Dr. Arrastía-Chisholm: Professor Mom

When I think about the word diversity it's not hard to understand, but when I think an example of inclusion it is a challenge to conjure on my campus. Although I have experience researching and teaching these topics in a roundabout way, I want to make a more explicit effort in incorporating current research into my teaching and enhance my current research initiatives. The truth is that these topics are at the core of my work as an educational psychologist, teacher educator, and counselor educator. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not discussing issues of access , representation , or cross-cultural competence . With my counseling students we tackle the issue of access to college and career readiness among rural students, an issue of equity . With my future teachers we discuss the research on how all students benefit from having a teacher of color, despite the high proportion of white female teachers. And yet with other students I have to explain why we should not scold stude...

It's the 5th week of school and by now we have covered behaviorism and operant conditioning in all three of the classes I teach. I teach that we reinforce productive, desirable behavior before punishing undesirable behavior, and that removal punishment (taking away a privilege or object) should be used before resorting to presentation punishment (scolding or a negative consequence). This is counterintuitive, especially because many of us were raised in environments in which corporal punishment was normative. Discussion is always freeform in my classes and comments are encouraged. I present concrete situations from real life, like my daughter drawing on the wall or a student not being able to stay seated during on-task time. Inevitably spanking comes up in these educational psychology discussions. "If you just pop them, then they will stop immediately... If I got hit, I never did the thing again... little kids are too young to understand other consequences..." As a mot...