In this, the first of two episodes with this guest, Ivana Isailovic, Ph.D., reflects on the path she has taken from Yugoslavia to France to the United States and beyond. Along the way she offers keen insights about how teachers can successfully navigate increasingly diverse classroom learning environments. Ivana’s childhood was a happy and fulfilling one, even as military and civil conflict consumed much of the region where she was born. Her thoughts on education will resonate with anyone interested in what matters most in teaching and learning. Read the Show Notes for more details!
Academic accomplishments (2:55)
Born in a country that no longer exists (4:40)
Growing up during a war (5:40)
Happy childhood memories (9:05)
Yugoslavia to France, and studying law (10:10)
Columbia Law School (11:00)
Who helps design the learning experience? (13:50)
Meshing diversity and collaborative practice (16:30)
Eliminating bias (18:55)
An immigrant’s perspective influences beliefs about teaching (20:30)
Some great teachers (22:45)
Generosity and patience (24:10)
A new learning experience – sewing (26:20)
What matters most in learning (29:30)
Knowing one’s students drives the design of learning experiences (30:00)
“Bonus material” (33:20, after the outro)
Speaker 1: What matters most in learning the challenge, the thrill, the benefits, interacting with other people or something else entirely. What is the connection between leading and learning? Does change drive learning, or does learning drive change? What's more important, teaching or learning? Is everyone a leader, a learner and teacher, want answers? Listen in, as we address these intriguing issues through commentary and with guests who share their thinking and tell us their stories. Lead. Learn. Change.
Ivana: Growing up during the war was a very intense experience. As a child, I couldn't understand fully what was going on, but I had a sense already that something really tragic was happening all around me. If we want to live together, we need to live with our differences. Our minds are more powerful if we think together about a given topic. I always try to leave students an opportunity to design their learning experience. As a learner, what is really important is this idea that my voice is heard. My grandmother was a teacher, her mother was a teacher and her grandmother was a teacher. I had a lot of wonderful memories playing with my brother, with my cousins, with my family.
David: Hello listeners. You are in for a real treat today as we have another great guest lined up for you. During one of Seth Godin’s Akimbo workshops, Ivana and I met and shared a lot of ideas to help one another improve our respective podcasts. As Ivana tells us her story and talks about the way she thinks about teaching and learning. I invite you to listen for connections with your own experiences. One note for this episode and our next one, you may occasionally hear some background city sounds as the recording location included some vehicular traffic nearby. Now, let's go directly to the conversation. Today's guest on Lead. Learn. Change is Ivana Isailovic. Ivana, thank you for spending time with us today.
Ivana: Thank you David for inviting me.
David: Ivana was born in Yugoslavia, holds undergraduate and graduate degrees international law, business law, economic law litigation, global governance, and earned a PhD in international law and gender studies. Ivana is a lecturer and visiting scholar. Today she is a visiting scholar at the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and at the law school at Northeastern University. Starting in October, Ivana will be filling the role of a fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and then she will be a lecturer at MIT in the spring of 2020. Ivana is also working on her own podcast Identity Talk, and she has recently pursued an interest in clothing design, which we'll touch on if we have time to do so.
First, I know that our listeners would like to learn a bit about your background and the path that led you from your country to where you are today. Most of us do not have the experience of being born in a place that is referred to in the past tense, when it is written about today. Yes, war was a part of Yugoslavia history and regional international politics has played a major role in the place that is now known by the names of multiple countries, and your country also provided you with your start, language, family, memories and with culture that will always be a part of who you are, regardless of any official geopolitical designation or your place of residence. So, let's start there. Share a few of your favorite childhood memories and also touch on what happened and what it was like, when conflict war started in early nineties.
Ivana: Thank you so much for that introduction, David. It was really lovely. Couple of childhood memories, as you mentioned. I was born in a country that does not exist anymore. Yugoslavia, it was a federation of what are now 70 independent countries. Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo. Very, very complicated, history is very complicated. Culturally, we are very similar though. We speak the same language, at least in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, and Macedonia is very similar to Serbocroatian. Slovenia and I could understand Slovenians, but it's not the same language, and Albanian is a completely different language. Some people from Kosovo can understand Serbocroatian because they lived in Serbia and Yugoslavia, but the new generations, I don't think that they speak Serbian anymore. I'm quite sure that they don't speak Serbian anymore.
It's a very interesting part of the world. I also read a lot of history and try to understand better also through my podcast. I was born in Belgrade, which was the capital of Yugoslavia in the mid eighties, and growing up during the war was a very... In a very intense experience, I would say. Because, I remember that my childhood was extremely happy in so many ways, growing up with my family and my parents in a very loving and supportive environment. I was very, very lucky to be growing in that kind of environment. But at the same time, the country was falling apart and it was extremely painful to grow up in that kind of environment. For my parents, their whole world crumbled down the country that they knew ceased to exist.
They were also political opponents. They were fighting against the nationalist rhetoric that was on the rise, and they got into trouble. I learned from very early age the importance of speaking up, and what can happen, what are the costs of speaking up in such an environment? At the same time, growing in a war zone also, as a child I was exposed to a lot of things. From mutilated bodies, to refugees, to pictures of war, even though Belgrade was not attacked. There was no war in Belgrade, but we were in a war zone to the extent that we could see people going to war coming, back from the front. We were exposed to mutilated bodies, refugees. As a child, I couldn't understand fully what was going on, but I had a sense already that something really tragic was happening all around me.
David: Were you close enough to hear the sounds of conflict in war, or just far enough away to see the results of that?
Ivana: The war was happening primarily in Bosnia and Croatia. So, it's couple of hours basically from Belgrade. We would see the consequences of war, but we were not directly exposed to the fighting end. In that sense, I was extremely lucky because I don't have people who died in my immediate family, I was not expelled from my home, things like that. My family was extremely lucky.
David: Did you have some positive experiences and some pleasant memories from that childhood time in the midst of all of that turmoil?
Ivana: Yeah, a lot. I had a lot of wonderful memories. Playing with my brother, with my cousins, with my family, so many wonderful memories. I can't think of one in particular, but I remember for instance, great parties that my parents used to organize for us, for birthdays, for the New Year's Eve, with their friends and with all their children. That was a fabulous memory, just us dancing and playing, even though the country was falling apart. But this is one of my most pleasant memories.
David: How did you end up arriving in the U.S and being on the trajectory that placed you in the role that you're in today?
Ivana: First we immigrated to France, when I was nine, my mom left for France to study law at Sorbonne. She was already a lawyer in Belgrade, but my parents decided that they didn't want to live in Serbia anymore under these conditions. So, she left with me and my brother. My dad joined us a couple of years later. We immigrated to France when I was nine, then when I was 19, I started studying law at Sorbonne University. I ended up in United States, because I came to New York to study at Columbia Law School. It was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about the United States and the culture, and the political economic organization, and so interesting because we all have the impression that we know the United States, because we all watch TV shows.
I remember that's one of the memories from my childhood. I really liked Beverly Hills, the TV show. That's one of my favorite TV shows. We all certainly knew a lot about the United States and then coming here, I just realized how complicated this country is. It was a great learning experience because, I discovered a different way of talking about law, a different way of teaching law at Columbia Law School. I remember when I left New York and went back to France, I said, I'll come back one day. And here I am. In the meantime, I worked in Canada at McGill University in Brussels, another university. Then I came after I finished my PhD, I came to NYU to finish a postdoc and then I stayed here.
David: When you start your podcast with the phrase, political is personal and personal is political, as soon as I heard that, thinking about teaching and learning, I thought learning is personal, and the personal should drive how learning is designed. You mentioned that you learned a new way to think about law. You use that concept that you're leveraging in your Identity Talk Podcast. But think about it, learning, think of it from the learner's perspective. The learners personally experience or the learners personal approach, how should that be used by the teacher, the person designing the learning experience for the learners? How should that be used to maximize the learning for that particular learner?
Ivana: This is a great question and also very complicated question. I'm going to try to give an incomplete answer. But what I try to do when I teach, and I thought in really different contexts, I thought in Europe, in North America, I taught students who were learning how to become lawyers, I taught undergrads. I thought in a diversity of context. I always try to leave students an opportunity to design their learning experience. For instance, that means that I would ask them to choose topics that they would like to give a presentation on, that I would ask them to write a paper or a short paper on something that they're interested in. I would ask them to use materials that they are drawn to.
For instance, last year at Northeastern, I taught gender studies class and my student chose to present a story about an Instagram account. Somebody who is using Instagram in order to talk about gender in an original way, or somebody who's using Instagram to post pictures that reveal how complicated our identities are. These are the ways in which I try to, on the one hand, present them with information that I think they need to complete that course. At the same time, let them the liberty to engage with these materials in a way that is appropriate for them.
David: It's clear that you're aware of the diversity of interests in talent and how people learn. That's how you approach the content to provide access to the learners so that they can figure it out in a way that works best for them, which makes great sense. That feeds into this notion of collaboration, and you and I discussed prior to today's conversation, getting clear about the question about collaboration and diversity. How should educators and learners make room for collaboration in a learning environment, despite the differences that each learner has, because the particular student, you mentioned used social media, Instagram to make a point or teach others and somebody else might use something else, and there's all kinds of ways to present what you've learned and what you know, and what you're learning, and as all kinds of ways to explore it, the different tools and vehicles that you use. What do educators and learners do collectively to ensure collaboration can take place? So it's a really legitimate and learning environment.
Ivana: This is again a great question and a very... It's a complex question, given that we are facing students that come from a diversity of backgrounds. There is diversity and at the same time we are in a learning environment, so we need to collaborate. Again, I don't know if I have a satisfactory answer to that, but what I really, really try to do in my classes, is make sure that students understand that our minds are more powerful if we think together about a given topic. Usually what I would do is, I would design role playing games, I will split them into groups and say, you represent X and you're representing another group, and how would you talk about that topic based on the fact that you represent this group with that kind of interest. Usually it works, there are still students who don't want to play and that's fine, but usually they're interested in that kind of role-playing and that allows them to collaborate despite other things to diversity in their backgrounds.
David: You've already answered the next question about removing some constraints and making the classroom less biased. Because when you're asking your students to adopt a perspective of someone else from another viewpoint or another set of experiences, you're eliminating bias as you do that, because they're having to think through a different lens. So, that's perfectly clear. What I'm curious about now is, is this the way you've always taught or did this maturity of teaching expertise evolve over time and if it has shifted, what do you point to as the place or a pivot point that changed your thinking enough to shift your teaching?
Ivana: I'm going to go back to your original question which is, how do we eliminate bias? And then I'm going to answer this question, what was the turning point? I think that what is really important, it's not only to foster empathy actually. Try to look at the world through somebody else's eyes and try to articulate your thoughts, thinking about somebody else. But it's also really important for educators, teachers, professors, and I can only talk about higher education because I'm mostly teaching at universities. I'm only teaching at universities actually. I think that it's important that we understand that our classroom is embedded in the political cultural context that is generating huge inequalities. By that, I also means mean narrow representation, stereotypes. We all have biases. It is extremely important to acknowledge that and try to be aware of those for educators, and then try to make our students aware of that by fostering empathy. It's not easy, but that's what I tried to do.
My teaching experience was really shaped by two things. One is growing up in Yugoslavia a country that dissolved in the middle of a violent, brutal war. From very early on, I basically learned that if we want to live together, we need to find a way to accommodate our differences. Then the second experience that shaped my teaching approach, was my immigration to France, and as an immigrant I had to learn a new culture, cultural learn new coats and I also learned how to see a situation from different angles. In that sense again, without making a lot of generalizations, because each story is different. I think that immigrants are in general, very good at seeing these different perspectives. Because they have their own background, they're coming into a new culture, what things are different. I always try to also in my class foster that. I want my students to be extremely sensitive to differences, in every shape and form. I think it's critical in an interconnected and global world in which we live right now.
David: The world is flatter than some people think it is. As far as being able to be on an even plane with people that you might not have even ever connected with before, they really feel like they were all the way around the world, and now they're right next door.
Thank you about your learning experiences, Ivana. I'm very curious now because of your focus on how to teach and what you value in teaching to accommodate the learners and move them forward, how you viewed some of the teachers that you've had in the past. Do you have a favorite teacher or teachers that you will always remember? And if so, how come he or she was your favorite?
Ivana: I have a lot of favorite teachers. First, I come from a family of teachers. I think I mentioned that in one of our previous conversations, my grandmother was a teacher, her mother was a teacher, and her grandmother was a teacher. My grandmother is still alive, so she's definitely one of the teachers who changed my perspective, but also her mother, my great-grandmother was also a teacher. She was very strict and I remembered that, and I used to get into fights with her because I didn't like the way she forced me to read something or do maths or whatever it was. But I learned a lot from her a lot. And then, there are a lot of teachers in France who really changed my life. Were extremely generous and extremely rigorous. And even now, whenever I'm in Paris, I try to meet up with them.
I think the reason why I like them so much is, one because of their generosity, that's a common characteristic. They're extremely generous and extremely patient with all of their students. I grew up in France, in Paris in an extremely diverse neighborhood, class wise, and ethnicity, and race wise. They were extremely generous with us and extremely patient and supportive. I remembered that in the middle school, I had this brilliant idea one morning to basically, put together a performance, a theater performance. We were reading a French writer from the 18th century, and we all liked the theater play. One morning they thought, why wouldn't we put together a performance? I talked to my French teacher, Madame (name not understood) who is still a wonderful woman and to my history teacher, Madame (name not understood) and they were extremely excited.
They hired the professional actor to help us put the performance together. And we did it, it took us five months and we did it. It was an extraordinary experience. I was very lucky, we were all very lucky to be surrounded with supportive adults. I also think that something else that I liked about them all of my teachers is that, they try to foster complexity, complex way of thinking. They try to foster critical thinking. That's how I learned to basically question every single argument and idea, and that's something that I try to do in my classes as well.
David: I know for a fact, because of the dress you were wearing yesterday and photos from earlier, that your mom is also a teacher, not just here. So I know she might not be the professional teacher, but she has served as your teacher, as you've learned too so just recently. How come that is such a great learning experience?
Ivana: You're absolutely right, my mom is one of the key figures in my life in general. I learned a lot from her, of course. I wanted to learn how to sew, because I wanted to learn how to make my own clothes, my brother recently had a baby and they wanted to sew something for his baby. My mom is really good at sewing, so I asked her when I was in Paris last time, I asked her to teach me how to sew a dress, and it was a wonderful experience because we went together to choose the fabric, then we cut the fabric together. She showed me some of the little tricks that you can learn in books, or if you Google, how to sew a dress, and it was great. My mom though, is not really patient. That's the only kind of negative side. She's extremely quick and extremely pragmatic and extremely driven, but not necessarily very patient. No. But I learned a lot of things from her. That was a great afternoon, we spent four hours doing that and I was very proud of my dress.
I remember when I started sewing, it was not very good. I started sewing pants for my brother's baby and it was not that good. It was not bad, but it was not... Of course, it was not perfect. Four months ago, I didn't know how to sew. So, of course it was not perfect, but she was extremely supportive. She was telling me that it was good, and for first time it's wonderful. So, keep going, extremely supportive.
David: You've mentioned what matters most in teaching to you because, you've talked about generosity and patience and also in your own practice, providing the learners with multiple ways to access content and demonstrate what they know and interact with other people and learn those collaboration skills along the way. That's a pretty broad coverage of what matters most in teaching. What do you think matters most in learning?
Ivana: From the learner's perspective, right? That's actually a great question. Let me think about it. It's a complicated question. I'm not sure that I can fully answer. Certainly for me as a learner, what is important is that... Is this idea that my voice is heard. I know that I will learn the best when I see that the person, the teacher, or the person who I'm trying to learn something from is concerned with my needs, has in mind my experience, tries to accommodate my story, whatever it is. And of course, I think that that goes with... As I mentioned, generosity, empathy, patience as well, because we are all so different. But that's an interesting question. I should probably next time ask my students what they see is important for them.
David: You answered that with two personal pronouns, pretty early on. You said, "For me," Because that's the only person you can answer it for, unless you ask the other students. So, you do have to ask, and then you said, "My voice being heard," Which I think cycles us back to the earlier question about learning being personal and the personal driving the learning. You've affirmed that, that's the case. It's not the political, it's the learning anything that's significant, it is really personal.
Ivana: We need to design the learning experience around our students and be aware of their constraints, and their wishes, and their projects. I make sure to always meet with my students, so last year I had 30 students in my seminar. I met with every single one of them for 15 to 20 minutes and asked them, "What do you like about the class? What would you like to do next? Let's talk a little bit about you about your paper." But most importantly, what would you like to do next? Because you want to tailor that class to their expectations.
David: Thank you very much, Ivana for giving us a glimpse into the teaching and learning world in higher ed and for providing us with some thought provoking material on how to capitalize on differences with the benefit of learners.
Ivana: Thank you, David, for inviting me. It was a great conversation.
David: Well, you have a great day.
Ivana: Thank you too.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening today. Podcast cover art is from Unsplash by a photographer Simon Matzinger with the view of Altmünster am Traunsee, Austria. And the soundtrack is Sweet Adrenaline by Delicate Beats. You can reach podcast host David Reynolds at LeadLearnChange@icloud.com. Follow us on Instagram at Lead.Learn.Change and check out LinkedIn for podcast related posts. Find the Lead. Learn. Change Podcast on your search engine, iTunes, Google podcasts, Spotify, My Tutor, or other listening app. Leave a rating, write a review, subscribe and share with others. In the meantime. Go lead. Go learn. Go make a change. Go.
David: Now I have to ask you, do you ever get mistaken for the provisional volleyball player with your same name?
Ivana: Nope. What is really, really funny. Everybody asks, so my friends in academia. So my friends they're like, "How can she be so successful and on top of that to be a volleyball player." It could be true because, I might be player. I might look like one. I'm not that old though, but... You don't have to be that tall to be a volleyball player because you get so confused. They're like, wait, so she's an academic and on top of that she's a volleyball player. No, she's... It's not me.
David: It took me a little while to really convince myself that it wasn't you. I wait a minute. I tell Debbie, I said, "This lady's a professional volleyball player. It's unbelievable."
Ivana: No. I could have become a professional seamstress, but not...
David: That's true. We I'll be looking for the Ivana line in stores this fall.