Inspired: Art & Science of teaching

Is teaching an art or a science? This is the question of today’s Daily Extend. The challenge is to find an artist and a scientist that represents some part of your own personal practice. In this reflection, I give you Sarah Bernhardt, sculptor, and Katherine Johnson, mathematician.

Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt was a famous French actor. While pursuing a very public acting career, she also pursued sculpting. She studied both the craft and other disciplines such as anatomy (Moura, 2017).

She was attacked by the press and important sculptors of the time [such] as Rodin. It was said that she was pursuing an inappropriate activity. (Moura, 2017)

After the storm 1876 — Photo from National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Connection to Teaching Practice

Certainly, in the college arena, professors come to the field of teaching by first studying and working in a particular career and then learning to teach. The challenge is to become equal skilled in your subject discipline and in teaching. The amount of time and effort that is expended in the pursuit of excellence in teaching is a personal decision.

On a personal note, I was intrigued by the fact that Bernhardt was criticized for sculpting as this was considered an “inappropriate activity.” I wonder why? Was it because she was female?

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson was a computer for NASA. In the early 1950s, women were hired for the computing pool in the Guidance and Navigation Department of NASA to complete calculations (Loff, 2016). Johnson was the only woman moved from the pool to work directly with engineers. She verified calculations made by electronic computers for space flights in the 1960s (Loff, 2016).

Women were not allowed to attend meetings with the male engineers and scientists. Johnson wanted to go to these meetings to learn more about the projects, so she went. (Wild, 2016)

Connection to Teaching Practice

In Johnson, we find another example of the pursuit of learning on the job, and of understanding new problems and finding the solutions. This is also true for professors who must meet the challenges of a new cohort and changes in both their discipline and the field of teaching.

On a personal note, I smiled at the simple phrasing in Wild’s NASA article, “so she went.” Another example of a female who was not supposed to be doing something but did it anyways.

I don’t think of myself as an activist for woman’s rights. I have lived experiences of being female and faculty. I have been questioned about my credentials. I have been challenged about my right to develop materials and to lead workshops. I once had a male faculty member, when confronting me about working on a particular project, announce that he “didn’t think I knew anything” in front of 30 plus students. Timing and awareness of his audience was not his forte that day. In the stunned silence of his departure, a student turned to me and asked, “what does he think you are, a potted plant?”

Teaching, for me is both an art and a science that requires ongoing study, part pursued as a passion in spirit of Bernhardt and part pursued as a personal necessity in the spirit of Johnson. And later, I hope someone says “they didn’t think she should, but she wanted to, so she did.”

Resources:

Loff, S. (2016, February 25). Mathematician Katherine Johnson at work. Retrieved from http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/mathematician-katherine-johnson-at-work

Moura, N. (2017). Sarah Bernhardt – The sculptor. Retrieved from https://womennart.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/sarah-bernhardt-the-sculptor/

National Museum of Women in the Arts. (n.d.). Sarah Bernhardt. Retrieved from https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/sarah-bernhardt

Wikipedia. (2018, August 4). Sarah Bernhardt. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Bernhardt&oldid=853380849

Wild, F. (2016, December 30). Who is Katherine Johnson? Retrieved from http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/who-is-katherine-johnson-5-8

Montage created with Photojoiner using Public Domain Images. Montage Photo Credits:

The death of Ophelia: Sotheby’s
Sarah Bernhardt: Napoleon Sarony
Mercury Space Flight Network: NASA
Kathrine Johnson: NASA

August 2, 2018August 2, 2018

You are more than your work: General Education Course Requirements

"Our passion led us here" written on a sidewalk.

I submit that we create a problem for students with the language we use for General Education course requirements in the college arena. We call them Electives. The term Electives gives students the impression that these courses are optional, that they are not important and that these courses do not deserve the same attention as students’ vocational courses. Many faculty reinforce this idea with the way they think and speak about the place electives have in their program.

In the summer of 2016, I got curious about a specific group of students who didn’t graduate. I wondered how many students where in their final semester of a program, who had at least a grade point average of 3.0 out of 4 and were not eligible to graduate. There were more than I expected. And then I looked at why they were not eligible. Electives. The majority had failed, dropped or skipped an elective in their first three semesters and that was what prevented their graduation at the end of their final semester. Many had enrolled in an elective course in the Spring semester but it meant that these students would not be walking across the stage with their class in June. Our college had set targets for increasing retention for the year. Graduating this group of students would have exceeded our targets.

So how do we address this? I have three suggestions:

Let’s stop calling these courses electives. These are General Education REQUIREMENTS – you need these to graduate. An addendum would be to also change other faculty conversations about the importance of these course to students.
Let’s do a systematic check of students as Winter semester ends and suggest Spring semester options for catching up missing courses or a plan for picking up the additional course during the regular semesters.
Let’s talk to students about the benefits of General Education requirements.

Today’s Daily Extend took me to ClassHook, and there I found this clip:

Dead Poet’s Society: What will be your verse

Mr. Keating emphasizes the real-world applicability of words, language, and poetry. He encourages his students to contemplate their life’s purpose. The human race is full of passion- poetry, beauty, romance and life: the things people stay alive for. “The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

Let’s ask students about their passions, their life outside of work and the impact they wish to have. Let’s explore the options they have with General Education Courses and show them the possibilities for making their college experience unique. This discussion could come as part of a workshop, at faculty meetings during Orientation, or during one of their core courses in 1st semester.

If we can reframe electives, I believe we could both improve student experience and graduation rates.

Featured image: Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

May 31, 2018

Digital Literacy – Musings

Photo of graffiti — Photo by naomi tamar on Unsplash

If I start with the premise that literacy has to do with a desire to communicate, then oral histories and cave paintings are artifacts of literacy. So too are books, works of art, music, dance, architecture, crafts, fashion and a myriad of other human expressions. As we humans strive to express the ideas in our heads, we create ways to do so. Literacy includes the desire to share ideas and information with your community, to learn and understand, to create and grow, to appreciate and critique.

In every generation, new mediums are created and old mediums are maintained, rediscovered or rejected. Therefore, digital landscapes are simply new spaces to occupy with our words, sounds, images, ideas and expressions. Our digital expressions are our cave paintings.

While I do believe that defining digital literacy (or digital literacies) can be useful, it seems to me that all the dissecting to find the small pieces and then trying to weave it back into a model leaves too much out. It is as if the act of pulling it all apart to name it leaves some of the magic on the floor that gets swept away when finally putting it back together and saying – this is it, this is the definition.

Series of small island — Photo by Shaah Shahidh on Unsplash

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” ― John Archibald Wheeler

I really love is this quote from Wheeler and the idea that what we know is our island and the shore is our awareness of what we don’t know. As we learn more, our island gets bigger and so does our awareness of what we don’t yet know – our shore line increases in size. The more I learn, the more I realize that there is still so much to know.

I feel this way about digital literacy. When I got my first computer in 1992, I could not have predicted the ways in which I use computers in my daily life now. I think about my mother, who just turned 92 and who recently figured out how to video call me over Facebook on her iPad! My mother – whose first car was a horse, who grew up in a place where there was one phone in the entire village, who did not have a television until the mid 1950s, whose first motion picture was the Sound of Music in 1965 and she is video calling me! She has digital literacy. She has found a way to connect and communicate using this “new” technology!

Screenshot of video call between mother and author. — January 2018, my mom calling me on Facebook!

So what does all this musing mean for me as a teacher in a digital world? This is the space I must occupy and I need to be both an explorer and a guide. I need to seek out, learn and understand new ways of expressing information and ideas in this digital medium while practicing creation, appreciation, and discernment.

Silouettes of hikers — Photo by Tobias Mrzyk on Unsplash

I don’t know if this was what you were looking for, my fellow Extenders but it is where this Extend Activity on What is your definition of digital literacies for teaching? took me. For more about this Extending thing I am doing out loud in this blog, I invite you to join OntarioExtend.

May 19, 2018

Standing a different river every day

omer-salom-528416-unsplash

“You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.” Heraclitus

“You can’t teach the same class twice, for everything is changing.” Irene Stewart

Sound like a strange teaching philosophy? Perhaps, but for me, it contains a truth. Everything is changing; every time I teach, the students are different, I am different, the world is different (even slightly) and what and how I teach must be different too.

The students are different – every semester, every year, every cohort of student are new and have unique needs. What worked last year, last semester, or, for me with workshops, last week, might not work now.

I am different – I haven’t stopped learning either. I am not the same as last year, last semester, and, because of the Ontario Extend experience, I am not even the same as last week.

The world is different – and while I could give a bunch of different examples of all the ways the world different – it’s about relevance – what was relevant last year, last semester and even last week may not be relevant today.

That is why I review my plans every time I prepare to teach to ensure that I am responding to the change. That is why I keep learning. That is why I want to keep extending.

This post is in response to the Culminating Activity for the Teaching for Learning Module of Ontario Extend.

Photo by Omer Salom on Unsplash

May 17, 2018

Crossing the threshold from peer lecturer to peer tutor

peer tutor

When we begin to work with students who are hired to be peer tutors, one of the barriers we must cross is the false idea that tutors teach. When I ask which courses they would like to tutor, I hear: “I want to teach math.” And what they usually mean “teach” in the sense of an expert who will explain the topics to a novice. This is the lecture part of teaching: I know it so I am going to tell you so that you will know it too or I know how to do it so I will show you and after you watch me, you will be able to do it too. Many first-time tutors are surprised to find out that the best tutoring sessions are where the tutor says very little and the student does all the talking and where the student holds the pencil or controls the mouse.

Tutor do need to have excellent knowledge of the course material and do need to be able to explain concepts and demonstrate skills but that is a small part of what a tutor should be doing in a tutoring session. Good tutors move from being a lecturer and demonstrator to acting as a facilitator and guide. They need to understand that tutoring is more about questioning and listening than speaking. This is the threshold concept that tutors need to work through.

Once you pass through that threshold, you can’t go back. You sit down with a student and start asking, what do you understand now about this material, where are you getting stuck, what questions do you have, what have you tried? Show me your text, your notes, your materials. Walk me through the problem you are struggling with. This is the blind spot.

Even as I write this, it is hard for me to explain the transformation that happens. So, in tutor training, I talk about tools and techniques. These are the smaller skills that lead to tutoring instead of lecturing. I use the example of tutoring Math and begin with the idea that the tutor should put down the pencil and the whiteboard marker. The student begins the problem while the tutor observes. Not the other way around. The tutor listens for confusion, missed steps and misinformation.

To ease tutors into this practice, I recommend they use the Simulated Instruction Model*, a technique I first learned in my study of Learning Strategies and Assistive Technology for student with disabilities.

After identifying a math problem, the student finds challenging, the tutor works through a similar problem (because we don’t do student’s homework). As they are working through the problem, they must say out loud everything they are thinking as they tackle the problem. They must make real their internal thought process. They talk out every step to solving the problem.

Then the student starts the same problem and they are asked to say out loud everything they are thinking and the tutor listens intently looking for missed steps, missing knowledge or concepts that have been misunderstood. The tutor and student can then discuss the errors in thinking, if any and in some cases, the tutor can identify the missing knowledge and help the student develop a prop. For example, the student may have forgotten about order of operations. The tutor can reintroduce BEDMAS (Brackets, exponents, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction) and invite the student to create a prop by writing BEDMAS and an explanation of their own on an index card.

The student then attempts a new similar problem with the prop visible on the desk still working out loud while the tutor listens and guides if needed. The student can try this problem or the first again until successful. When the student is successful, they attempt a third similar problem. The student is encouraged to turn the prop over and only access it when needed.

This process is very effective for tutoring math and is also very effective for moving a tutor from an expert lecturing/demonstration mode to a facilitator and guide mode. It can be used in a group setting as well where students solve problem together with the guidance of a tutor by having the students, in turn, up at the whiteboard solving the problems instead of just watching the tutor do it.

*Note about Simulated Instruction Model (SIM), I do not have a citation for this model. I have search the internet for more information about SIM and where it came from to no avail. Perhaps I am remember it wrong. If anyone has insight, please let me know so that I can credit this.

This post is in response to Ontario Extend’s Teaching for Learning Module’s Blindspot Extent Activity.

May 12, 2018

I don’t teach

Irene Stewart standing before a class of students.

That’s right, it is confession time. I don’t teach. At least not in the way most think about teaching at the post-secondary level. I have no answer for you when you ask me: So, what do you teach? This will make some of the activities in my professional development project with Ontario Extend a bit challenging as I will need to extend in my own way but I believe that still fits the overarching goals.

So, what do I do? I am a member of the faculty of St. Clair College in Ontario. Faculty at colleges in Ontario are defined by the CAAT collective agreement as professor, counsellor, and librarian. I have been a Retention Coordinator for over 10 years and in that time I have been categorized as a counsellor, then a professor, then a counsellor again. I don’t quite fit in either category. I, along with a 2nd Retention Coordinator, am responsible for Tutoring Services at all three St. Clair campuses. I am responsible for the theory and practical portions of tutor training and for the ongoing observation and guidance of tutors throughout the semester. I am like their in-class teacher, lab teacher, and placement supervisor all rolled into one and perhaps preceptor is the best term to apply to my role. My partner and I precept 100 tutors across the college during Fall and Winter and about half that through the Spring/Summer.

That is half my job. The other half of my time is spent responding to gaps in services and programs through direct involvement or advising on potential solutions.

Here is an example. In the past few years, we have had an increase in International Student enrollment. Because there was a need, I created and presented a number of different workshops and seminars for International students on writing, APA, study skills, group work, presentation skills, college level reading, academic integrity, etc. I also helped to develop and implement tutoring services to serve International Student needs in ESL including walk in and conversation club services. These workshops are presented outside of class as voluntary activities and in-class upon faculty request. I developed a workshop on college culture in the Fall for a specific program to address issues encountered in and out of class.

It went like this, I was meeting with the Manager of Student Services at the Chatham Campus. A faculty member interrupted to talk about issues their class was having and boom, gap girl is tapped in. Gap girl is me, by the way. I modified some of my existing material, added some new insight and came up with a workshop that would benefit both domestic and International students on college culture. I did the workshop and it helped.

Fast forward to December and I am called into a meeting with managers from Marketing, Student Services and International Student services to present the workshop. I walk them through the workshop as I can’t really present it because the learning activities and discussions don’t work without the students. They love it and ask, can we turn this into a 3 minute video for Orientation. Ummm…. no. I agree to do the workshop, without the learning activities and discussion, before a group of students to be video taped. I can’t strip is down into 10 minutes and I have to tell you, I hated it because it was 27 minutes of me talking. All the fun stuff of interacting with the students and energy that comes with that experience was gone. There was no opportunity to modify the content or delivery on the fly based on the students in front of me. I also had to change the way I dress and go to hair and make up which just made it worse.

After the taping, someone else decided what to cut and what to keep and came up with 10 minutes of video. I think they cut out some of the good stuff. At January orientation, it was shown to the incoming students as a whole group. For the Spring/Summer, it was used in small groups as part of the Faculty sessions with program groups and included opportunities for discussion.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHylmJUKPPw&w=560&h=315]

Please don’t misunderstand. I think the video editing, addition of pictures and other video clips was masterfully done. I hope students and faculty are finding this video helpful. I certainly have had students stop me in the hall since Spring Orientation to say – hey, you are that lady! But this is not what I consider teaching.

I love my job, I have the flexibility to do many interesting things that other faculty are not able to do. And I can fill the gap between what I do and the Extend modules and apply the activities in a way that will help me grow professionally and improve what I do for students and the college. I just hope that some of what I share will be helpful to other in our fabulous ExtendWest cohort.

April 27, 2018

Extending

I am joining Ontario Extend, an initiative from ecampus Ontario. This is an project that looks to build teaching and learning skills in educators in the realms of technology and online learning…. I think. Well, that is what the website said anyways.

Specifically, I am joining ExtendWest and the opening event is in about two weeks. To prepare, I am opening up a bit of interweb landscape to play with, my own little sandbox, if you will. So far, I have a chair to rest in set up. Extending like stretching can be uncomfortable. I don’t yet know what I am getting into with this project but I am giving myself permission now to dabble, to rest, to wiggle my toes in the sand and enjoy the experience without expectation.

“Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.” — Deborah Day