Monthly Archives: February 2017

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Inspiration from the Girl Who Married a Ghost

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Last weekend I was spending an inordinate amount of time wandering aimlessly (on purpose) around a bookstore, when several titles got my attention (or “caught my eye,” if you’re into painful clichés). I thumbed through them and decided I wasn’t interested in reading them, especially since the “To Be Read” section on my bookcase is much bigger (almost the entire bookcase) than my “Have Already Read” section (one shelf).

But one title in particular stood out: The Girl Who Married a Ghost. I thought about how many of my students often settle for essay titles like “Comparison-Contrast Essay” or “Definition Essay” or even just “Essay.” I realized that this title might come in handy as an example that attracts the reader’s attention. Browsing around, I found more titles that jumped out at me. And since I’m always looking for inspiration for classroom ideas, I typed them into the “Teaching Notes” on my phone:

The Girl Who Married a Ghost

The Baby on the Car Roof

Sleepwalk With Me

A Burglar’s Guide to the City

Monkeys with Typewriters

I’m looking forward to bringing the girl who married a ghost into my classes. Am I referring to the title of the book or an actual girl who married a ghost…? With a little time and effort, maybe both….

 

 
higher education

What Inspires?

I’m participating in GCC‘s Write 6×6 event this semester. And no weaseling out of it by being too busy. I’m actually scheduling time during the week to write, and you should expect 6 posts over the next 5 weeks (it’s supposed to be 6 weeks, but I’m already late for my first post … late but NOT given up on!).

The suggested first week’s post is to write about what inspires us to do what we do at GCC. That’s what I’m doing.

I’m the Instructional Media Developer at GCC. I work in the Center for Teaching, Learning and Engagement. Our mission is to be a professional development resource for Faculty and Staff. And my job is to help Faculty and Staff professionally develop by helping them to create instructional multimedia. That can be anything from writing, handouts, spreadsheets, audio recordings, video, pretty graphics or flyers, infographics, interactive animations of one format or another, and the list goes on!

So what inspires me to do what I do is: Faculty or Staff with a message they want to deliver to our students in an engaging way.

Elsewhere, and this is just an example of uninspiring multimedia, I’ve seen people try flipping the classroom by recording hour-long lectures from the back of the classroom and posting them into Canvas. The shot is stationary, the sound is awful because it includes all the rustling generated by the students closest to the camera, and the instructor and whiteboard look tiny and can barely be seen. That’s not the kind of thing that inspires me.

Could you watch a scene like this, with barely intelligible audio, for an hour?


Photo: Broad run algebra class by James H Dunning

But here at GCC, I work with Faculty and Staff who are very motivated to help our students succeed. When someone like that comes in with a specific goal, it’s very inspiring to me, and I’ll dig deep to provide the know-how.

Academic advisor Isaac Torres notices students don’t understand the difference between Advisement and Counseling:

Adjunct ESL Faculty member Elizabeth Macdonald realizes her students need help getting their children off to a good start in Arizona’s public schools:

Psychology faculty Dr. Patricia Lavigne wants to encourage psychology students to join Psi Beta without personally making a pitch to every class during the first week of school:

There are so many inspirational faculty and staff at GCC who go an extra mile to help students and engage them in the learning process. You motivate me to do what I do, especially when you tell me your dreams, schemes, wild ideas and if-onlys, and then let me help you make them a reality. Bring in the thing you want to improve and let’s partner up to make it better.

 
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I Get by With a Little Help…

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Thank you John and Paul. Now if I may riff off you for a brief moment please (sing with me!)

I get by with a little help from my… colleagues.

It’s true. I really do, and I am grateful for it. The help and support that comes from the people I work with not only gets me through the day/week/month/semester/year, but it keeps me coming back for more. I’m lucky to work in a supportive atmosphere that encourages sharing, engagement, connection, building relationships, and, well, being helpful.

In turn, the help and support from friends and colleagues that keeps me motivated to do my best inspires me to be helpful and supportive too. You know, the pay-it-forward idea. And when I really think about that concept, I realize most of what I do as faculty at GCC is centered around helping others. Whether it be helping new faculty learn to navigate our monstrous community college system, or helping students find their writing voice (sure, they may not realize they want to find it–they simply want to pass ENG101–but I still help them find it!), my job is to help. Seriously, that is the second coolest realization I have had all year. (In case you care, the coolest realization I have had this year is that this applies to all of us who work for GCC–our job is to help. We are in the business of helping people find their purpose, change their lives and reach their goals.)

(I will sleep better tonight knowing we are all so helpful!)

Take us out, Ringo!

 
Student Services

Picking the best path

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As I sit here writing, I’m remembering a time when I had to make a decision without fully understanding my choices.  I remember feeling anxious and unsure of how it would turn out.  I recall trusting others with valuable information to help me process the decision and learn about my options.  In some cases, it was empowering when I was able to make a positive decision about my path with the help others.  Even with all the information and best support, sometimes I still made a bad choice for myself.

Looking back, I wonder how others decided if I should be given the chance to make the decision or if they should make the decision for me.  It would be my hope that others allowed me to make a choice when they felt I would be empowered and successful.  I hope that when it has been noticed that multiple individuals struggle with the same choice I was offered, the expert would make the choice for us.  Now that I think about it, it must be hard for experts to know when to make the choices for others or give the choice to me.  Offering too much choice too soon is harmful.  Limiting choice unnecessarily is hurtful.  So how do we decide?

In my experience, my capacity to make an informed choice depends on the complexity of the options, consequences of the decision, and my confidence in the expert.  If the options are complex, the consequences are significant, and I trust the expert more than myself, I would want to the decision to be made for me.  If the expert makes the options easy and the consequences are low, it seems like giving me the choice would be empowering.  As with everything, what may be best for me may not best for everyone.  I can see how it would be hard for an expert to evaluate in the moment if a choice should be given to or made for me.

Every day in the GCC Testing Center, we are balancing the right for individuals to choose how to complete their placement exams.  Students have choice on whether to take all exams at once or split up the Reading, Writing, and Math placement exams up into different testing sessions.  Students have the choice on the order they take the exams.  These choices may influence the outcome.  It is difficult to blame these choices on the course placement outcome.

In the past, we gave students a direct choice on which of the 3 math placement exams to take.  We found that students struggled understanding the options for the math exam.  We knew about the struggle because we frequently had to repeat the question in different ways, explain our terminology, and still received looks of confusion and bewilderment.  So now we make the choice for students (everyone starts with the moderately difficult exam and goes up or down based upon their answers). We made this change to reduce the possibility that the selected exam artificially lowered course placement for a student.  We knew this change may increase the testing time for students who needed to take 2 exams.  We decided the increase in testing time was worth it because the results would lead to more accurate course placement.  Accurate course placement is the most important goal when we test incoming students.

 
CTLE, Write6x6

In Search of My Inspiration. How Do I Expand Beyond?

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I have to admit I’m borderline burnout, but what keeps me going these days are the people I work with on a daily basis. My inspiration comes from all of those faculty and staff who take the time to better themselves and be the best they can be and utilize the CLTE to help them with that. I can’t be a slacker around these folks. Oh no, so I’m inspired to step my game up and help provide the services they need, and it reminds me of why I’m doing this job in the first place. It’s easy to forget at times.

So the last thing I need to be doing right now is agonizing over a journal post, but I’m inspired to do so because of the 10+ posts already posted on Write6x6.com from last week. They are my inspiration to post, to share. They are my inspiration to complete a tedious FPG application for an upcoming workshop. My inspiration to schedule FMS training in the CTLE. My inspiration to send out yet another announcement about what we have to offer, knowing very few will bother to read it. But it’s that few that inspire me.

Recently I attended a district event at SCC called TechTalks. It’s a TEDTalks type of event where 8 speakers talk about their experience with using technology in their life or work environment. These talks are very inspirational, but on this particular Friday I had every legitimate excuse to not miss work and not attend. I’m so glad I didn’t give in to any one of those excuses because that’s all they are is excuses. Attending TechTalks rejuvenated me. It inspired me. It made me want to go and do ALL those things those speakers talked about. I wanted to understand data, play with virtual reality, create portfolios for my students, create OER, and even make a music video despite my lack of music and movie making skills. I was inspired. Again by my colleagues in Maricopa. I’m so glad I didn’t pass up this one of a multitude of opportunities to be inspired because what good am I to you, my colleagues, my students if I’m not inspired to do my job?

 
Write6x6

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – Reflection from 2/2

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From Thursday, 2/2/2017:

This morning, the woman who collects tuition for my son’s school made the discovery of a four inch gaping hole lined with the fringe of shredded fabric on the side of my skirt, “You have a HUGE string hanging off there! Do you want me to cut it?” Of course, this was after leaving the house, dropping kids off, and stretching my brain into work mode. On the drive in and after the discovery, instead of listening to news and attempting to decipher whether it is fake or not, I went into existential mode in thinking about how the more life piles on, the less we have to care about the significance of not noticing a ripped skirt in the scheme of things. I mean, really, how could I have dressed myself and not noticed such a glaring wardrobe malfunction? Did it matter? How is it that the older I get, the more I am forced to “not sweat the small stuff” due to pure circumstance?

It is something I was ruminating about, and then as it tends to happen, serendipitously, of course, after me crudely attempting to mend the gash with a makeshift sewing kit, two brief moments emerged to reaffirm my thoughts.

A returning student of mine stayed after class to let me know that in his previous life, he was a government official who use to care for the special needs population in his community. In class, we have been discussing identities, stereotypes about our identities that society makes, and embedded arguments that perpetuate the assumptions. His family had to leave their homeland in 2008, and they came to the United States with nothing. Nothing. After his narrative of displacement, he continued. Radiating with pride, he says, “We had nothing. But today, today, you know, I have three daughters. All three of my daughters are college graduates from GCC and GCU with nursing degrees.”  He makes sure I know that the lessons his family learned from their hardship are the reasons his daughters are so successful today.

Moments later, I was signing out of the computer, crossing my t’s and dotting my i’s in leaving the classroom ready for the next instructor. “Hi Mrs. Dewey,” chimed someone. It was a familiar someone and one of my highly motivated students from ENG091 and ENG101. Last semester, she enthusiastically signed up for the CRE101 and ENG102 Learning Community, but on the first day, she was not there. It was not like her to disappear, so here and there, I would wonder if all was alright in her world. As it happens, this semester, she is working three jobs while taking her prerequisites to get into the nursing program. Visibly, ENG102 would not work with her packed schedule. She wanted me to know that she would be back for ENG102 in the forthcoming semesters and wanted to check in so I would know what happened.

Tiny yet grandiose moments like this happen every day in my work here.Tiny because they are small in duration. Grandiose because every time they happen, I gain new insight, clarity, and perspective on all that small stuff.

 
student success, Write6x6

I Made My Mentee Cry

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It all took place while I sat at the  car dealership waiting for my 2006 Mazda 3 to get repaired.

I didn’t mean to make her cry.

But she inspires me and she needed to hear it.

This set a thought process in motion that inspired me to write. GCC Faculty work very hard and are incredibly dedicated to student success. We really don’t hear enough about them and their stories that are so inspiring, so I will share one.

As a PAR Mentor, I was reviewing her hybrid 101 course, specifically looking at a series of videos she had created about exercise motivation and adherence. She designed the videos so the students could “chunk and chew” the information for the module. Each of the seven videos were about seven minutes long. Just enough time to engage a student and maintain their attention.

She didn’t have to do this at all. She could have easily said “read the chapter, take notes, and take the quiz.” But she didn’t. She saw a need and an opportunity and she went for it, despite all of her other responsibilities as full-time faculty.

She knew the students could play these videos over and over as a listening tool while driving or exercising, or to watch while sitting at the computer after school. She knew the students would appreciate the extra effort she made.

Do you know how long it takes to record, edit and upload a seven-minute video? It takes a lot of time and love. She did this seven times, and then created quizzes to go with the videos so the students would know if they really understood the material.

Our faculty do a lot of behind-the-scenes work that they don’t boast about. They do it because of their passion for teaching and ensuring the students are getting what they need for success.

So, go ahead and make a faculty member cry.  You might get a quote like this:

“Oh my goodness! You just made me cry! I cannot thank you enough for your kind words and encouragement. You have lit a fire under me to work harder and give more.”

 
Adjunct Faculty, Student Engagement, student success

Repairing the Damage

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I’ve always loved reading and writing. Throughout most of my education, it was never particularly difficult for me to complete English assignments, even if I wasn’t particularly engaged. I wrote the assigned essays with relative ease, even if I didn’t care about the topic, because I liked having my opinion heard. I read the books I was given, even if I hated them, because I loved reading. Reading and writing came easy to me, and I took it for granted everyone else was the same way.

Of course, it helped that I had teachers that encouraged my interests and skills. With the exception of one teacher: Mrs. Michelson, sixth grade Language Arts teacher. To this day, I don’t know what I had done to aggravate her, but she seemed to have it out for me. She actively discouraged my point of view on matters discussed in class, to the point where I stopped raising my hand or speaking up entirely. Further, she often criticized my assignments as having “too many details” or being “too long;” she only marked the issues and never gave me any praise on what I had done well. Nothing I submitted to her was good enough for her approval, nothing I said was worthy of leaving my mouth. My voice was stifled, my opinions outright discouraged. I learned to hate English class, and perhaps would still to this day had it not been for my seventh grade Language Arts teacher, Ms. Smith.

When I decided I wanted to be an English teacher, it wasn’t because I was thinking of all the supportive and wonderful English and Language Arts teachers I had had throughout the years, or all the encouragement I had received to pursue my dreams. Instead, I thought of all the burned out teachers my friends and I had witnessed over the years. I thought of all the negative experiences inside of a classroom. I thought of Mrs. Michelson. Of course I wanted to emulate the teachers who had inspired me, but more than that, I wanted to be the teacher who undid the damage of the bad teachers, the burned out teachers, the teachers who had simply stopped trying. I never wanted my students to feel the way I did in that sixth grade classroom, and in other classrooms in high school and university.

That’s why I do what I do. I like teaching English here at GCC because it gives me the opportunity to begin reversing the effects of the teachers who had wronged my students, who didn’t make them feel that they were worth listening to. I do my best to engage my students in a multitude of ways, to get them to think critically and then transfer those thoughts onto paper. The writing is usually rough and needs a lot of work, but it’s a start. The goal is to have them not necessarily “master” writing by the end of the semester, but gain confidence in their own abilities and in their own voices. They may not leave my class at the end of the semester loving reading or writing, but they see the need for it in the college and university environment. What’s more, they feel that they deserve to be in the higher education classroom.

 
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Is Anybody Out There?

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Teaching a hybrid public speaking class has certainly challenged my “classroom skills!” Classroom? I only meet with the class five times during the semester, while the remaining weeks are completed through Canvas. The major difficulty has been in making that personal connection with each student. I pride myself in providing a welcoming and enthusiastic atmosphere in traditional structures, but establishing a positive feeling-tone is a bit daunting from afar. Should I care? Should the students need my illustrious “connection?”

Of course, we should all care! Communication is more naturally achieved in face-to-face interactions, and even though the students and I are accustomed to text and e-mail “social skills,” it doesn’t ensure that our messages are understood or that our attitude or emotional message is conveyed. Emojis only do so much?. I need to know more than names prior to the first speech, and I must develop trust and collegiality among the students to give them the needed courage and confidence to walk up front and begin.

What to do? What to do?

1. In my perfect world, each student would have a clear photograph that appeared by their names in Canvas. (My brain’s memory bank is overloaded with data from 32 years in public high schools, preventing me from easily matching faces and names when we first meet. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!).
2. Two on-line assignments that help have been an outline for a speech introducing them to me. Once submitted, I can comment on an individual basis. I look for common ground and any unique tidbits thrown to me. The other is a discussion post, requiring each to react to a minimum of two other students. Most address each other by first name and respond to a specific idea posed.
3. The first speech had been a speech of introduction, but for the past two semesters, I have required a personal experience speech. Students really seem to respond to each other on a more intimate level when they listen to the wide variety of stories and what made the experience memorable or important. Before the first speech, students participate in an ice breaker so they have to get up and move around the room. That helps loosen them up a bit.

What I have found is that now the students feel comfortable asking me questions through Canvas e-mail.  When provided with an optional workshop to prepare the longest speech,  many attend.  They also know that I WANT them to do well, so there is less “out of sight; out of mind” and more exchange and participation. The highest compliment I can receive is to have a student tell me that they dreaded speaking in front of the class but they actually “kinda” enjoyed it.

 
Arizona, GCC

Because being good matters

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Students come here to shine

In them, our fires of knowledge burn bright

Dreams aglow and rising!

Years ago I made a transition into the work of academic advising. It was to be a short layover job of sorts before heading into teaching, but the teaching bug faded and never materialized for a variety of reasons. Advising as it turned out, suited me quite well. I found I loved the combination of helping students pursuing important educational and life goals as well as the constant research and learning advisors need to stay current in a realm of ever-changing academic and transfer information.

Advising when done right takes a breadth of skills and abilities many take lightly. You have to know or be able to quickly access volumes of information. Mistakes on your part cost students time and money. Regretfully, most advisement training is on-the-job learning from mistakes. I quickly learned that to be effective, you have to know a lot, ask frequently to verify when you don’t know something, and find help when needed to aid students in a more holistic manner when they need additional resources.

Most importantly, through advising, I was inspired every day by the stories students brought to my humble cubicle. The single mother with a terminal illness trying to make sure her daughter would be able to get an education and career prior to her death; DACA students looking for a good education in a STEM field with perfect GPA unable to get an Honor’s scholarship or any other for that matter; homeless students who made it through the semester without dropping out despite the barriers. I learned to listen to students and continue to do my best to help them while they are here at GCC. My reward is watching how often a little bit of extra effort on my part often makes the world of difference to a struggling student. And that, ladies and gents, is why I love advising and why I’m good at what I do. Because it matters.

Filed under: Arizona, Culture, GCC, Poetry Tagged: Write 6X6