berkeley. So I grew up on the East Coast. I have a North African French speaking mom and a Midwestern dad. And this is - the Berkeley Joint Medical Program - is pretty much the only program I applied to west of the Mississippi. I told my parents, “Don't worry, I'm just going there for five years and then I'm coming back to the East Coast where people aren’t really flaky and weird”.
Coco Auerswald:
And and that was over 35 years ago. My poor mom has finally given up on having me go back. So, so I came out here because I wanted to learn medicine with a context of social justice. And I also wanted to be able to learn more about Medical Anthropology. And being at Berkeley was the only place in the country that I could do that.
Coco Auerswald:
So I came here. I was actually - if you look kind of across from where we are sitting now, the big, beautiful lawn we have in front of Doe Library, Victoria might remember, used to have these green buildings in it, the T buildings, and they were these literally army green buildings made out of plywood and they had been built for the GI Bill.
Coco Auerswald:
So no, I'm not that old, but they were still around many, many years later. And so you could tell kind of how much prestige our program had because we were in the T seven building. And so that's where my work started becoming a medical student. And so I really had my roots here. I went to UCSF and really felt the rest of human knowledge kind of dropping away.
Coco Auerswald:
And this unique focus on learning Clinical Medicine and taking care of people. And that's really required in your training to really have that single minded focus. But the whole time I was really missing the Social-Science piece, it was really hard for me. And as soon as I got out of my residency, which took many years, I jumped right back in again in my fellowship of doing ethnographic work.
Coco Auerswald:
So it was - there was always a pull. And so after I finished my fellowship and joined the faculty at UCSF, one of my mentors called me and said, “Hey, you know, there's a position at Berkeley, I think it'd be really great for you”. And it felt like being called home again. And I, I actually still get tears in my eyes when I think about what it was like to set foot on campus again, because I really you know, I live in the Bay Area, but I didn't really - I live in the city.
Coco Auerswald:
I had no real reason to set foot on campus and setting foot on campus again and seeing the VLSB building where I had, you know, taken Anatomy and seeing all the places where I took Social Science classes. And it really overwhelmed me. And so it really - this feels like my true home. At UCSF, I was seen as sort of a little bit off the edge because I was always talking about, you know, social context, including on war - in words, including in clinic.
Coco Auerswald:
And it drove people a little nuts. Here., it's funny, I was seen as a positivist and so I j- I was joking there should be a UC campus at Treasure Island and maybe that would be the best place for me intellectually. So yeah, so I really feel like I belong here.
Victoria Robinson:
Wow. That's amazing. So great to hear that story.
Victoria Robinson:
You're known for working with houseless communities, and particularly the impact on youth of the ravages that houselessness can bring into people's lives. Wondering, could you share a little bit about that research and that teaching context?
Coco Auerswald:
Thank you. So I'll say it's really hard to pick words when the experience of not having shelter is so stigmatizing in our community.
Coco Auerswald:
So I think the important thing is to not have those attitudes -not the words. I'll just say that I use people experiencing homelessness because someone from the community actually really was upset with me. The first year I taught it because he thought I said houselessness class. I don't know who had told him that, but someone told him that and he was like, “People aren't missing a house, they're missing a home,
Coco Auerswald:
Coco! We need a home! You know, just houselessness it's just going to turn into the same thing as homelessness and people are just skirting around it and picking different words”. So, you know and he was just he sent me this message and he was just so mad and went on and on and on. It was really interesting because this is a guy I'm always trying to, like, get more attention from him to get involved in my teaching more.
Coco Auerswald:
So this is like the longest message I'd ever gotten for him. And I was like, Oh, I really just say homelessness. But I'm very focused on being person centered and seeing people experiencing homelessness and not saying, you know, homeless person or the homeless or things like that. So just so people know why I'm using that term, but I'm not trying to correct other people's terms.
Coco Auerswald:
So I started doing work with young people experiencing homelessness during the HIV pandemic. So the last really horrible pandemic and actually it was my focus on HIV and my concern about the degree to which it was affecting adolescents and the ethical issues around that that led me to young people experiencing homelessness. At that time, people were saying that it was unethical to test young people who didn’t - weren't living with their families, so they weren't testing young people who were experiencing homelessness.
Coco Auerswald:
And there were a lot of young people who were getting sick. So there were a lot of issues around that. And I wanted to do more work to understand the social context beyond just giving people bleach kits and handing out condoms and things that were not really addressing, you know, what we call now the upstream factors. So trying to understand more about what we could do about systems.
Coco Auerswald:
And so that's when I started doing that work. And that work was initially focused on social networks and understanding what happened to young people's social networks when they lived on the street and kind of shared belief systems on the street that might lead to either practices that protected each other or hurt each other and also something that I ended up publishing as, “The Life Cycle of Homelessness”
Coco Auerswald:
so - or, “Life Cycle of Youth Homelessness,” understanding why, really young people ended up on the street, what happened with their networks and their beliefs and how that related to their health behaviors and how ultimately that also made it difficult for them to leave, especially in the context of overall stigma. So that work really started at the individual level.
Coco Auerswald:
And then over time, I've kind of moved upstream and done more and more work that both partners with young people in the actual work as well as focuses more and more on structural factors that lead us to really think about what we need to do to change society so that young people can be healthier and have a successful transition to adulthood as opposed to how we can change young people, which is a lot of what we try to do now.
Coco Auerswald:
So I hope I answered your question.
Marisella Rodriguez:
How do you see the connection between your practitioner work, which is so rich and teaching?
Coco Auerswald:
So I practiced and taught here at Berkeley. I did both until I had to switch my appointment. And so now it's been about seven years since I've seen patients. So just to be totally clear, I'm no longer a practitioner.
Coco Auerswald:
That was a very, very, very difficult decision to make. I didn't particularly want to stop seeing patients, but I had to make a decision about, you know, kind of what was going to be on my tombstone, you know, what was my impact going to be with the finite time I have on this planet. And I decided that, given that I was very focused on ending youth homelessness in my lifetime, which I'm still focused on, that the best way I could do that was going to be by focusing more upstream.
Coco Auerswald:
So it was a very hard decision. Initially, I really saw it as temporary. Now I think it's probably not temporary and that's a weird feeling. However, the the stories and the experiences I had, certainly influenced my work every day. The fact of having been a medical student during the HIV pandemic and seeing what that did to the gay community and especially young gay men, I mean, it was basically my generation of gay men that was decimated.
Coco Auerswald:
So, you know, being a witness to that and trying to be an ally, you know, as a cis straight woman and a med student who had access to more power and privilege in the medical system. So all of that and just, you know, my experience working with young people, especially at San Francisco General Hospital, where I was a doc for 23 years.
Coco Auerswald:
So my experiences taking care of young people from the Bayview, young people from the Mission where I lived a good amount of time, and, you know, low income young people from around the city and sometimes other parts of the state, since other parts of the state don't have county hospitals because of Prop 13 and so I carry those stories with me and I consider them to be kind of my marching orders, you know, to walk and teach with the understanding of those young people's paths.
Coco Auerswald:
And I also love that Berkeley is one of the types of places that the young people that I cared for, you know, that Berkeley is the kind of place that gives them - really gives them an opportunity to access power and a voice. And I'm very proud. That's the thing that makes me most proud of teaching at Berkeley.
Victoria Robinson:
I'm sitting, absorbing so much and with so much gratitude for the work you do and that our students have the opportunity to experience that richness.
Victoria Robinson:
We often use so many different words to think about the classroom. We've we've stated equity, inclusivity, and to just start with those two terms, how do they guide how you think about constructing the classroom and those relationships with students? And are there other ways or terms that come to mind when you think about what principles guide you in putting the classroom into a place with relationships that you want to build?
Coco Auerswald:
Yeah, there's so - there are so many terms. You know, we want to bring in as equity, inclusivity, voice. I think one thing I really try to emphasize from the first day is that we're creating a community. I think of our class as a village and that we are working together in community to teach each other, but also help each other teach ourselves and also kind of, you know, meeting people where they're at and helping them grow wherever they are.
Coco Auerswald:
So community is really important. I think there is a lot of - I've thought about this since you shared this question with me before and before the class, I try to have a description of the class that emphasizes that the class will be a place where we are going to focus on real world health equity issues, but that we're going to scaffold students with understandings of a lot of these terms.
Coco Auerswald:
You know, there's so much really, I think for a student, especially students who aren't coming from bubbles like the Bay Area is just a lot of jargon, you know, that we're speaking with. So I talk about that and how for me, I don't want my class to be a place where they're learning to speak in code. I felt when I came to grad school here, a lot of times I'm sure that you've seen this too in your studies.
Coco Auerswald:
You know, it seems like sometimes in grad school people are just trying to create the longest, most meaningless sentence with as many multi-syllable words as possible, hopefully including like hegemony and, you know, something about Foucault and it's - I found it so frustrating. So on the other hand, some of that jargon’s really useful and is not actually jargon. So jargon is, I think of jargon as something we're using to exclude folks.
Coco Auerswald:
So I explain to students, you know, we want to understand terms like, you know, social determinants of health or white supremacy or anti-racism. We want to be on the same page about those terms because when we use them and we all agree on what they mean, it saves us a lot of words. You know, it saves us a lot of words.
Coco Auerswald:
And it also saves a lot of misunderstanding. And so they're really important heuristics. So, shortcuts to help us understand what we're each saying. And so I tried to, at the beginning of class, try to share some of those different terms in ways that students are teaching each other, but we're also bringing people on the outside. So we're not suddenly saying like, “Oh, you teach each other even if you don't know what to say,” that's not really fair.
Coco Auerswald:
So I try to share those types of terms in what I'm sharing so that students can see like, Oh wow, I'm actually going to be able to learn that jargon and understand what it means. And then I emphasize that I'm going to have them be active. And I also emphasize that I am very, very, very interested and frankly, really need to have students who have lived experiences of the public health challenges that we're going to talk about in class.
Coco Auerswald:
So that I really, really want students to feel welcome who have experienced homelessness, who have, you know, in the class I'm teaching this semester, who have experienced firsthand the harms of climate change and inequitable distribution of that in our community and police violence. And they're not expected to share those things. And I make it clear that it's not like they're men on display, but it's very important to me and what - the way I use that information that I get from them in a pre-course survey that is not anonymous, but it's confidential, is that then I share with the class, you know, just so you know, a third of the students in this class have experienced
Coco Auerswald:
homelessness and about 55% of them have families or friends who have experienced homelessness. And so that helps to unplug the sort of otherizing of that and this sort of common understanding we have when we're talking to other people that, well, we're all the housed ones, you know, even if we acknowledge that privilege, just assuming that because it's not true and one in five students at Cal last year experienced homelessness, that's a lot of people.
Coco Auerswald:
That's over 10,000 students. So trying to de-otherize that experience is really important. So I try to do that early on and then I do things that frankly are really hard to do in classrooms that are built for - I had to explain this to students over and over again last semester because my homelessness class went from being about 30 some students to 115 students in an auditorium size type classroom.
Coco Auerswald:
And I explained to them, I'm really sorry, this class is set up to be a talking head class, and I'm not a talking head. And no matter what this classroom looks like, I'm not going to do it. [laughter] So one of the most common feedback I get from students, this is so funny and I'm sure other faculty would laugh is, “We wish Coco would lecture more”. [laughter]
Coco Auerswald:
I'm honestly probably saying more words in a row right now in this podcast than I ever do in class. So creating an environment despite the space where students are working in groups and sharing each other's, you know, maybe each other’s experiences, but at least the opinions that they have from that experiences and then trying to have different ways they can share that with the class that doesn't necessarily involve speaking, which is really hard, you know, because I actually really want them to participate.
Coco Auerswald:
But I had a quiz question on Monday about the syllabus, and one of the things was class engagement is graded on everything except what? And the answer was class participation. And and they were like, and I said, I really want you to participate, but I'm not gonna grade you on it. So, so those kinds of things, I hope, help.
Coco Auerswald:
And there's a whole bunch of other things, honestly, including bringing people whose experiences are marginalized into the classroom and making them the experts or not making them, but recognizing that they're experts. You see, even there, I'm like having this academic perspective. But anyway, recognizing their expertise so that other students feel like, Hey, me too. And so, yeah, I would say that's a partial answer to that question.
Marisella Rodriguez:
That was quite a rich answer. I actually would say you named so many teaching techniques that, you know, I think we hear out there in in the landscape of inclusive teaching, active learning, holding space for student experiences, recognizing and valuing them. And, you know, to me, Coco, you're such what I would call a mission driven educator. And personally in my educational career, those have been the instructors that have impacted me the most.
Marisella Rodriguez:
It's not just the content, it's the valuing of experiences. And you said bringing the person into the perspective, reminding us that these are lives at stake. And I've seen you hold space for those experiences. And I'm wondering if you have any advice to faculty on how to do that, because I mean, I'll just say it. I'm not sure if you'll you'll agree, but I don't think it's easy to do that.
Marisella Rodriguez:
And I think a lot of faculty will come to the front of their classrooms and feel very nervous to do that, to feel like they're already going to be judged. And so maybe they choose not to do that. And so what might you say or advice you might give?
Coco Auerswald:
Can you clarify exactly what you mean by that? What is - because I can interpret what you're referring to in multiple ways, and I want to be sure I understand.
Marisella Rodriguez:
For the content that they're teaching.
Coco Auerswald:
Right, so I do not solicit or expect students to share their experiences. So if it comes up, then I will honor it. And honestly, I see it as a gift, but I do not solicit it. So I ask about that in the pre-course questionnaire. So I have a sense of who's in the room and I pay attention to it.
Coco Auerswald:
I'll admit in - when I put together people and teams to work on projects, I'll pay attention to what they've told us about their lived experience, both because with certain projects they might benefit from having a student with lived experience, but also maybe paying attention to it. -just maybe not - just being one of the students so that they're not suddenly like in the position of having like, Oh gosh, now I'm the expert in the group,
Coco Auerswald:
great. You know, so I haven't quite figured that out. And I think it's going to be different every semester because you don't know who you have and what kind of projects you're going to have. So so I do it more by bringing in folks and the folks I bring in are people who are in a position of strength to share their experiences.
Coco Auerswald:
So I would not, for instance, bring someone in, you know, randomly who is, you know, living on the street in Berkeley. It would be voyeuristic and it wouldn't be safe for that person. There would be a lot of issues. But if there is someone who's identified as a leader and you know, deserves respect as a leader regardless of their housing status currently, you know, if someone sees themselves as a leader of the community at People's Park or, you know, who's part of a group of folks who were formerly experiencing homelessness, who now do street performances like the Skywatchers folks in the Tenderloin, then I'll invite them.
Coco Auerswald:
But even then I will only - I won't introduce them as someone you know who has experienced homelessness, who is currently experiencing homelessness. I leave that up to them and then they'll bring that in insofar as they want to. Because my opinion when you're speaking to people who are vulnerable and this is really important to me and in a non-clinical setting, in a clinical setting, I really need to know like, okay, what's going on with your body?
Coco Auerswald:
I really need to know and I'm going to protect it. But if I'm - if I have someone coming into the class and I know, for instance, that, you know, they've been harmed, let's say it has something to do with my class now where we're talking about climate change. And so maybe their parents were migrant farm workers and have experienced harm, you know, due to fires or things like that.
Coco Auerswald:
I will talk to them, not to get them to share that experience, but I will talk to them as a member of that community who then is an expert and say things more like, you know, what is your experience of how fires have affected the migrant farm worker community based on your lived experience and based on the people you know, And then they're going to share what they want to share.
Coco Auerswald:
And I tell them beforehand, You're not here to share, you know what's going on with your own family. That's that's really up to you. But I - you're here because you're - you have knowledge that I don't have and that most of the students in class don't have. So I interview folks as experts and then people you know, people tend to like talking about themselves.
Coco Auerswald:
And if they feel safe sharing information that might be othering in other spaces, then that might be freeing and but it's not expected.
Victoria Robinson:
Coco, I have a couple of thoughts, ideas, questions that come from what you've just shared. One is very structural, which is that the bringing of community, community representation, community voice that comes from the incredibly dense topics and complex topics that you’ve - you bring to the classroom.
Victoria Robinson:
I'm just wondering if you have advice or you even have dreams of how that work gets structured, gets supported, gets built in ways that's really sustainable. So that's one - you know, big, big question. And the second actually comes from, I think, where we're at in some ways a transition or a provocation of terms with intent around this work from equity, inclusion and diversity, belonging into projects that we're now naming as anti-racism and some of the expectations that are crucial to anti-racism and not just institutional and structural shift, but personal.
Victoria Robinson:
And that personal comes with a lot of deep work, reflection, emotion and to be honest, trauma. And that's a deep project, a personal project to hold on with all the other factors of institutional, structural change that are required for anti-racism. And I'm wondering how do you hold those kind of emotive affective pieces of that work together in the classroom? And to be honest, in a 15 week semester when you have to achieve so much. Sorry, those are two big questions.
Marisella Rodriguez:
Easy questions!
Coco Auerswald:
Yes, I was going to say I think we need to adjourn to 5:00 and get a very big bottle of wine. [laughter]
Coco Auerswald:
Partially for your first question, I probably need to be sedated a little bit. And that is because if you don't experience outrage and I'm just saying - I'm saying this as I really love this campus.
Coco Auerswald:
I really, really do. But it is you know, it's a product. It's a big - first of all, it's a bureaucratic mess that would like shock Kafka. Honestly, it's unbelievable how, you know, just things are so messy. And again, and I also really love staff. So staff listening to this, it's not on you and you have to grapple with this stuff more than we do as faculty and students.
Coco Auerswald:
So thank you. But it's a mess. It's also, you know, capitalist and so, you know, people are just very much following money. And where does money go and is it justified? Is there deservingness, around that money? Etc.. So the thing that frankly, I'm just going to say it pisses me off is reimbursing community members who take time out of their day where they're doing work that is at least as important as what we're doing here at Cal.
Coco Auerswald:
And I think what we're doing here is really important. But they're taking time out of their day. They're coming to this space where, you know, we do speak jargon. We expect people to sort of guess what we're thinking. It's a very intimidating environment. A lot of folks don't necessarily come from this kind of environment. So just the fact of being here, they're not necessarily going to feel like they belong.
Coco Auerswald:
And then for me to legitimately pay them, they have to get - they have to apply to be a vendor in the UC system, which means that they have to share their taxes and they have to share all kinds of stuff for the university to pay them. And I'm talking about not a lot of money. And this is and they treat them the same way as people who like here -
Coco Auerswald:
Boudin Bakery, you know, that we're taking - you know, they're not Boudin Bakery like Boudin Bakery can do this because they're going to sell thousands of dollars, hopefully tens of thousands of dollars of boxes of lunches, and it's worth it. But why should George, from the, you know, who has exited homelessness and is now a community leader who's taking time to come to Cal and trying not to feel intimidated, have to fill out, honestly hours of forms and wait weeks and then respond to more emails, etc. to get the check?
Coco Auerswald:
And I'm going on and on about this because I'm hoping that people will feel shame around this here, honestly so and and so reimbursing people is actually one of the reasons I met you, Victoria, because I wanted money to be able to reimburse people. My husband's like, “Okay, so this is for another person coming into your classroom?” And I’m like, [whispers] yes, it's for another person
Coco Auerswald:
coming into my class, so like - but I promise I’m gonna get funding. I mean, honestly, we have privilege that we can do it and he can deal. But, you know, I just thought why not make it legitimate? And also it feels weird to them because then they're getting a check from the professor and I still can't use that money for that.
Coco Auerswald:
Even the money you folks have given us. So we need to honor people's time. We need to honor people's expertise and we need to pay them. And it has to be an amount that is respectful of their expertise, real money for that time. So I know I've just gone really long time about that, but it's a big issue.
Victoria Robinson:
Thank you for naming it.
Coco Auerswald:
Yeah.
Marisella Rodriguez:
And in a timely manner too, you know, we're we're sort of almost pushing it aside as saying, you know, this is a minor thing or it's a logistical thing, but these are the ways you get expertise in the room so that students can learn in authentic ways. And when you look at it from that perspective, that could be life changing to a student in your room. That could change their whole career trajectory, it could change how they go home and speak to their families or think about their own lives.
Marisella Rodriguez:
Those things matter.
Victoria Robinson:
And to use another piece of jargon, it's epistemic and it's ontological.
Coco Auerswald:
Yeah. And the campus is saying that their focus needs to be on community engagement and discovery, QED. I mean, honestly, this is not a side issue. This is a central issue and that's why [whispers] it pisses me off. So the other issue is something that I'm really working on.
Coco Auerswald:
So I, you know, my parents both had graduate educations. I went to a very good undergraduate university. I had a chance to go to UCSF. I'm a faculty member at, you know, the number one public university in the world, I think. And, you know, I own a house in San Francisco, all those things. So I, I know that I come from a lot of privilege and I'm very aware of that.
Coco Auerswald:
I also think that students - I've I've found- it's interesting talking to students and trying to be very honest about that. Also being honest about the experiences of othering in my family and how those things have affected me. My mom's family was kicked out of Tunisia for being Jewish, and that has caused a lot of mental health issues and trauma across generations
Coco Auerswald:
in my family. So everyone's really complicated, right? And so trying to share that and honor people's experiences, it's challenging. So I think different things that I've done have been to really enjoy and appreciate and be grateful to be a lifelong learner and to know that I'm learning from a lot of different types of sources too, to know that I need to be not just applying this in the classroom, but thinking in my daily life the way young people in my class have to deal with it in their daily lives about, you know, what this means and that it's not like some window dressing to what I'm doing at Berkeley.
Coco Auerswald:
That's another thing. And then the third thing I do is have a session on positionality in each class. And so I feel a little bad for the students who take take both my classes. And I'm - I feel very honored that a number of my students take both the classes that I teach and then they have to do it again. But it's interesting, even they say, “Wow, you know, my statement was different this time”.
Coco Auerswald:
And so thinking about what your positionality is, you know, what what are you bringing to this place today, right now and what are you carrying and how does that affect your learning? And, you know, what does that mean? And so how I negotiate that session is evolving for sure. But that is a session that students really resonate with.
Coco Auerswald:
And it's not a third rail at all. The students love it, and it's always a session that the students mention at the end in the evaluations about how important that session was to them.
Victoria Robinson:
That's great. Thank you so much for sharing. We're almost out of time, which is unbelievable., it's just flown by. Are there things that you had wanted to share in this space, especially for colleagues listening, of experience you've gathered and advice you'd love to share and invite them into conversation?
Coco Auerswald:
Well, I thought it was interesting when you were - we were preparing for this and thinking about, you know, what about for people who - so the whole grading issue and also academic rigor issue and those kinds of things. This all that is really important. And so first of all, I would say that teaching this, it would be a lot easier if I gave lectures every time, honestly, maybe not the first year or even the second year - no diss to my colleagues who deliver amazing lectures and that I wish I could go see.
Coco Auerswald:
But once you got them, you kind of have it down. And so what what it means for me is that every class and every semester is really different and I'm reinventing and recontextualizing and recalibrating. And it's so much work and it means that things just moving all the time and it's harder to predict. And that's something that makes the students anxious.
Coco Auerswald:
And so it can be challenging. So I think you have to really share with the students what your process is and why, why things are like that. I think that it's really important that we work on having spaces where we can teach these classes. Like right now I go to bed at night dreaming of having Wheeler Hall 120, whatever it is, and I’m praying
Coco Auerswald:
I get it. And I hope maybe by being on this podcast someone will take pity on me and give me that classroom next year. [laughter] But I learned I need that classroom so badly I can't even -
Victoria Robinson:
I’m teaching in it right now.
Coco Auerswald:
Yeah If I don't get that class, I think I'll start crying. [inaudible] Yeah, yeah, please. [laughter] But I think also just thinking about the grading piece is really important.
Coco Auerswald:
I had a student write me last year and say, I really want to take your class. I got a message from X in such group, you know, affiliation type group about your class. But I want to know if you're going to grade me a lot on my writing. So I do honestly believe that we need to do a better job teaching Berkeley students and grad students to write.
Coco Auerswald:
It's hard in a big university, and I believe that, but I'm not doing it in my class. I'm just not. So I think that if you want to really be sure that everyone feels welcome and you want to teach specific skills, then you need to narrow your goals and accept it and own those things you want to teach and be okay about not teaching the rest.
Coco Auerswald:
And that's hard. I am a very picky editor, but yeah, and I'll give them feedback, but I won't grade them on it.
Marisella Rodriguez:
All of that is just music to my ears, you know, this juggling act of keeping things structured and consistent but not the same every time, because you always have a new group of students in front of you.
Marisella Rodriguez:
You have different classroom contexts, but also you named it or you hinted at it a little bit. Students are different in the day. You know, we evolve, something happens, we have feelings and suddenly I'm a new person in a learning space, even though it's the afternoon and I would still - in one in the morning. I just - I'm so inspired by everything that you're saying
Coco Auerswald:
And COVID and, the strike and rains and all the things. [laughter] Sorry, I’m stepping on your words but all those change the learning environment so much.
Coco Auerswald:
Yeah. Wow. Ouch.
Victoria Robinson:
This has been incredible. We've been - we've had the best conversation. I knew it would happen. [laughter] Coco. we're lucky. Very lucky to have you as part of the teaching community at UC Berkeley and very honored that you teach in the American Cultures curriculum. And you named the learning process across multiple classes. And my hope is that students do take multiple classes with you and have that growth and have that experience, and that's part of their signature Berkeley life.
Victoria Robinson:
So thank you for all you do.
Coco Auerswald:
Thank you both for for your support. I really, really appreciate it. A lot. [instrumental music]
Marisella Rodriguez:
This podcast is a partnership between the American Cultures Center and the Center for Teaching and Learning. These episodes would not be possible without the support and guidance from Doug Parada, Program Associate for the American Cultures Center, the Ethnic Studies Changemaker Podcast Studio, Angel Garcia, undergraduate student in Chicano Studies, and Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, Director of the Ethnic Studies Changemaker Podcast Studio and Lecturer in the Ethnic Studies Department.
Marisella Rodriguez:
Thank you!