Dr. Shuan Karim graduated from the department in 2021 and currently works as teacher at Metro Early College High School in Columbus. He agreed to share what he's been up to since graduation and to give some advice to current students.
Tell us about your job. Where are you working, and what is your job title?
I am now working as the "Teacher of Linguistics" at Metro Early College High School. Metro is a lotteried, non-selective STEM school open to students from across Ohio. The draw is that they offer a STEM curriculum and an early college experience. One of the goals of early college is that students are prepared to take college courses at The Ohio State University in their junior and senior years. Additionally, Metro is on the mastery system, which means that all the students must achieve 90% or more in their classes. If students complete all their foundational work and are assessed on that material with a less than mastery grade, they must revisit the material, reassess, and achieve mastery. This system promotes excellence and is another attractor. Just like other schools in Ohio, their students are required to take foreign language credits. However, a few years back (just before the pandemic), they decided to offer an Introduction to Linguistics to complement their foreign language program, keeping with their STEM focus. I'm filling that niche and so much more.
What was your job search process like?
After the staff at Metro decided to host a linguistics course, they put out the word to the Department at OSU. I was contacted by Professor Brian Joseph while defending my dissertation, "The Synchrony and Diachrony of New Western Iranian Nominal Morphosyntax," about my interest in the position. This proved to be a great opportunity in that hectic last year of grad school. Upon graduating from OSU in December of 2021, I decided to spend 2022 finishing publication obligations and joint projects while applying to postdoctoral positions.
In December 2021, I approached the administration at Metro with the idea of expanding their course offerings to include a variety of language and linguistics content that could be integrated into their honors curriculum. Each semester, I offer "Intro to Linguistics" and a rotating linguistics course that does a deep dive into a particular subfield. I began this semester with "Language Evolution and Change." This gives students the opportunity to count two linguistics courses with two foreign language credits toward completing an honors degree. Additionally, I have drawn from my language background to expand their foreign language offerings by adding Japanese to the list of elective courses.
What do you do daily for your job?
There are all the same things I encountered teaching as a grad student:
· Making slides
· Giving lectures
· Creating and grading assessments
· Hosting office hours
· Staying attuned to students' mental and emotional health
However, as expected at a high school, there is more hands-on guidance and management. As for my curriculum, I offer the same course content they would receive in the equivalent OSU courses but with more in-class time for things that college students typically do outside of class, like homework and reading.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
It probably sounds cliche, but my students are absolutely the best part of my job. They are so receptive to both the content that I teach and the way my life experience informs my interactions with them. When I was in high school, I was not a successful student. I was polite and friendly, but I was also beaten down and disaffected when I made it to high school. I remember having a teacher who, across 10th and 11th grade English, refused to call me by my name despite daily corrections. A fellow student told me that the entire class corrected her for me on a day that I was absent, to which she replied, "does he really want to be called that?" I see daily life at Metro with a richly diverse student body: a large proportion of the students are Muslim; I have Egyptian, Iraqi, Kurdish, Amazight, Wolof, Somali, Turkish, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Tamil students, just to name a few. The school is a safe environment where students are not forced to be closeted about their race, religion, sexual orientation, or budding political philosophy. Each day I come to work, I am blessed with the privilege of learning from my students.
Furthermore, my students have taken a strong interest in linguistics, which was my goal, and they have taken an interest in me and my experiences. One day in between units, I decided to give my Language Evolution students a presentation based on my research. I wanted to give them a taste of academic research, and I was excited about a paper that I had just published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society called "Akkadian [e]." At the high school level, knowledge is a black box. Students see information in a textbook or online, not the work that goes into putting it there. I tell my students that all questions have answers; it's just that some of those answers are not known by anyone. Being the person that captures that knowledge for the first time is one of the most profoundly satisfying experiences in the world. When I gave my presentation, some students were interested, some were bored, and one was on the edge of her chair with excitement. After class, she asked me if we could meet during office hours to discuss. When we met, I was shocked to find out that it was not my research that captured her intellectual curiosity but my enthusiasm. She was interested in how a person could be so excited by the mundane nuances of sounds interacting in a language that has not been spoken in over 2000 years.
Of the skills you acquired in grad school, what skill is the most important or helpful for your job?
It would be disingenuous to say that the content I learned is not the most important thing; I studied linguistics, and I'm teaching linguistics. However, the networking and people skills that I have learned from presenting research at conferences and for my former colleagues in the Department of Linguistics have been invaluable. These skills help me communicate and collaborate with fellow teachers and administrators. They help me advocate for myself and my students, and they help me respond to the questions and concerns of my students, adapting to their individual needs. A room of high school kids is not necessarily different than a room of fellow scholars, especially if I assume positive intent and mutual respect.
Do you have any advice for students who are interested in teaching?
Yes, do not wait for the perfect position to come around. Decide what that position would look like and make it for yourself. Often people don't know what need exists until they are presented with a viable better option. Advocate for yourself, and make sure that people know what you can bring to the table. Also, be excited! Never forget that knowledge is a sacrament, the work you have been doing is fascinating, and your enthusiasm will inspire people.