Aaron Barlin: "Who I am as an educator is fundamentally more than the subject I choose to teach."

Senior Aaron Barlin is capping his undergraduate experience at UCI with support for a new undergraduate club - "Club Lightbulb: Anteaters for Education." Aaron studied at UCI from 2015 to 2018, earning a double major in Education Science and English. He communicates that he chose UCI because he applied to colleges knowing he wanted to become an English teacher, and although many campuses offer undergraduate English programs, no other campus in California offers specifically Education Sciences to undergraduates as a major. In April of this year, Aaron shared his perspectives on his educational journey and his time at UCI.

Aaron Barlin, April 30, 2018

I originally wanted to teach English just for the sake of teaching English. Beginning in seventh grade, I realized that I had strengths in rhetoric and literature that I wanted to share. In practice with rhetoric, I developed an empowering sense of voice, and in literature, I learned to receive empathetically the voices of others. For as long as I have aspired to become an English teacher, I have wanted to empower my students’ identities like my English teachers had empowered mine. English functions as a critical dialectic between the students’ disciplinary learning and their moral, emotional, cultural becoming.
 
It wasn't until college when I realized that—no matter how much I master English in its infinite complexity—who I am as an educator is fundamentally more than the subject I choose to teach.
 
As a first-year undergraduate, I joined the Student California Teachers Association (SCTA), the pre-service program that belongs to California's teachers’ union, CTA. As an active SCTA member, having been holistically and fundamentally challenged to explore who all our students and teachers are across the state of California, I arrived at a dramatically new conception of education. Who I fundamentally am as an educator is a collaborative agent of equitable change—of critical social justice.
 
SCTA sharpened my aspiration to become an educator, but the union's discussion of education as a sociocultural construct also rendered my aspiration more daunting. When considering the most disenfranchised students, I am both driven and challenged by questions like: How do we construct English curricula that resonate with and represent culturally, linguistically diverse classes? How do we empower students who are chronically hungry, sleepless, or truant? How do we inspire students who suffer from domestic violence? or racial discrimination? or mental illness? How can we thoroughly educate students who pressingly have bills to pay and/or mouths to feed? How do we give the most systemically challenged, underprivileged students a voice?
 
From these questions emerges the newest club in the School of Education, “Club Lightbulb: Anteaters for Education.” Club Lightbulb stems from individuals’ interests, identities, and zones of proximal development relevant to their familiarity with education. Discussions of race, bias, privilege, and politics in education thus become available but not our necessary focus: not everyone is ready to dive into those discussions. Fundamentally, we engage members in personally relevant, professionally applicable opportunities to develop and explore empowering, holistic outlooks on education and to build relationships with other Anteaters across campus who are interested in education. Everyone is welcome: you do not have to be an undergraduate, an education sciences major, or an aspiring educator to grow with this club––anyone can be "for education." It is from this holistic experience that we hope personal growth and professional practice will ultimately emerge. I hope that this new club becomes the cornerstone for community and educative discussions for the School of Education.
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