The group that has been most culturally relevant for me, has been the First Year Residential Experience cohort. I was pregnant when I was hired and was out for 6 weeks during my first semester at GCC. This made it hard to connect with my department.

The FYRE meetings were my favorite part of my first year. It was a place that I felt connected to and that I belonged. Everyone no matter their age, life, past work history, etc. are all starting new at GCC. This made it easy to connect and feel welcome. Chris Neilson cultivated a judgment-free space for us to feel safe asking questions. He was always available to talk to and about anything. My whole cohort was comprised of individuals that I admire still to this day and have continued to be valuable members on the campus. We span multiple departments and act in many different roles.

I feel so blessed to have had them in a challenging time in my new faculty life and still regularly get together with them to discuss the campus and life as a probationary faculty member. This is our final year as probationary faculty. I cannot wait to see where we grow from here!

I have been working hard to keep my students actively engaged in class and have found that making class worthwhile is what keeps them coming back. 

I have to ask myself, “what can my students get from me that they cannot get from watching a youtube video?” We are literally competing with the internet and all of the knowledge it holds. We must be better than the videos, even the ones we create, when students are in front of us. Why should they come to class if they can have the same experience online?

This is why I have embraced flipped classroom models and active learning. Putting the learning onto my students ahead of class and creating dynamic and engaging cooperative learning on the days and times that my class meets has created the draw for students to come to class consistently. 

If you are going to flip your classroom I suggest making video assignments (preferably video cued), where students watch a short clip of a longer video, answer a question or two related to the content in the video, then proceed to watching more of the same video or another short video, then answering more questions, and so on. This models more of the classroom feel of taking in some information and practicing it or reflecting on the new information before taking on more new information.

Before using video assignments, my students were not prepared for the active group learning activities that I had planned for the scheduled class times. These video assignments assess their progress and help to motivate the students to be prepared for class.

In Spring 2021, I decided to come back to campus and teach in-person. I was tired of the online and live online teaching and wanted a sense of normalcy. One of the ways that this was possible, at the time, was to teach with half my students attending in-person and the other half attending live online. Luckily the course that I chose to come back in-person to teach in this split modality was a course that I had taught numerous times. The biggest help of all was my amazing colleague at Phoenix College, Marcia Corby, who was willing to try the same thing on her campus. We both teach mathematics for elementary educators courses and we have worked together to build our curriculum for years. Our students who take these courses are on the path to one day be teachers in their own classroom at the elementary level. 

Marcia and I identified the problem early on as we brainstormed what this course would look like in a split modality.

Before we could answer this question we had to first figure out the logistics of teaching in both modalities at the same time. This requires reviewing the technology we had in our classrooms, getting everything printed that our students would need ahead of the course start date so the packets could be mailed out, setting up the classroom for the social distancing and activities, and setting student expectations that we would put in our syllabi. 

After we had PREPARED all the logistical issues for the course, we need to think about the TEACHING. This is much more difficult than picking between Zoom and Google Meets. We now had to think through the activities we did in person per pandemic in a live online space, how to build community when your class is in dual modalities, and how to effectively communicate to the students. 

This forced us to think through how to make every activity in our class accessible to our students that never set foot in our classroom. Thankfully Phoenix College was well prepared to embrace the virtual challenge with virtual manipulatives. Phoenix College has been curating a virtual manipulatives library for years and anything we did not find we asked if it could be built. We were lucky to have instructors outside of mathematics that were looking for coding projects for their students to complete. 

Modifying assignments was a huge undertaking and required us to think outside of the box or paper bag in this example. We took an in person simulation and modified it for the Online space. This required us to make videos to demonstrate the simulation that we would run with our class in person. It helped that the pandemic had already started us on changing all of our assignments. 

As you can tell the planning and thought process required to launch this course was intense but teaching it was a huge mental drain. Trying to attend to two different audiences simultaneously was difficult. Making “in the moment” changes had setbacks since you would then need to, on the spot, determine how to share and incorporate both spaces (in person and live online). When technology failed for students or us it was crippling in this format. 

Even though this undertaking was rough, Marcia and I have had some amazing things come from it.  Our HOME (Hands On Manipulative Exploration) Assignments became significantly better because we weren’t as leary of students operating with virtual manipulatives and we demoed how to use some of the virtual manipulatives. Students could attend class even if they were locked out of their car (true story). We even had students who would not have been able to take the course in the morning, due to work or family obligations, attend since they could enroll in the live online course. 

Overall this process of preparing and teaching in this split modality has strengthened our course materials and has made us consider teaching the course in different modalities in the future. 

by Dr. Krysten Pampel and Dr. Ashley Nicoloff

In my life as an educator, I have been faced with many difficult situations that were hard for me to navigate. The one that has stuck with me the longest was when I was teaching high school. I had two brothers who were both taking my algebra course, one a freshman and the other a junior. The only day that they both attended my class was the first day of school, from there on out I only ever had one of the brothers. About two weeks into the school year, I approached the older brother to enquire why I only saw him every other day. He chose to be vague and blame illness and bad timing of a family emergency. I didn’t push but I watched for another two weeks as the brother continued their alternating attendance in my class. They were both doing reasonably well in my course and they weren’t hurting anyone but the situation bothered me.

I decided that enough was enough, I needed to get to the bottom of this unusual behavior. I approached the younger brother this time and asked about the unusual attendance pattern. The younger brother explained that they were alternating days to attend because they had two non-school aged siblings at home and their mother was working a second job. They had to alternate attendance in order to make sure that the siblings at home were cared for.

I was astounded that this was the reason but checked with the older brother the next day to confirm the story since I was unable to get the mother on the phone, understandably, in the previous weeks. The older brother asked me to keep this quiet and that he appreciated my willingness to work with him and his brother for the assignments and tests. He admitted to me that they had been doing this alternating attendance for the past two years and he was excited to have his brother in high school so it could work more effectively.

I explained to him that I could not keep our conversation a secret and I would speak with the social worker to see if there could be any support given. It was risking to bring in the social worker since in some cases the students flee the school as a way to avoid the conversations that follow. In this case, I was happy that everything worked out. The school was able to find support for the family so that the younger children could receive care, their mother could work, and both brothers could attend school regularly.

This was a difficult situation for me to navigate but those two brothers were the ones that had “difficult situations.” Those two brothers will forever be a reminder to me that “tough times create tough people.”

Written by Dr. Krysten Pampel & Dr. Ashley Nicoloff

One of the top GCC values a faculty needs to be successful is being future-focused. When thinking of future-focused faculty some characteristics come to mind: (1) life-long learner, (2) the desire to stay relevant, and (3) willing to change things up in their teaching and mindset.

As defined by GCC, future-focused is enhancing innovative and forward-thinking perspectives and approaches to prepare students for evolving educational, workforce, and societal needs.

Faculty that attend to this GCC value might find themselves researching the changing trends in our student population. The GCC CTLE held a Summer Book Club where the book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us by Dr. Jean M. Twenge (link to book) Faculty who employ this value might research their field or content to see the trends in the needs of business and careers associated to their field.

In order to shake up their teaching styles and meet the needs of our every changing student population, future-focused faculty might take the opportunity to participate in the Reimagine Project. The Reimagine Project takes faculty from every discipline (residential and adjunct) and leads them on an in-depth look at 5 different teaching strategies (problem-based, project-based, flipping the classroom, community-based, and learning communities).

Glendale Community College has multiple opportunities to help future-focused faculty grow and find success. Through those efforts, we as faculty can help our students gain a new future-focused view on their education and future careers. One of the opportunities is led by Dr. Gabriela Cojanu in the Business Information Technology Department. She has designed an Innovation Summit where students will learn about entrepreneurship, paths to innovation, and to share their ideas in a “Shark Tank” style competition for cash prizes! (link to flyer)

I find that making lasting relationships with other faculty members challenging. I am not sure why but this has always been a struggle for me, even before GCC. I know that the faculty here at GCC are all trying to create quality instruction for their students and we are all attempting to help our students achieve their goals.If any relationship should be easy to build it should be this type. We all have a good amount of job related characteristics that we share. However, I still find it difficult. FYRE has probably been the best way for me to meet faculty outside of my department but within my department opportunities are limited.

I want to feel connected with the faculty here at GCC and I believe the best way to do this is to start saying yes to extracurricular events. I am not a huge fan of happy hour but this might be the best way to build lasting relationships with my fellow faculty members.

When making relationships with Staff, I feel more at ease. I feel comfortable coming to the staff for help on pretty much everything. This level of comfort helps me to connect with the staff. I get to learn about their families and we can usually find common interest fairly easily. These relationships mean a lot to me and I put forth a good deal of effort in making connections with the staff.

Creating relationships with my students is the easiest for me. I have had a good amount of practice since I have taught for 10 years. I like to start my semester off with introductions surrounding their hobbies, interests, and long term academic goals. This helps me connect with the students outside of them being in my class. I also start to learn their names fast since I can parallel their hobbies with their names.