Dr. Feresten received an MSc in pharmacology from UBC and a PhD in neurodevelopment from SFU. Their PhD focused on the effects of specific genetic mutations on early brain development in C. Elegans, a microscopic roundworm, and the effect of these mutations on simple forms of learning.
Dr. Feresten has been a teacher’s assistant in a variety of neuroscience, genetics and biology courses at SFU since 2014, and joined Alexander College as a sessional instructor in winter of 2023. They teach Biol100. They love their new job.
“Each person has a unique framework connecting everything they know into an integrative understanding of reality; this is one’s worldview. When new knowledge is integrated, it can be applied in unanticipated contexts. Learning is not just the absorption of facts into your brain, but the integration of those facts into your worldview.
The deepest challenge of learning lies in understanding how to fit that new knowledge into the larger framework of what you already know. My job, as a teacher, is to help students develop this critical skill, thus giving them agency over their own learning process.
I do this by leaning into the inherent diversity of the classroom and developing an environment of creativity and bravery. At the heart of my teaching is my own deep-seated craving to integrate as much understanding of the world as I can. To model integrative learning, I myself must constantly be integrating the learning structures of every student I work with.
This is the most important part of teaching: to learn together and, by doing so, to build something new.”