Category Archives: Write6x6

Kindness Matters–6×6 Week One

Last fall, I had the privilege of bringing some of my ENG 101 students to a seminar with Dr. Rupert Nacoste. His presentation, entitled, “Respect Starts with Me–How to Handle Neo-Diversity Anxiety” encapsulated for students some of the key points in his book, Taking on Diversity: How We Can Move from Anxiety to Respect.  (I highly recommend this book, by the way!)

Dr. Nacoste points out that we are in a time of vast social change, and notes that change tends to make people nervous. Often we don’t know how to deal with situations or with folks who are different than we are; yet, we are thrust into these diverse situations every day–especially in the academic world. His solution to a very complex situation is actually very simple, something that perhaps we learned in kindergarten once upon a time–kindness.  Every human being should be treated with respect and dignity. It’s ok to acknowledge our differences; we don’t all have to look alike, think alike, etc. But we do have to exercise kindness at all times.

As faculty, it’s important to note that each of our students comes to our classrooms with different experiences that have shaped them as people and have informed their ideas about the world around them. We have an amazing opportunity and grave responsibility to model kindness as we accept students where they are and show them how to converse with others of different backgrounds and opinions with kindness and respect.

 

Habit and the Art of Behavior Change

I just realized that the theme for this week is “culturally relevant.” So I had to stop and take a look at the draft I had saved to see if it could be salvaged!

As it turns out, EVERYONE is talking about behavior change, so that makes it cultural, right?

I have set over a million goals that I failed to accomplish. How ’bout you?

Don’t you find it frustrating, for example, when you realize you are consuming too much chocolate-covered anything, set a goal to quit, and find yourself back in the cookie jar within 24 hours.

Not being perfect myself, I feel I am in a good position to share my method for success. It all lies in the thought process. I treat every day like a training session for the future and I am not obsessed by my goal. I do become slightly obsessed by the process, however,  until it becomes autonomic.

Most of us see someone we wish to emulate, figure out what they do, and try to do exactly what they do. This is like going from zero to 180 in 3 seconds and wondering why the car’s engine is all over the highway.

Repetitive, deliberate baby steps with only the baby step in mind, not the outcome, is the path to mastery.  Each deliberate baby step is a training session for your future mind. In the future, when the baby step becomes a habit, you will look back and be thankful that you remained true to each and every session. They weren’t hard sessions, but the were consistent. The foundation was being laid for the day when you were ready to take it to a new and more challenging level.

How do you know you are ready for the next level? It is when you get out of bed in the morning and you no longer have to convince yourself of the benefits of your goal despite the hardships. It just is.

It’s like the act of brushing our teeth. We don’t slowly walk up to our toothbrush, weighing the pros and cons of tooth brushing, struggling through every brush stroke. We don’t think to ourselves about how we can avoid it or what else we could be doing that is more fun. We just do it because it is part of the morning and evening ROUTINE that WE have created for ourselves.

Tooth brushing actually became easy because it is a short bout of activity with tremendous benefits. Can you think of anything in your life that you can do in short bouts that can bring you tremendous benefits, allow you to build a habit over time, and create a foundation where you can step it up when you are ready?

I can.

You can.

Your students can.

 

My Inspiration: Writer’s Block

I love this 6X6 Writing Challenge. So why can’t I write anything? Each time I begin, I read it and it stinks. I just read Jeffrey Sanger’s post and he reminded me to think about my audience. Everything I’d written up until this point was written for me. I was my audience. Who wants to read that kind of stuff? Not even me at the moment… So here’s a thought for our 6X6 writing community regarding an inspirational person I met online thanks to NPR. Don’t you just love NPR?

Check out this video or his website. I hope you’re inspired…

Alain de Botton 

Writer, modern-day philosopher, founder of

The School of Life.   https://www.theschooloflife.com/

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2v8TywXjLA&w=560&h=315]

 

de Botton’s The School of Life and  http://www.thebookoflife.org/  offer free, relevant, intelligent information.

 

 

 

Week 1: The One Thing You can do to Raise Enrollment

A six week “how-to” series
Week 1, Step 1: How to Impact Enrollment. But first, a story.

My biggest failure happened when I was a wet-behind-the-ears youth leader. I was actively looking to raise money for youth activities and I had responded to an ad pitching a T-shirt fundraiser. The company featured exciting, fun, faith-based designs on sleeveless T-shirts, and, for a limited time, was selling the shirts at a steep discount. The deal involved paying in advance with no returns and no refunds, but these things did not matter because these sleeveless shirts would sell themselves. I used my tax refund money to purchase the shirts. The shirts arrived and we began selling. But, instead of buying the shirts, our friends and families asked: Don’t you have any T-shirts with short sleeves? It turns out that people are so adverse to wearing sleeveless T’s that the fundraiser tanked horribly. It was a hard pill to swallow, but it changed my life.

I learned to never make decisions “based on a hunch.” I came to love data informed decision-making, and I am not alone. In this data driven age, even the youngest consumers are making informed decisions by comparing products, pricing, and reputation, including incoming college students and their families.

You’ve probably guessed by now, the “one thing” you can do is based on what works, study proven methods, and not gut instinct. So, what is the “one thing” you can do to influence the student decision-making process, raise enrollment, and raise GCC’s reputation in an increasingly crowded marketplace?

Before I spill the beans, you should know that conversely, by not doing this “one thing,” you risk falling off your potential students’ radar completely, and losing them to a competitor. There is a lot at stake and much to be gained.

The first step:

Go to www.gccaz.edu, and type your last name into the search box. Take a look at your employee biography webpage. What do you see?  If you were a student, is there anything on your page that would make you choose you?

What’s ahead:

WEEK 2: THE “ONE THING” AND ITS POWERFUL SWAY
When it comes to students choosing your classes, leaving choice up to chance is not your only option.

WEEK 3: THE “ONE THING” AND IT’S NOT BRAGGING
Reputation is king. Making your achievements public enables people to make informed choices.

WEEK 4: THE “ONE THING,” AND HOW TO INFLUENCE ASSUMPTIONS
Learn the top trait people assess when viewing strangers’ photos, and how your face, wrinkles and all, makes people choose you.

WEEK 5: The “One Thing” Before and After
If two faculty are each offering the same class, who would YOU choose?

WEEK 6: The “One Thing” and the Final Step

 

Theoretical War of Theory

When pursuing my Master’s I enrolled in a summer course entitled “Theory of Education”.  For many in the class it was the kind of backward psychobabble  that bore little relevancy on actual classroom technique and management, focusing primarily on Behaviorism and Constructivism.

Theory Meme

It has now been well over a decade since those early days of learning, and I have only grown in appreciation of the experience gained during those few months.

Fear not, this will not be a summation of educational theory and delivery methods. I could not give any theory justice this far removed.  No, like any good learning experience it wasn’t what was said that impacted me so much, but rather what was done.

Although most of those taking part in the class checked out day one, there were a few of us interested enough to make the classroom dialogue interesting. All the other students were already elementary or secondary teachers attempting to shore up their credentials and bank accounts by adding a Master’s to their wall. I was still in my educational infancy, a TA at the college without much in the way of practical experience.

The professor was a devote Contructivist and every lesson seemed to have a tinge of personal bias. Excellent for me who had latched on to Contructivism, but bad for the other interested parties who had seen Behaviorism work in their early education classrooms. Many of our sessions ended up turning into debates, often heated and passionate. At one point, midway through the summer semester, a frustrated elementary teacher stood up and declared that she would never understand Contructivism, and that the instructor would have to fail her on the spot because she was a Behaviorist for life.

I was at full attention, expecting some witty retort and conversion right then and there. What I got was a life lesson that stuck with me more than all the academic and education theories crammed into my textbooks. He smiled, warm, friendly, his debate tone drifted away replaced by a Bob Ross jovial melancholy, and he said that was okay, that he respected her beliefs even if they weren’t his own, and he wouldn’t want her beliefs to change simply because of his.

More important than theory I had witnessed practical implementation of the the greatest skills higher education can instill; patience, kindness, and critical thinking.  The ability to accept that there are different views beyond your own, and even if you are in a place of power you should not attempt to convert opinions, but encourage personal discovery.

Beliefs may define an individual, but they are not the reason society succeeds. Kindness, understanding, and curiosity are what propel both education and mankind, allowing us to achieve great things together, no matter what theories we happen to follow.

 

 

 

 

 Why Math?! Why?!

Ever since I can remember I have been a driven person. My parents still to this day comment on the anxiety I use to give them when I asked what we were going to do today. Come to find out I was not okay if they did not have a plan in place or decided to change the plan. My mentality has not changed much from when I was little. I still make plans and execute them. This has served me well in life and has helped me achieve my goals. As you can probably guess everyone does not have the same thoughts about planning and execution. I experienced two mathematics teachers during my freshman year that helped to shape me into who I am today.

My math teacher was unorganized and chose to run her class in “organized chaos.” The students in the class behaved well and there were very little problems but she provided very little order in her lessons. The biggest concern I had was that she only excepted problems to be solved in one way, her way. She came across as unprepared and inflexible to me, and frustration set in. Math which was one of my favorite subjects became one of my least favorite. I passed the class but was starting to feel like math was not going to be “my thing” anymore. Mind you this was my first experience with a teacher like this and I was ready to call it quits.

In the second semester of my freshman year, I took another math course with a different teacher. This math teacher not only had a plan in his lesson but showed the entire class multiple ways to solve each problem. He told us that we, as students, have options when solving problems. This class helped me to explore different strategies when solving problems which made the class more interesting. We were no longer looking for the right answer rather how many ways we could get to the right answer. This is when I started to see math as a puzzle that can be solved in multiple ways, starting with the edge pieces or the middle, with the same resulting picture.

My experience as a freshman in high school was what shaped me into the mathematics teacher I am today. I strive to provide my students with multiple strategies to complete problems. I also encourage them to explore and find other strategies to solve problems. I was given the opportunity to see that I could make multiple plans, execute those plans in multiple ways, and still each my goals. It is my hope that I can help my students to realize the same thing is possible for them.

 

For Bisia (What Inspires Me Daily)

What amazes me is to see how the lines of lives come together — lead to a single time or a place. I am a big picture person, and I like to contemplate it. When I think about what inspires my work every day at GCC, I think of my grandma, Helen Kobylski. My sisters, cousins and I called her Bisia (pronounced Bee-sha). Bisia was the daughter of Polish immigrants, and she grew up in a Polish neighborhood on Detroit’s west side. When she was in sixth grade, her father died of cancer, and she dropped out of school to work to help support the family. She never went back to school.

Bisia was an avid reader, but she didn’t write much. The only evidence I ever had that she wrote was when she signed birthday cards, “Love, Bisia.” That was it. But she loved Westerns. She loved baseball. She loved a good political discussion. She loved bingo. She was so passionate about what she loved. She was also so limited by her lack of education, not at all in terms of her intelligence, but in terms of her ability to secure good work. Bisia never had a job that wasn’t in retail. She never had a job that earned much over minimum wage. She worked hard for decades, and when she retired, she was on a fixed income. Every single year for Christmas, my two cousins, two sisters, and I received the same gift from Bisia: a single, crisp, two dollar bill.

Bisia was not the kind of grandmother to spoil her grandkids.  She’d be more likely to yell at you to finish your homework or be too busy washing my cousins’ mouths out with bricks of Dial soap than she would be to give you a hug and a kiss. But when I went away to graduate school — all the way from Detroit to Cleveland — and came home on my breaks, Bisia would have a whole collection of food waiting for me. She would give me her bucket-sized government peanut butter, the government block of cheese, her ration of canned ham, and the gigantic rectangles of butter, all generic, all utterly delicious. I’d drive these back to Cleveland with me and share them with my fellow graduate students who didn’t live close enough to home to receive such a bounty.

Despite her own lack of education (and likely because of it), Bisia made sure that my mother was the first in the family to graduate from high school. Somehow, she sent my mother to Mercy College. Somehow, back when women didn’t really go beyond their bachelor degrees (if they went to college at all), my mom went to the University of Michigan for a Master’s Degree in Social Work. She did this before she met my dad and before my sisters and I were born. Somehow, my mother earned a graduate degree in the early 1960s.

Bisia’s story, and thus our family story, reminds me greatly of our students’ stories. So many GCC students come from somewhere else, speak another language, are first generation college students, are negotiating two languages (or more) and cultures daily — the one in public, and the one at home. I look out over my classroom, I listen to my students speak, I read their writing and learn their stories, and, when I do, my grandmother is always nearby. I see my GCC students, and I am reminded of where I am from. Every single day. I think of the tradition that existed only between my grandmother and me, of Bisia saving her allotment of government-assisted groceries, and it inspires me daily to help others achieve their higher education.

Bisia was the first person in her family of origin to live past age 49. Then she made all the way to her 80s. I was 34 when she died. There isn’t a single day when I’m in the classroom that I don’t think of my grandmother. She had a tough life, and she was fierce because she had to be; her energy went into investing in the future despite having very little resources. The lines of her life eventually helped draw the lines of mine. And now I just keep drawing them and extending them. In addition, I am blessed to be in the position of offering the opportunity for my students to draw their own lines to see where they might lead. When it happens this way, and all the lines come together –if even only for a semester or two — there really is no beginning, and there really is no end. It is the most motivating big picture for me ever, and it’s precisely what keeps me going.

 

I wore compression socks to work today

My non-teaching job forces me out of bed at 4:30am to work stock crew at a retail store and requires me to be on my feet for long periods of time. In an effort to combat the leg fatigue and edema, I broke down and purchased compression socks—and not the really cool kind that lifters and runners and crossfitters wear. The ugly kind…the ones that are purely functional and “flesh”-toned, with subtle hints of jaundice.

They are glorious.

I’m pretty sure they solidify my status as “old,” and while I may be a few years shy of my AARP card, they are a reminder of the ever-growing age gap between me and my students. Every year, I get older, but my students stay roughly the same age. When I first started teaching at community colleges, I was 29, just 11 years older than my youngest students. Finding course content that connected with them was easy, mostly because they had experienced the same significant cultural moments that I had. I could pepper a class discussion with references to the O.J. Simpson trial or Brandi Chastain’s game-winning kick and subsequent disrobing; and my students responded with knowing head nods.

AP Photo/The San Francisco Examiner, Lacy Atkins, File

That isn’t the case today. I’m 15 years older; they’re still roughly 18-25.

Earlier this week when a class discussion on precise word choices afforded me the opportunity to quote Inigo Montoya, I suggested that it’s important to choose words wisely to avoid comments on their paper like “you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” My students didn’t laugh. Instead, they just stared at me…blankly. Even when I humbly offered, “The Princess Bride?…anyone? No? Just me?”…nothing. And in that moment, I realized that another one of my “go-to” references needed to be updated.

Giphy

Every semester, I’m faced with the reality that connecting with my students is much harder than it used to be. I am growing increasingly more aware of the fact that my students aren’t knowledgeable of the same events I am, nor do they relate to the world the same way I do.  As educators, we talk a lot about the importance of student engagement and its direct correlation to student success and retention, and so every semester, in an effort to close the growing age gap, I actively seek out new supplemental content that will help them make connections between their reality and the skills we ask them to master. Surprisingly, a majority of this new content comes from former students.

When a class asks me if I have heard about a recent event or seen a viral video or a social media post or a T.V. show, I carve out time to look it up. At worst, I find it obtuse or offensive; but even then, I am learning more about the interests of this generation of students, and that knowledge helps me connect to them in other ways. More often than not, though, it is something I can use during a future class discussion, and in those moments, they teach me, helping me understand their world—and mine—a little bit better.

I hope that I never lose the ability to make those connections with my students, that I never get to the place where my class never changes and I have become Ferris Bueller’s economics teacher Professor Binns, droning on incessantly and completely oblivious to my classroom of sleeping students. I hope that I never run out of new material…but if I do, I can always fall back on a cute kitten .gif. Everyone loves a cute kitten .gif.  

Giphy
 

Contagious Spaces

 

HeadshotGCCFall2017.jpg

My name is Tenisha Baca and I am Residential Faculty for the Communication and World Languages Department at Glendale Community College in AZ. I am also the Co-Faculty Developer for the Center for Teaching Learning and Engagement. Welcome to this post!

We’re always encouraging others in higher education, but there are moments when we need it ourselves. When we’re motivated and inspired it impacts everyone we serve. It’s contagious and I’m here to spread it.

One way to stay motivated and inspired is to surround yourself with items that cultivate that feeling within you. The best place to start is the office. We spend a significant amount of time in the office. We should surround ourselves with items that encourage us to be awesome in what we do.

My office is a haven of motivation and inspiration. I’ve included pics below. Here’s a list of some of my top motivating/inspirational items in my space.

1. Purple Heart Award: Award I received after completing chemotherapy. I’ve been a cancer survivor since 2008. It reminds me of what I overcame and it encourages me to encourage others that they can overcome what they are going through.

Purple Heart Award.jpg2. Picture of my husband and I: He strives for excellence in everything he does. It reminds me to strive for the same thing inside and outside of the classroom.

Hubby and I.png

3. Notes of appreciation on my wall: Over the year’s people have been nice enough to write me such encouraging notes. I keep all of them and it touches me to know I have touched others in my work.

Thank you notes.jpg

 4. Wonder Woman: All of my figures inspire me because I love WONDER WOMAN!!! Everything she stands for is something I strive for daily.

Wonder Woman.jpg

5. Door of Inspiration: Place where I post people, sayings, notes, etc. that encourage me to be the best version of myself every day.

Door of Inspiration.jpg

Cultivating this space and mindset makes a difference. I pass these messages along to my students when they stop by my office and we have conversations about life. I also pass them along in the classroom. One day I asked a student: “Hey, have you found all of this motivational/inspirational stuff we have discussed to be something helpful to you?” He said yes “It makes me realize that I can do anything. And that I can work hard to get there if I put in the work.” That is a great lesson a student learned, not just for the classroom, but in life. Like I said before, motivation and inspiration are contagious and I’m here to spread it. Thank you for reading.

 

 

Mindfulness in Everything

I thought the word mindfulness was a little overused and overrated. And then I started abusing the word myself. In the classroom, in meetings, with my friends, with my kids.

I have actually boiled it down to the one thing that could save us all from ourselves. If something is going wrong in your life, you are likely on autopilot. Handy for planes. Bad for most people…unless you are a really good habit builder.

Too much body fat…eating mindlessly.

Too little sleep…surfing (internet, TV channels) mindlessly.

Depressed…wishing mindlessly.

Anxious…fearing mindlessly.

I think we just do things because it’s the way we have always done them, never questioning why. Always on autopilot.

Mindfulness is about being present and focused on people and the world around us. On our thoughts, on our food, on our lessons, on quiet, on noise, on smells, on textures, on colors, on tastes and on how we feel about it all.

The mind is powerful and controls our body and ultimately our health. If you are having a hard time getting focused, start with your breath. You’ll will find stillness there and will eventually be able to expand your areas of focus.

I encourage my students to touch, feel, hear, see and question as they are learning. I encourage mindfulness in the classroom because it teaches the student to learn in new ways and reach surprising new levels of comprehension.