Tag Archives: education

Interviewing Tour

February 28, 2020 Tenisha Baca Leave a comment

The writing prompt for Write 6 x 6 this week asked this question:

What would you love to be able to do to improve yourself in relation to your job or to change your job?

I would love to interview teachers from different professions in MCCCD, the state of Arizona, the U.S. and around the world. I want to talk to teachers who teach higher education, or karate, or piano, or knitting. I want to get a collective sense of why they are teaching , the keys to successful teaching, and what they love most about it. I would love to pull from their experiences and get a sense of what drives them everyday.

I just watched a You Tube video that’s an oldie, but a goodie, from someone known as the Kid President. The videos on this channel never get old, and is usually a good go to when my work week has been crazy and I haven’t had enough time to work on my blog post. In the video Kid President’s Pep Talk to Teachers and Students! He asks a central question I’d ask in all of my interviews: What are you teaching the world?

Have you thought about that? What are you teaching the world? I would love to jump into that question and unpack it with others in an interview. I feel their answer would really inform mine and would help me to grow as a person and as a professional.

Adjunct Faculty, Write6x6

Titles VS INCLUSION

February 19, 2020 Paul Moore Leave a comment

My colleagues have already done an excellent job of breaking down inclusion and how to accomplish it in an academic setting.

Rather than echo what was already stated, I wanted to briefly discuss one of the barriers to inclusion: titles.

Titles, or labels, are either earned or given by society. Sometimes they relate to our cultural background, sometimes they relate to our level of education, and other times they simply seem to be bestowed without reason.

I do want to be clear. There is nothing wrong with having a title as a way to identify function or purpose. After all, most of us are professors, a title that denotes our specialization in the education of others in a particular field.

Most positions have a title: Biologist, Commissioner, Dean, Director, Doctor, Mayor, President, Professor… the world is not wanting from a lack of titles.

In their multitudes, however, titles have become barriers to inclusion as they are used to judge others or ourselves.

I have struggled to combat this thought process, the idea that someone is better or worse, smarter or less educated, simply by the title they carry. If a County Commissioner was at odds with a Level I Planner, or a Dean was at odds with the parents of a student, my initial inclination, without knowledge of the situation, was to side with the higher title.

On a personal level, I have seen others change their opinion of me, almost immediately, after finding I had gained or lost a certain title.

The problem with titles is that within each one there is an incredible range of talent, expertise, and intelligence:

Think about all the medical doctors you have ever met.

Were they all equally talented? Knowledgable?

Of course not. Yet, they have the same title, and sight unseen there is a tendency to put all doctors on the same level.

Categorization without knowing. The antithesis of inclusion.

Although I am personally still working on breaking free of title bias, I can say the first important step is to realize that titles denote a function, not intelligence, kindness, or capability.

They merely answer the question “What do you do?” not “Who are you as a person?”

As long as I can remember that, I know I am on my way to becoming a more inclusive individual.

LGBTQ, pronouns, transgender, Write6x6

Inclusivity = Pronouns

February 12, 2020 Tenisha Baca Leave a comment

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When I first started as Residential Faculty I kept encountering students who identified as transgender and they would let me know their preferred pronouns. When they approached me I gave off the appearance of knowing what they were talking about, but I had no clue. I have to admit that I felt a little ashamed not knowing, I consider myself to be a pretty woke person and I realized that I was clueless in this area. So what did I do? What any teacher would do, I educated myself on the subject and I realized there was even more that I didn’t know.

On my quest for education, I googled “What is transgender?” I found myself on the transgender FAQ page for GLAAD, an organization that centrally focuses on acceptance of the LGBTQ community. They not only explained what it means to be a transgender person, they also had headers like “What name and pronoun do I use?”, “How do I treat a transgender person with respect?”, “Why is transgender equality important?” How did I not know this? One thing that stuck out to me was the sentence where it mentioned the anxiety a transgender person could experience when they are associated with the birth name they do not identify with. After visiting the page, I visited other sources that would help me to understand my students even more. I went even further and attended a workshop at SMCC where the focus of one of the break out sessions was gender identity, expression, and the LGBTQ community.

One thing that is important to me is creating and cultivating a positive, constructive learning environment for EVERY student. I currently address students by their preferred name and pronoun of he/him/she/her/they/them. At the end of the day it’s not about me, it’s about the student and their experience in the classroom. I’ve been doing it ever since I started my journey into educating myself about transgender people years ago. On the first day of class, I ask my students to let me know if they have a preferred name/pronoun during roll or after class so that I can address them appropriately. Students do mention it during roll, or come up to me after class and let me know their preferred names/pronouns.

Now some real talk, it took me a moment to adjust. There have been moments in the first couple of weeks where I accidentally call my students their roster name or I get the pronouns wrong. There was a moment in one class when I did that and I talked with the student after class and apologized, and let them know that I didn’t mean any disrespect in that moment. Despite my mistakes, I think what matters most is that I’m trying and I’m continuing to learn and grow. I’m making an effort to create an environment where students feel like they matter and feel like they are included.

empowerment, Write6x6

Inspiration From Kindergarten Through College

February 3, 2020 Tenisha Baca Leave a comment

I am someone who is inspired by so many different things in life. I was recently inspired by the Netflix Series Cheer. In what way? Well, that’s another blog post for another day.

The two consistent things that have inspired me the most are my former teachers and my mentors. Some of these individuals have played the role of both the former teacher and the mentor. Who I am today and the work that I do is representative of the key individuals who have crossed my path in education. Below you will find six lessons learned from teachers/mentors, that I apply in the classroom and my life.

Kindergarten Teacher: The only thing that limits you is your imagination. I learned this when we had green eggs and ham in class. We read the book and my teacher made it a reality. My little mind was blown and the food was delicious!!!!

4th Grade Teacher: No matter how behind you are, you can always catch up, you gotta work a little harder, but you can make it. I learned this when I transitioned from one school district that was lagging into another school district that was way ahead of where I was at. I caught up eventually, but it took a little bit of time.

High School Theater Teacher: Go against the grain and take risks. My high school theater teacher always had us involved in work that was not typical for high school students. We did Shakespeare (A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream) and Greek tragedy (Antigone) and adult work like A Few Good Men and A Lion in Winter. The same attitude was also placed in our speech pieces since he was our speech and debate coach. I also learned that, no one is above or below anyone else. We were taught to respect each other as actors and tech people. Everyone contributed to building the set, the production of the play, and tearing down the set. No one was allowed to talk down to each other or treat anyone as less than because of their “status”.

High School Multicultural Club Adviser: People are different, but there is so much that we could offer each other in this world if we would just take a moment to listen to each other and learn from each other. All we need to do is to get out of our own way. I am so thankful that I was a part of this club. In high school I learned about the importance of diversity and inclusivity. We also learned about the barriers of racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, etc. I had the opportunity to serve as the President of the club and as a counselor for our multicultural camp Rammietown. The experiences I had then, still impact me to this day.

College Speech and Debate Coach/Mentor: The most successful people in life are those who combine talent with hard work. When I started speech and debate in college, I was not the most talented person. I lacked a lot of confidence and felt like I was pretty small compared to the big competitors on the team. Many came in with several titles and I had one. I was absolutely terrified in many of the practices I had my first year because I felt like I was completely exposed and that everyone could see my weaknesses on the team. Despite my insecurities, I kept working hard, while those who were naturally talented, just coasted on their talent. I continued to get better and eventually surpassed some of them. I eventually became a multi national and international champion. I discovered that I had some talent, but what separated me from everyone else was how hard I worked. I never want to be wasted talent.

College Professor/Mentor: Be excellent in everything that you do and how you live your life. I am a firm believer in excellence, it aligns with our campus value of quality. I try to strive for excellence in my personal and professional life. Like Oprah has said ” Excellence is the best deterrent to racism, sexism, etc.,” but it also brings me joy and pride. When people enjoy my work, I have joy and pride because I did my best work, and the end result is the most satisfying. My college professor is an embodiment of excellence. They taught me the importance of putting your best foot forward in everything that you do.

I have so many more that I could share. The list goes on and on. I’m sharing this because what we do in the classroom matters. As instructors we must never forget the impact that we have on our students. The list above shows the impact we can have on our students.

Write6x6

2020 Vision

February 1, 2020 Paul Moore 7 Comments

The world has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. It is difficult to fully grasp the increase in access to information, and with it, misinformation.

Education has a responsibility to try and keep up with this exponential growth in access.

If this responsibility is taken on a case by case basis it becomes impossible. Even the most gifted teacher can’t fact check the firehose of information and media being fed to students (and every internet user) on a daily basis.

So how can educators avoid getting stuck in a perpetual Sisyphus style loop with correcting misinformation?

There is an old, now cliché, saying: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Modified: Provide someone a truth, and you correct one lie. Teach someone to pursue truth, and you keep them from a lifetime of deception.

Teaching students (or anyone) to recognize fact from falsehood is not an easy task. There are a dozen different forms of bias that serve as barriers to the truth, some of which are variants on the traditional forms of bias we think of as educators.

Last year I was at a Town Hall meeting on the possibility and impact of new low-income housing. The audience could be described as hostile. At one point in the presentation, there was a slide showing cited figures disproving the notion that “low-income” means “more crime”. At this point, one of the audience members stood up and proclaimed, phone waving in hand, that that information was inaccurate because “He just Googled it”.

“I Googled It” Bias (a variant of anchoring bias) is just the tip of the iceberg. Where Google has at least considered filtering for accuracy over relevance, social media platforms have generally taken the opposite approach. This blatant disregard for accuracy is especially dangerous because, according to Forbes magazine, 64.5% of internet users receive breaking news from social media.

Social media is an addiction, and like all addictions, expect a fight when trying to wean people away from it. The path of least resistance here is not to go after social media altogether (I’d struggle to give up /aww on reddit), but rather educate that social media shouldn’t be a primary, or even secondary, source of information. At best social media should serve as a tertiary form of information, it should provoke the thought of “Is this true?” rather than “This is true.”.

The next step goes to my old rallying cry around critical thinking skills:

Always consider both sides of the issue

Question, no matter the source

Look for currency, credibility, and bias

The first thought when reading any information shouldn’t be “What is being said?”, but rather, “Who is saying it?”. Most importantly, find multiple sources for the same piece of information.

This notion especially holds true when educators start thinking about “quality sources”. One of the dangers in academia is the sometimes blind faith put in peer-reviewed journals. Unfortunately, there have been multiple cases, with some even causing societal belief shifts, where data published in peer-reviewed journals are later found to be false.

As difficult as it may be, both educators and students have to acquiesce to the notion that some facts can be fickle. The understandings of society, history, and science are usually “best guesses”, but that should not dissuade from the pursuit.

In the end, it is the pursuit of truth that should be the primary focus of education. Every teacher should strive to show students how to limit social media’s influence, avoid bias, and apply critical thinking. These skills will prove invaluable long after a student graduates, and well into whatever era comes after this age of information.

empowerment, We Matter, Write6x6, You Matter

Iyanla Vanzant Says You Matter

April 10, 2019 Tenisha Baca Leave a comment

7502b197610a52e13fcf9e3c753a636287f000a4aff0f21648a9780dc7ffed178d792954105314f7ce1494f2cc6447195d08dc5edd27b0fe7bd1aae706afd20f Many people know that I love Oprah! I am of course subscribed to her podcast Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations. Yesterday I listened to the episode: Iyanla Vanzant: You Matter. Iyanla Vanzant is a woman who helps people overcome some major issues on a show on OWN called Fix My Life. When I saw the title of the podcast I had to listen and I was not disappointed. It perfectly aligns with what I have been talking about for the past few weeks. If you get a moment to listen, check it out.

The statement that stuck out to me the most was:

“…we get our meaning and our mattering from our story and if we tell a story in a way that disempowers us we won’t know that we matter…..”

When she said this in the podcast it made me think. How many of our faculty, staff, and students have created stories in their heads that discourage and disempower them? Stories of discouragement and disempowerment prevent them from realizing that they matter. If their story includes people who tell them they are not good enough or that they will never amount to anything or that they are not good at reading, writing, or math, it will not only impact them but also the people who serve them. When I work with a student one on one and they express frustrations and are really tough on themselves I will think about what Iyanla says. What story are they telling themselves and what does it mean to them? How is it impacting them in the classroom?

How can we have stories that empower us and helps us to create meaning so that we feel like we matter? One way to do this is to pay attention to the people who are in your lives and what they tell you on a daily basis. Being surrounded by people who tear you down makes it difficult to build yourself up. Another way is to stop comparing yourself to others. I mentioned that in a previous post. We have a tendency of tearing ourselves down when we don’t feel like we measure up.

empowerment, We Matter, Write6x6, You Matter

Iyanla Vanzant Says You Matter

April 10, 2019 Tenisha Baca Leave a comment

The statement that stuck out to me the most was:

“…we get our meaning and our mattering from our story and if we tell a story in a way that disempowers us we won’t know that we matter…..”

Write6x6

A Capacity to Care

April 7, 2019 Paul Moore 2 Comments

I want to make a disclaimer: This article will most likely lack the structure and finesse of my other blogs.

I originally had planned a different article this week with the same title. My goal was to do a full education/politics crossover next week with four critical traits. However, on Thursday I had a meeting that put today’s trait front and center. I am going to go with my heart and go more in-depth today than I had originally planned. I will include as many of my draft thoughts about caring as I can.

AZQuote image of Teddy Roosevelt quote "Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care." — TR Quote 1 of 2 for the day. I often look to our 26th president when I am in need of inspiration. (C) AZQuotes

Every educator I have met that has been in the profession for an extended amount of time is caring by nature. Even for those that don’t know this first hand, it doesn’t take a great deal of research to find that almost all educators do what they do despite the financial and emotional toll that comes with the title of teacher. Those sacrifices are made with the intention of building up others every semester, every day, and every class.

The essence of education is a desire to make the world a better place and to empower others.

Ideally, anyone in a position of power should share the same goal, especially those in political power.

I spent the better part of the afternoon Thursday in a room surrounded by powerful regional entities: utility owners, ports, economic advisors, mayors, councilmembers, development directors.

I walked out of that meeting feeling frustrated, defeated, and depressed. I walked out questioning my volunteerism and optimism for the future.

Many of the conversations I witnessed at that meeting boiled people down to numbers, put profit over affordable living, and came across with a callous disconnect that broke my heart.

Image of money from pixabay — Currency has people on it. Close enough, right?

More than anything at this very moment, I regret not saying anything. I regret just listening and accepting the pecking order. I doubt anyone in that room would have listened to me. I doubt my speech would have been as eloquent and as well rehearsed as those I would have been opposing. Nevertheless, it would have been the right thing to do.

AZQuote image of Teddy Roosevelt quote "In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing" — Sorry Teddy… I forgot. (C) AZQuotes

Others were silent as well, I would like to think that those in silence felt the same as me, but I will never know the answer.

When I sat down in front of my computer, wanting to talk about the capacity to care, of how it is reflected in everyone I meet in education, I simply couldn’t shake how I had just seen the opposite end of the spectrum.

I could have stuck with my plan and said some of these things in my closing next week. As important as the other traits I have discussed are, upon reflection, the capacity to care is the cornerstone. The vast majority of educators have open caring hearts. The vast majority of those I have met in positions of power do not. Fortunately, the problem presents a solution: have more educators active in their communities and governments.

Solution over problem on chalkboard - pixabay — A Capacity to Care.

empowerment, We Matter, Write6x6, You Matter

STUDENTS MATTER

April 5, 2019 Tenisha Baca Leave a comment

I like student evaluations. Many dread them because of the anxiety of what students might say on a form, but I look forward to them. I encourage my students to complete them since they let me know how I’m doing. I let them know that their thoughts matter. I read every positive and negative comment on each evaluation form. I let them know that pay close attention to what they say because I am always striving to be better than I was the day before. To me, evaluations are all about helping me to improve.

I understand that some don’t share my view and that is ok, but they are needed, and I think that they are effective. What have I learned from my student evaluations over the past five years? The importance of having clear instructions and criteria for my assignments, providing deeper explanations for course content, slowing down in my lectures, having more of a variety of activities in my lessons, and not going off on a tangent during lectures (I have my soap box moments) =>). I’ve improved in most areas, I still go off on tangents. =>) I’m still a work in progress in this area. =>)

Evaluations provide feedback that helps us to improve, but they also inform us of the impact we have on our students. Feedback can communicate how much we matter to our students. For the past five years, I have been floored by the feedback I have received from my students. Some express an interest in the field of communication, some mention how they have been able to use what we learn in their lives, others enjoy the discussions and the activities we have in class, some have even said that they feel like I care about teaching and them.

As instructors, we never really know the impact we will have on our student’s lives. Evaluation season helps us improve and reminds us WE MATTER. I encourage you to take a moment to review past evaluations from students, chairs, deans, managers, supervisors etc. Ask yourself: How have I grown? How has my growth impacted others? How does my evaluation communicate my value and my worth to the people that I serve? I hope the evaluation review will provide you some information that will help you to see your room for growth and the impact you have on others.

Write6x6

The Mother of all Virtues

April 1, 2019 Paul Moore Leave a comment

Patience can make or break a teacher; consider the following examples:

The first time a student struggles while others want to get through the assignment
The ever-evolving battle of classroom management
The realization that three years of lectures are now obsolete and need to be remade
The endless forms, regulations, training, seminars, webinars, assessments, observations, and reviews
The implementation of new technology that is routinely phased and replaced
The grind from tutor to adjunct to associate

Hands gripping puzzle pieces. — We’ve had one assessment, yes… but what about SECOND assessment?

Much like a nurse without crisis management skills, the realization will quickly set in that an error in career choice was made if an educator lacks patience.

Teacher writing on board with student texting in foreground. — Cell phones in class… Breathe in… Breathe out…

Teachers may not always feel patient. I know I have lost my patience during trying moments, but no other career path exemplifies the concept of patience better than education.

Time itself slows for an instructor. Where many jobs provide tasks to be completed in a week or day, educators live in a world of semesters. This is a world where careful planning is followed by laborious execution and capped off with in-depth assessment.

Sand in an hourglass. — Looks to be half past midterm.

It is fitting that the mother of all virtues is the most important trait for the mother of all other professions.

Continue to be patient, my friends.

Write 6×6

Tag Archives: education

Interviewing Tour

Titles VS INCLUSION

Inclusivity = Pronouns

Inspiration From Kindergarten Through College

Iyanla Vanzant Says You Matter

Iyanla Vanzant Says You Matter

A Capacity to Care

STUDENTS MATTER

The Mother of all Virtues

Get Your Kicks on Write 6×6