The Shape of Water

I teach at an open access community college. When I applied for this position, I actually googled open access having little concept of what it truly meant. I was responding to the supplemental questions for the job application, which were designed to illicit responses that showed I belonged in the community college environment and knew the mission and the purpose of my role. I have no idea how what I said to that question at the time was responsive to the people who read my application because it is only after having been immersed in my position for almost five years that I truly know what those words mean.

When I applied for college, I applied. I wrote essays about my qualities. Who even knows what I thought those were at the time? How I wish I still had a copy of those precious mementos of a young, innocent, optimistic premed with a love of chemistry and an interest in herpetology. I only applied to the two state schools. The Hope Scholarship was going to fund my tuition and a science book. And since I was a female in the south who wanted to study chemistry and had a 4.0 GPA, I got everything else funded through scholarships as well. So college was free. I worked in college out of minimal necessity to fund some fun in jobs that were in my discipline, lab assistant and then teaching assistant. It only took one semester in college to show me research, not medicine, truly suited my passion and talents. I was surrounded by my home state’s brightest and best. When I graduated from that state school, I went to another state school for graduate school. It happened to be a top tier chemistry research institution. I spent five years feeling like a poser as I was surrounded by our country’s brightest and best. But I earned my degree. I have never been prouder of my ability to persist.

Then I started my career in medicinal chemistry research. But my post doc was not that lucrative and tutoring at night and on the weekends for undergrads seemed very fulfilling. It was the beginning of Obama’s first term, so government austerity was en vogue. Grant money was hard to come by. I made a decision. I was going to reenter education. But I wanted to focus on teaching. I did not want to dilute my focus by trying to be everything. I was hanging up my lab coat and molding the bright minds of the future. So I applied to all full time jobs available. I thought I would get some experience at community college and help a lot of students. My college is known for transfer in science, and since we are Berkeley and Davis adjacent, that is where so many of our students go. I knew what it takes. I had taken it. I could help these kids see that vision.

Before I took this position, my husband warned me. He said, “Ellen, you have a big heart. Make sure you don’t see every cause as yours. If you do, you are going to kill yourself.” My husband knows me well.

I started teaching Organic Chemistry, my wheelhouse. My first class was probably the best class I will ever have. I could get 10 of them to hang out with me on Fridays at an office hour coming to campus on a day most of them don’t even have class. I wasn’t supposed to do committee work, I was supposed to teach. I taught the hell out of that class. I made the craziest problems and learned so much about myself and my college and the experience of highly successful community college students. I was spoiled.

My second year was harder. I was still in organic chemistry, but the class wasn’t quite as eager. The Fridays were a total flop, so I stopped them. But I immersed myself in some of the work of the campus. I joined the steering committee of the newly forming MESA program, a learning community intended to support first generation financially challenged STEM majors. I helped develop a plan of action, an application, a recruitment program, an interview process, get a physical space, and become established. I met some amazing motivated students with real challenges. I have since left that committee but I marvel at the success it is bringing to such deserving students and still work to support its mission through my other roles on campus.

My third year I had a baby and switched to our introductory chemistry course. This course serves many masters. It is a GE class. It is an option for nurses, dental hygiene, and allied health. It is also a prerequisite for our General Chemistry course for science majors. I had a full spectrum. There were kids in that class who had never lit a match. In their lifetime. Some were challenged by most everything I threw at them while others were bored out of their mind by the slow pace. Others were skating by with minimal engagement and less successful than they would have been because of their lack of effort. It was a challenge to keep all of them buying in.

Many worked one or two jobs, many were parents or supported their families by providing child care or elder care. I began to realize just how selfish my college experience has been. I just left home, moved into a dorm, removed myself from the daily needs of my family. I didn’t have to worry about getting my grandmother to her doctor’s appointment or picking up my cousins from school. My students were trying to do it All: finance the education they were seeking and supporting the family that housed them. Well those that had a home to go to. That year I had homelessness, bankruptcy, and emotional collapse from grief all plague my students. They pay more for my textbooks than they do for the units they get lectured from me, but the bill can still cripple them and the stress of college science even at the introductory level can break them. I began to recognize the nature open access to college science.

My fourth and fifth years have been in our first semester of General Chemistry course. My first Fall in that assignment I had some of my C students from the previous semester. I was so flattered they wanted to learn with me again. Then, two weeks in, we all were crying. The class has an intensity unmatched in the courses I have taught. It was my first time in it, so I had no idea what to expect. I tried my best, but I saw so many of my students from my intro class flounder. I had such little idea how to bridge the gaps between the courses but knew my mission must be to figure out how to ease the transition into full blown science major for the raw talent that finds a seat in my classroom. So that spring I enrolled in a class to improve my teaching methods. While I was teaching, I was also learning about research into the best practices for turning novice learners into motivated experts.

I have spent the past three semesters teaching this same class, designing a classroom on the premise that to be learned chemistry must be interesting and social, improving my discussions, growing as a teacher facilitating deeper learning. But this semester is providing my biggest challenge yet. I am working with a student who has almost no vision. In chemistry. It is challenging my perception of the visual nature of each and every learning objective. It is forcing me to anticipate more fully simply anything I might want to do or say in class. Is my doing or saying that providing meaningful learning experiences for this student? It is challenging my perception of anything I require in assessment. Is it fair to ask that of this student? Is doing so holding all students to the same standard?

The thing is, this student is damn inspiring. They are so motivated, so engaged, so eager to share in their love of science, anxious to tell you about this one other blind chemist they heard of who provides an endless source of motivational fuel. Representation matters.

We were talking about the energy of the atom. I brought in the lamps and the diffraction gratings to demonstrate line spectra. This person attempted to hold the grating, swore they thought they saw the line, squealed with excitement. I am not sure what they really saw, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t the tear in my eye.

We got to molecular structure last week. I seriously almost went to the store to get puffy paint and lentils to make a kit until a desperate plea for help hooked me up with a campus technologist. I spent hours designing and hand drawing the kit with atom label in English letters for their scribe with Braille letters for them. I worked with the technologist who took my hand drawings into raised dimensions with a puffing printer. I made the kit have XXs for lone pairs instead of dots so as not to confuse the Braille. I had bonds made that could show multiple bonding and dashed and wedged bonds. I know there are molecular models but you have to have a good Lewis structure to get there. I had to get them to see the picture.

We pulled out the kit in Lab. I held their hand. Showed them the features. I taught the scribe the design elements. They were elated. The student had had the Intro course and said they simply didn’t understand this topic. My kit brought it to life. Our hands worked to help them grasp the shape of water. It was a great day. The biggest flaw was how much the pieces moved around. I thought about going to the craft store and getting felt and velcro, but I just didn’t have the time. The kit has a hundred pieces!

The student came the next day to my office hours. I was working extra hard with the kit and the models and a set of structural scaffolds I had had printed with the puffy machine. I was trying so hard to get them to understand dimensionally the molecule and the 2D drawing convention of dashes and wedges. It took an hour rotating through the modalities, holding their hands on the models and raised graphics, and their Braille-note machine. I am not sure it worked but I tried so hard. Afterwards, my coworker said she overheard the session. She said, “Ellen, it was magical. You are like Annie Sullivan if Helen Keller wanted to be a chemist.”

That is the opportunity teaching at a community college gives. We take all comers. We welcome all people, no application necessary, to join us on their educational journey. We invite you to explore your passions but we hold you to our standards because we know what your road holds.

I am sorry if I haven’t really written much this semester. I mean I totally embraced this new opportunity to grow and help, but none of my other professional obligations to my class, my committees, and my research went away. I am exhausted. I have been fully immersed in the work of shepherding young scientists from my community with such a diversity of life experiences including one in particular through one of their first huge steps on their path to a rewarding career in science. I completely love my job. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. A lecturer position at UC Berkeley posted recently, and though several people forwarded me the posting, I didn’t really consider applying. Sure, I could be working with amazing young minds at one of the premier universities in this country, but I could never be someone’s Annie Sullivan. In truth, my colleague is too nice as I am closer to feeling even with all the effort, I am still not making my class accessible enough. But we are both giving it every ounce of effort and creativity to bring the world its next engineer, each finding joy in the small breakthroughs like grasping water’s simple, beautiful shape.