Dr. Manuela Ceballos, Assistant Professor of Islam in the Department of Religious Studies, was in the process of completing her PhD in Religion from Emory University when she began working at UT. Before Emory, Dr. Ceballos was a student at Bryn Mawr College, where she was trained as a language teaching assistant. “I taught morning Spanish ‘drill’ sessions as an undergraduate and was in charge of my first class as a master’s student in French,” she recalls. At Emory, Dr. Ceballos also taught introductory Arabic, shadowed professors as a TA, and taught her own class at Spelman College in Atlanta: “All of these experiences were so wonderful,” she reflects. Dr. Ceballos later moved to Albuquerque and, while writing her dissertation, taught English as a second language to adult refugee and immigrant students and was also a substitute teacher at a local high school. By the time she came to UT, then, Dr. Ceballos taught a very “diverse group of students of different backgrounds about a pretty wide range of subjects.”
It’s another experience entirely that Dr. Ceballos used to form her teaching philosophy. “While part of my philosophy, of course, draws from my experiences in language instruction, I also try to center my teaching around a form of critical pedagogy which I learned from my father who taught at a large public university in our hometown of Medellín, Colombia.” Dr. Ceballos uses translation (the displacement of concepts from one context into another) as a metaphor to think about what happens in the classroom when ideas travel from one context to another, and also to emphasize the importance of language as a process rather than as a single event. “Thinking about translation also helps me remember that there are power differentials that exist as those ideas travel between people, groups, and languages—power differentials that I don’t want to obscure,” Dr. Ceballos remarks.
With this philosophy at the center of her courses, Dr. Ceballos strives to “foster the cultivation of an interior intellectual life that can be a source of nourishment, solace, and freedom in all kinds of situation for my students.” She executes these ideas by establishing what she refers to as a “community of learning in which collaboration with others can lead to the betterment of our social worlds.” Humbly, Dr. Ceballos admits that she dares to dream big: “those are really lofty goals and not always fully attainable, but at the very least I hope that students get a taste of the many possibilities open to them through higher education.”
However, when describing the impact of her classroom environment and her teaching philosophy, it’s clear to see that despite her “lofty” goals, Dr. Ceballos is succeeding. “I have been immensely fortunate to have had the students I have had, and I relish reading their news even after many years have passed since our time together,” she reflects. “I have also been a student nearly all of my life and think about my own teachers often.” Dr. Ceballos admits that she’s been a student who both over- and under-performs. “Regardless,” she says, “I have had teachers who have treated me with kindness and patience, and who have remembered that we come to the classroom as whole people, not simply disembodied minds ready to be filled with information.” Dr. Ceballos also expresses her gratitude for her teachers, who were creative in helping her work through problems.
“It is challenging, but crucially important, to teach and learn through situations of struggle and hardship.”
For those reasons, Dr. Ceballos is always trying to look at the instances in which she was guided through difficult events in order to find creative approaches to learning barriers. Her teaching and learning have thus felt like one “full circle moment” after the other, and she feels grateful to pass along the lessons from her own teachers to her students. “Those are the moments that I would say have impacted my career the most.”
When asked about where she believes the future of higher education is heading, Dr. Ceballos still remains humble. “I don’t know that I have much to add to the body of literature on this subject that is out there,” she starts, “but, in my experience, much of what students appreciate about the classroom is some form of connection.” For Dr. Ceballos, the challenge is to develop ways to connect with students and to help them engage with one another through avenues that are not only respectful of everyone’s integrity, but also intellectually exciting. “Our environment is making it increasingly difficult to do this, but I am hopeful because teaching through despair is not an option I want to contemplate. There are plenty of political and economic challenges facing universities that are going to require that we reconsider how we think and how we learn. I hope that we remember and prioritize that connection through learning as those changes happen.”