Easing the ‘jump’ from high school to college: how teaching fellows support a Stanford course

Bringing a Stanford course to high school students in their own classrooms via a hybrid model takes multiple layers of partnership, including with teachers and schools open to trying new approaches. But it’s the role played by teaching fellows that provides the “secret sauce,” says Lerone A. Martin, professor of religious studies and African and African American studies in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.

Professor Martin, who directs the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, worked with Stanford Digital Education and the National Education Equity Lab to make his course, Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom, available to high school students in under-resourced communities. “The curriculum is provided by me as the professor, and it's the same curriculum that I teach here on campus to Stanford students,” he explains. 

Teaching fellows — Stanford undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni — provide an additional, and personal, layer of support. They coordinate with the classroom teachers to co-lead weekly discussion sections on Zoom; they also provide robust feedback on student writing and help high school students acclimate to the challenges of college work. In this video, teaching fellows Juan Flores, Sam McLoughlin, and Anna Rose Robinson describe their efforts to make students feel at home and supported — and how they find teaching to be deeply meaningful and fulfilling.

The teaching fellow role is integral to all the courses that Stanford offers to high schools in low-income communities via the collaboration with the Equity Lab, across subjects that include bioengineering, computer science, and ethics.

Beyond Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. was rolled out in seven high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2024 and is slated to be taught in schools in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, this winter and spring. Students who pass the course receive credit from both their high schools and from Stanford. A separate video focuses on student experiences in the course. 

If you're interested in being a teaching fellow for the course or helping to support it in some other way, please send an email to digitaleducation@stanford.edu and put "Malcolm-Martin course" in the subject line.

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lerone Martin, Stanford professor: My name is Dr. Lerone Martin. I am the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and African-American Studies at Stanford University.

This dual enrollment course is entitled Between Malcolm and Martin. We offered it as a hybrid course to over 100 students in seven different high schools. And all of these high schools were Title I high schools.

The curriculum is provided by me as the professor, and it's the same curriculum that I teach here on campus to Stanford students. But across the seven high schools we worked with, they were led by their high school teacher in the classroom. And the secret sauce to the course was this role we invented, called “teaching fellow.”

Sam McLoughlin, teaching fellow: And I remember grading one of the finals. I think actually my co-TF was the grader for that student. But he texted me and was like, you have to go watch her midterm. And we both cried while watching it. It was just really a beautiful distillation of the relevance of Malcolm X to that student's life and her family's experiences.

Anna Rose Robinson, teaching fellow: Some of the students also mentioned that I made them feel comfortable in the class, which meant so much to me because they're high schoolers in a college class, and the jump from high school to college is something that is so uncomfortable. And I think there's so much value in a person that can make you feel at home and make you feel happy and safe, no matter where you are.

Lerone Martin: This course has been so impactful, not only to our high school students, but also to our teaching fellows. It's been impactful for them in terms of intellectually. It allows them the opportunity to connect and to use their skill set in various ways, to connect with high school students and to teach. But it's also been meaningful for them on a personal level.

Anna Rose Robinson: I think one of the ways that being a TF has changed the way I think about myself as a Stanford student, is increasing my gratitude, because Stanford is a difficult school. The quarter system is really fast-paced. And I think a lot of us like to complain about a lot of things very frequently. But it's always good to make sure that I step back. And sometimes it's speaking with people who aspire to go to Stanford and realize that I really am lucky to be here.

Juan Flores, teaching fellow: I think this experience was a lot more transformational than I originally had sought it out to be. Not only did I learn professional skills that I could apply in other places in my life, but it was also more of a passion project, or passion job where, like I said, it didn't really feel like I was working, I was doing something that I enjoyed.

Lerone Martin: The future of this course involves scaling both in breadth and in depth. Next year we've already been asked to more than double the number of students that we've engaged online through our hybrid course. So we want to continue that scaling. But we also want to scale more in depth. And that is we want to bring a number of high school students to campus in the summer to really deepen and enrich their experience of engaging with the Stanford community.

Anna Rose Robinson: I would definitely recommend for Stanford students, or grad students, or alumni to become teaching fellows. There's a lot of benefits to it.

Juan Flores: I think in my interactions with youth, I always thought about the late Maya Angelou's quote, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people always remember how you made them feel.” And if I could do that for just one kid, then I think I did my job successfully.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lerone Martin is also the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor.