This content was published: April 1, 2018. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Employee Highlight – Ralf Youtz
Posted by mariah.cisse
Ralf Youtz has taken advantage of professional development opportunities coordinated through the Office of Professional and Organizational Development, including the Teaching Men of Color in the Community College online course and utilizing funds through the conference grant program. Read more below to learn how Ralf has utilized and shared his learning to benefit students at PCC.
Ralf earned his Associate of Arts Transfer Degree from PCC in 2005. Nine years later, he joined the PCC Faculty as a math instructor in the Sylvania Math Department. Along with accepting the never-ending challenge of becoming a better math and statistics teacher for PCC’s wonderfully diverse and ever-changing student body, Ralf is committed to teaching for social justice and to decreasing costs for students by using Open Educational Resources (no-cost or low-cost textbooks and materials).
“After becoming aware of so-called “achievement gaps” in math, I recognized that low success rates for Black students, Latinx students, and other groups do not say anything about the intelligence or math ability of Black, Latinx, and other students. But these “gaps” do reveal how we in the math education community have failed, and how we continue to fail, to give our students of color the genuine math learning opportunities that they need and deserve. With that perspective,I am committed to learning whatever I can to work toward a less inequitable math education system in my classes, here at PCC, around Oregon, and nationally. I do my best to share what I’m learning as I go, in hopes of making the work visible and of being a supportive co-learner with colleagues who are also committed to this ongoing work.
When I took the Teaching Men of Color in the Community College online course, I asked my teachers for recommendations about sharing ideas from the course. They both said “Go for it!” and added that sharing ideas about educational equity at voluntary events doesn’t have as much of an impact as sharing ideas where people have to be. That inspired me to do my best to share ideas about effective teaching practices I learned in the course as widely as possible.
I’ll be facilitating a similar workshop for my fellow PCC math instructors at our April Math SAC meeting (where we have to be), then again later that month for my statewide colleagues at the Oregon Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges Conference. I plan to keep improving and refining the workshop, so that it can be used as resource whenever and wherever possible—it should also make a return appearance this May at SY TLC.
This work is impossible without guidance and support. I’ve received guidance from, among many others at PCC and elsewhere, Michael Alcobendas, Jimena Alvarado, Miguel Arellano-Sanchez, Linda Fergusson-Kolmes, Jayvin Jordan-Green, Max Macias, Michele Marden, Clifford Meeks, Dorothy Payton, Amara Perez, Whiteness History Month organizing committee, and too many PCC students and instructors to list! And I’ve received support these past four years from Tanya Batazhan, Daniel Findley, Amy Hofer, Gregg Meyer, Open Oregon, Karen Paez, Franklin Roberts, and the Office of Professional and Organizational Development.”