Alumni Spotlight: Libby Indermaur (`19) Serving a distinct population
Libby is a graduate student at Cornell in the Chris Smart Lab, School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section. A teaching experience at a local prison has inspired Libby.
During the spring 2024 semester, doctoral student Libby Indermaur was a teaching assistant in Professor Emeritus Bill Fry’s plant pathology course at the Cayuga Correctional Facility in Moravia, New York. Through the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP), incarcerated individuals can earn an associate’s degree, and some students aspire to eventually earn their bachelor’s. The course inspired Indemaur, who is studying plant pathology, to pursue teaching as a career.
What did you find rewarding about being a TA for the class?
This experience was full of firsts. Most of the students had never heard of plant diseases. Bill and I introduced them to a whole world of biological phenomena and vocabulary. I’ve been learning these concepts for years, but this was my first time teaching them to an audience like theirs. They were very willing to show their confusion, frustration and amazement about what they learned. In response, I couldn’t help but show them the same. This was the first time in my experience with teaching that I felt free to admit what I didn’t know. I think that made their learning more meaningful, if Bill and I could show that we were always learning something too.
What was the biggest challenge?
The prison is an intimidating place to volunteer. It took me many weeks before I felt comfortable entering the prison and standing at the front of our classroom. Part of this was because I am used to teaching with typical tools like microscopes, samples, PowerPoints and videos. Plant pathology is a hands-on discipline. I was really nervous to teach the subject in a way that I had never learned it. We only had a chalkboard, printouts, articles, textbooks and three hours once a week to teach the students about plant pathogens and their resulting diseases.
What teaching techniques did you find were most effective?
We thought a lot about the physical dynamic in the classroom. We sat in as much of a circle as we could, and Bill and I would take turns going to the board. Often, there was no one at the front of the room, and we hoped this would help the students feel like equal parties in our discussions.
We also thought a lot about how to give the students hands-on learning experiences in the absence of a lab. The solution we found was to invite students to the board as frequently as possible, typically to diagram a life cycle or draw a disease progress curve. We were always asking the students, “Who wants to explain this back to us?” If they were at the board, then their peers were responsible for guiding them through the process. This seemed to help everyone learn: The stakes were low for the person at the board, and the students in their seats got to summarize what we had just covered as precisely and concisely as they could. These kinds of interactions made it easy to have fun in the classroom.
Did any of the students’ stories resonate with you?
Yes, absolutely. Very few students had previous experience with agriculture, and most of them said that they registered for the course because they needed it to graduate. One student’s motivations were far more personal. He shared that he registered for the class because his mom is a master gardener in Oklahoma. He said he wanted to spend more time talking during their weekly phone calls about what she was interested in. He thought that our class would help him do that.
His relationship with her seemed to motivate most of how he approached the class. Each student had to write a term paper, where they selected a single crop and would describe five of its important diseases and how to manage them. This student chose to study peaches, because they were important to his mom. He had her mail him printed, color pictures of symptoms of each disease he was studying. Both he and his mom were so invested in his success and in him contributing what he could to the class. I was really moved by his dedication and the support that he had from his family. What an unlikely class to be offered, but I am so glad that we taught it and that he was one of our students.
Kathleen Curtis originally wrote this story. It has been reprinted here with permission from Erin Rodger, Senior Manager in the Office of Marketing and Communications at the Cornell College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
https://cals.cornell.edu/news/2024/08/student-inspired-teaching-experience-local-prison
