Talking Circles on Getting Ready for Next Term Last week Sarah Apedaile hosted two Faculty Talking Circles: “Wrapping up and getting ready for next term.” Especially interesting were the analogies shared for getting ready (planning) that individual instructors shared. Getting ready for the next term is like:
One of the suggestions made a faculty member was to find a place where we can share materials and exchange ideas. Sarah was already working on this! She created a Faculty Community of Practice team on Microsoft Teams where we can share our stuff. She posted the PPTs and notes of the last few Talking Circles there. If you want to be part of the community, just click on the join button when you are in the Teams section of the Teams app and choose Faculty Community of Practice. It is our hope that, in the coming months, the FCoP will become a bit of a happening place.
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Bring Your Whole Self… Last Thursday and Friday, Sarah Apedaile hosted two faculty talking circles on “Learning Environments that Enhance Student Wellbeing”. The intention was to elicit ideas and strategies from NorQuest instructional staff so that we could learn from each other. Both circles were very rich in discussion and specifics and while the first seemed to focus on actions that you might do immediately, the other spent more time on proactively building a course and environment that creates a safe space. One of my favorite quotes came from an instructor on the first day, he said (and this is my paraphrase because I could not remember word for word), “Instructors need to bring their whole, authentic selves to the classroom (online or in person). This may mean sharing your own successes, missteps and failures as you have travelled through your educational journey.” Now I know this instructor, and I know that he isn’t saying that a teacher should dominate the classroom with personal anecdotes and ego-centric lessons. What he was getting at is the importance of being real, being vulnerable, and being approachable. On the weekend, I kept coming back to this thought, and I compared it to when I began teaching. In my first few placements, I came across many seasoned educators who were very willing to share their life lessons in teaching with me. Some of the most frequent messages I heard were:
Their advice was something more like an antiperspirant commercial: “Never let them see you sweat!” I remember feeling quite uncomfortable in “faking it”. I knew I had much to learn about time management, subject area content, lesson design, and relationship building and that I would make more than my share of mistakes. That said I quickly found that frequent apologizing was not the way to go. The teacher still needs to be the teacher. Just how does an educator, often given courses and materials that they have not mastered themselves, come across as “confidently human”? How do they effectively lead their students with passion, assurance and a good dose of humility? It is something that I continue to work on. One thing is for certain, in the past couple of decades the role of the educator has changed. We can longer be “experts”, the explosion of information and access has broken our shaky hold as the sole purveyors of truth! Moreover, while in many different countries the position is highly esteemed and one would never think of challenging their instructor, in North America we have learned to be less directive and more collegial, especially at the college level. We want open discussions in our classroom, where students are comfortable asking the hard questions and where we can be real in our responses and concerns. Nonetheless, as instructors we still have responsibilities that require some distancing. Ultimately, we are gatekeepers, for programs and professions. We also have high expectations, for our students and for ourselves. Moreover, as many of us have learned, there is a big difference between being friendly with our students and being friends with them. Sometimes our students can get a little too comfortable and then feel shocked or offended when we have to deliver news they don’t want to hear. So it can be very challenging for instructors to navigate and negotiate their role with each student group. Complicating all of this is the current and ongoing requirement to do most of our relationship building online. The Covid crisis has presented challenges, created distances, and generated feelings of isolation and anxiety. Our students, and many of us, need the subtle interactions and affirmations that came so easily to our in-person classes. As the instructor I quoted earlier also said, “Sometimes if you see students as students you might be missing the point in terms of supporting them. You have to see students as regular and normal human beings who go through ups and downs like all of us... and therefore, even if they are obligated to study or learn, you have to support them as much as you can to help them deal with their other challenges which are not classroom based.” Just as we bring our whole selves to class, our students should feel comfortable bringing their whole selves too. Covid has pushed this further, many of us now face listening and counseling challenges, we need to be available and “confidently human” as we deal with the new online environment and the continuing strain of pandemic and economic uncertainty. Thankfully, many of the participants in the talking circle had suggestions that might just help us in adapting to this environment, providing the support needed to our students, and finding ways to create a safe learning community. I’ve grouped and listed the thoughts of your colleagues below: Suggestions for daily or one-on-one interactions
Suggestions related to lesson design
Suggestions regarding course design
For many of our students, their studies have given them something to dive into, perhaps even as an escape from the rising Covid numbers, the imminent specter of a lockdown, and the isolation brought on by our “new normal”. Our job is to encourage, engage, support, guide and assess with an eye to the whole student. More information on ways to support students in the online environment can be found here: https://campusmentalhealth.ca/toolkits/faculty/how-to-recognize-when-a-student-may-need-support/in-the-virtual-classroom/ https://tatp.utoronto.ca/teaching-toolkit/teaching-with-technology-teaching-online/supporting-students-online One Physics Teacher’s Experiment in Teaching A number of years back, when I was in a role very similar to the one I have now, I had the pleasure of working with high school teachers as they integrated changes related to literacy, assessment, inquiry, and differentiated instruction in their coursework. One of the teachers, who taught high school physics in a large urban school, invited me to come and attend his classes to provide feedback. For the purposes of this piece, we will call him “Fred”. Fred had been teaching for 30+ years and he was finding it more and more difficult to deal with the “busy-ness” of teaching. He was considering retirement (he had reached the magic number), but Fred also knew that he loved teaching, and he loved working with teens; he was just getting tired. Many of Fred’s classes were in a combination classroom and lab. On lab days, students were expected to spend the first 20-25 minutes in their desks listening to Fred explain the day’s experiment. Fred was very prepared; he had PPT slides, a two-page handout and a raft of notes to work from. On lab days, the students would often trickle in, in dribs and drabs. The school had a number of athletic teams and interest groups, so students had difficulty getting to their classroom right on time. Such was the case for the two classes that I spent with Fred and his class. Students trickled in, got settled and then waited to be re-oriented to the lesson and to Fred’s expectations. “So this is what is getting to me Jeff,” Fred shared, “I feel like the first 25 minutes of class is nothing but false starts. I start explaining the experiment, then a couple more trickle in and I have to start over. Then, even when they are all here, some students are not really paying attention and they will ask the same question that I had just finished answering for several other students. Meanwhile, other students have already read the whole handout and are asking me questions that most of the class is just not ready for. By the time we move to the back of the classroom (to the lab part), I’m exhausted and feel like I’m going to lose my voice. And once we get started on the experiment, I find out just how many students still didn’t get it!” After a couple of visits, Fred and I sat down together and discussed ways forward. First, we took a close look at what was actually going on:
Next, we asked a key question: “Who is actually doing the work?” Fred had to confess that, in spite of all his good intentions, he was actually the one doing the work. He made the handouts, prepared the notes, and gave the explanations. The students just had to sit back and listen (or not). We decided to put the onus for learning back on to the students! Yes, we would provide them with scaffolding and support, but we were not going to spoon feed any longer. The next lab class, Fred made a point of meeting each student at the door. As they came in, he gave them the two-page handout, a highlighter and a one-page graphic organizer. In a hushed voice, he asked the students to come in quietly and to get down to reading ASAP. Further instructions were written on the board. On the board, Fred had written the following directives:
K - What do we know already? What are the givens for this experiment? What are the conditions? W - What do you want to know? What phenomena are were really investigating? H - How will we go about testing to see what happens under certain conditions? What are the critically important steps in our experiment? L - What did we learn from the experiment? How should that be represented? How can it be replicated? S - What is the significance of what we have discovered? How might it be applied to real world applications? It took only a class or two for the students to catch on to the new routine. Fred no longer had to greet them at the door; the students just came in, picked up the materials (handout, highlighter and graphic organizer) from a front desk, and settled in to work. There were significantly fewer false starts and repeated explanations. When I next met up with Fred, he seemed to have a bit of a spring to his step. “It’s been a life-saver, Jeff! I am so glad we decided to make those changes. The students who are keen can get going as soon as they are ready and those who struggle I can sidle up to and work with quietly as they work through the KWHLS. Wow!” The Need to Step Back and Seek Input
I’ve shared this anecdote, but not because of my part in it. Indeed, Fred was the one who went through the reflective process; he identified an issue, sought a second set of eyes, discussed some of the underlying issues, chose a course of action and then skillfully and persistently put this plan into place. I just asked a few timely questions and shared some strategies that might help (we discussed many more options than the one he chose). The process that Fred and I went through is called: “instructional coaching”. As one of my mentors explained to me years ago, “to coach” in situations like this is not really acting like some kind of athletic coach, trying to get the best out of his athletes. I would feel funny yelling encouragement and guidance during an instructor’s lesson - “Atta go! Wonderful motivational bridge, Now let’s get to the outcomes!” Instead, to coach, means to provide the conveyance (like the old horse drawn coaches) so that instructors can work from one place or teaching challenge (a muddy spot) toward an easier or more efficient path. This “coaching” is done by careful observation and thoughtful feedback and questioning and not through pointed advice or judgement. There really is a bit of an art to it. In the last few years, Joan Wall, Sarah Apedaile and I have all had the chance to provide a bit of coaching to countless “Freds” at NorQuest. It has been great! Instructors have asked us to visit their classrooms (both physical and online) to seek feedback on their practices and routines. I love this part of my job. I get to watch true professionals in action and I get to step into learning environments that are vibrant and intellectually stimulating! In one morning, I can learn how to put in an IV line, balance the books, apply for a job, and formulate an effective thesis statement. If you are interested in having a faculty developer like Joan, Sarah or myself, work with you, just send an email our way. However, you might wait a week or two before doing so though. At the moment, it is a very busy time as many faculty need support facing up to tech challenges in teaching online for the first time (and Sarah is on leave for the next few weeks). You might also line up coaching conversations with a teaching colleague, where you visit each other’s classes and provide feedback. Just remember though, this process is not about evaluation; it is about reflection and growth. Look for someone who will challenge you to see possibilities, not push you towards their own preconceived notion of best practice. Well it has been 7 weeks since my last Monday Morning Musing. I went on vacation at the beginning of July, and when I came back to work, things were quiet – except for the instructors in language instruction and LINC. They just kept motoring along! What I learned on my summer vacation… On my “staycation” I managed to do a lot of work on my patio. Cynthia and I spent most of our quality time doing intense, manual labor. I prefer to think of it as my “2020 Covid-19 fitness workout”. Now, nearing the end of our project, we are thrilled with how it all looks. However, there were some challenging moments. I had a feeling that the project would not be an easy one. However, as most do-it-yourselfers soon find out, I just had no clear idea of just how much planning, dumb labor, fine motor skill, perseverance, dumb labor, compromise, new learning, and dumb labor it would require. And don’t get me started on the number of times I ended up going to the hardware store or the rental shop to buy more materials or rent a tool for the day! I think the most stressful part was in operating the gas powered concrete saw to make cuts in the forty-pound pavers. I did not want to make any mistakes (I did make a few though), and I did not want to lose any fingers (I still have all ten)! Now, as I turn my focus back to supporting faculty with the world of online teaching, I can see a few parallels between planning and building our patio and planning and facilitating an online course.
A Table of Contents is not a Curriculum In 1983, I was the new Social Studies, English and French teacher in a small Christian school in Chatham Ontario, which seemed like a universe away from my experiences in Edmonton at the big public schools and the big public university. It was August 1, my first year of teaching, and my principal was asking me to submit “year plans” for every course I was supposed to teach in the coming year by the end of August. Yikes? Where to start? How do you know what you don’t know - if you don’t know what you don’t know? Then he left for vacation. I was left to figure out what a year plan was and how I would create one for the 12 different courses I would be teaching that year. So I spent the next couple of weeks haunting that little rural school. Every other teacher was gone; it was just me, the humidity of Southern Ontario and the thousands of flies that came into the school from the adjoining corn fields and buzzed around my sweating pate. I dolefully went through the filing cabinets in my classroom, I found some archaic readers and texts in the book room and eventually I cobbled together a year plan for each of my courses. It wasn’t easy for a 21 year old kid on his first teaching assignment. But, I made them: each year plan carefully laid out the units, objectives and time allotments for the ten coming months, often based upon units or chapters I found in some of the texts that looked promising. Then he came back. After I submitted my plans and the principal dutifully went through them all making copious comments with his red pen, he handed the plans back to me and asked why I hadn’t looked at the year plans from the teachers before me, or why I hadn’t referenced the provincial curricula for the various courses I was about to teach. Apparently all those documents were right there in his office, in the filing cabinet next to his desk. It would have saved me a lot of time and re-writing. When I shared that I thought his office was definitely “out of bounds” and that he never once said that I might find the materials in there, he just took another drag on his pipe (you could smoke in the schools at that time), shrugged his shoulders and said: “Oh well then - that explains it!” And then I started rewriting my year plans. I learned a couple of valuable lessons that summer. One lesson was that you need to be a self-advocate and ask as many questions as you can, especially when you’ve been given the task of roughing out a plan for the year. The second lesson was a little more complex; I learned about the complex relationship between curricula, year plans (syllabi), resources and textbooks, and the freedom to teach what I thought might be important. So why the story, Jeff? At this moment, all around the college, NorQuest instructors are learning the very same lessons. I know that a number of departments are going through a major curricular review and that certain instructors have been given the responsibility of making a “curriculum map” for particular courses. It’s not an easy task. It may be tempting to simply find a suitable text, copy down a few chapter headings and extrapolate some key learning outcomes and figure all is OK, but the table of contents in a textbook is not a curriculum map. Now this is not a small topic, and certainly not something that can be sufficiently addressed through a Monday Morning Musings, but here are a few things to keep in mind when looking at the big picture of curriculum planning:
So where does academic freedom fit it? Are we teaching robots? No, we have been given a great deal of liberty, provided we meet the learning outcomes, program and government requirements, and accreditation requirements. (See the NQ Academic Freedom Policy) You also need to consider the program and college established curriculum, assessments, processes, and practices Each department may have specific requirements and concerns that can influence or impact your plans. (See again, the NQ Academic Freedom Policy). Think of curriculum maps like a road map; you know that you need to visit Red Deer, Calgary, Cardston, Brooks, Drumheller, Jasper and Banff. There is nothing that says how you get there (bus, plane, moped, skateboard, Harley, or minivan), or when (zip out and come back, plan a round trip, cluster certain municipalities according to festivals, plan according to COVID release times?), or even what else you may look at along the way. However, you do need to visit these specific places within a certain amount of time (by the end of term) and there are things you need to see/explore/do/appreciate in each of the places. In the end though, your students will eventually be assessed on their knowledge, navigational skills and cultural appreciation of Alberta, and hopefully your plans (route), activities and assessments will have helped to prepare them for this. If you want to discuss this further or if you have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to contact one of curriculum consultants or faculty developers at the college. Most of us love talking about this stuff (yes, we are nerds!), and see it as important, challenging and kind of fun. Planning with the End In Mind! This past week I gave a session on “Powerful Planning”. It was based upon the principles of backwards design and followed a model established by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their seminal work: Understanding by Design. Wiggins and McTighe suggest that, if we want to take our student on a learning journey, we really need to think about our destination and then, plan our trip backwards! Furthermore, we need to decide upon the most important sights or stop-overs. In every course of study there are big ideas or “enduring understandings” that students need to grasp in order to become fully competent in that areas. These big ideas could be important conceptualizations, skills or attitudes. Often such ideas can be found in the GLOs found in our curriculum guides or curriculum maps for the courses we teach – but not always. Sometimes we have to dig into professional standards, consider pre-requisites for follow-up courses, or reflect on our own professional experience to determine what is “enduring” or “essential”. Unfortunately many of us are just too busy to think about the “big ideas” in our coursework until we get quite far along into the term. Often the course is assigned shortly before we start teaching it, and we begin a frenzied cycle of familiarizing ourselves with the content, preparing lessons (often content laden PowerPoint slides) and delivering lessons, in an effort to stay one step ahead of our students. Engagement, support and assessment can become after-thoughts. It is an unfortunate reality of post-secondary teaching. However, Wiggins and McTighe would have us step back to see the big picture and, at the outset of planning a course or a unit, follow three important steps:
An integral part of “Understanding by Design” is the generation of essential questions. Big Ideas can often be explored more fully when we take our students on an inquiry process, interrogating the important ideas and their underpinnings together with our students, rather than just summarizing a few key ideas for them. So getting a handle on the content of our courses is simply not enough. If we truly want our students to connect with the content and make sense of it, we need to begin with the end in mind, and think about not just the “what” but the “how” and “why”. And if we identify the big ideas, enduring understandings and essential questions, we will be able to provide a clear framework with touchpoints that students can come back to again and again. (If you are interested in learning more about the backwards learning process, don’t hesitate to contact the PD team or the Curriculum team – we would be more than happy to share our resources and insights with you.) Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. |
AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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