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Moving Beyond "Identity Politics"

In an interesting piece about Van Jones in today's New York Times, the CNN talking head says something very perceptive:

"If you only focus on the toxic crap, you're not being fair to the Trump voters...But if you deny all the toxic crap, you're not being fair to the rest of Americans."

To me, this line sums up a challenge in responding to this election and to the choice made by the 25% or so of American voters. Too many Americans have embraced racist, bigoted views of their fellow American and their fellow citizens of the world. But an equally large number of Americans have rejected those views despite the presence of a problematic candidate on the top of the Democratic ticket. (Secretary Clinton has some impressive political strengths but her support of the Iraq War, hawkish foreign policy, and amassing of personal wealth via Wall Street speaking engagements should have disqualified her from the Democratic nomination.) And, more importantly, 

 

Just read a cool article on parenting by Marcia Angell in the New York Review of Books: Why Be a Parent?

 

I liked it for three reasons: 1) it challenges binaristic ways of thinking -- in this case about parenting, 2) it suggests that a life without children can be a happy one, and 3) it discusses how given our current social structures, families are increasingly turning their attention and resources inward, toward raising their own children in a hyper-competitive world rather than toward raising all of our children together.

 

I especially like the last paragraph:

 

Children, then, are the good news and the bad news. For most of us they enrich our lives beyond measure. I would have done almost anything for my children, and they feel the same way about theirs. But children are also the problem. They are so precious that their parents concentrate on them to the exclusion of nearly everything else and feel justified in doing so. That seems to be what citizenship now means: every family for itself. I wish we could find a middle ground—yes to children, but no to letting our anxieties for them supplant every other human impulse. It would go a long way toward that end if, as urged by Gopnik, we were to adopt policies like those of other advanced countries to help parents raise children—whether you call it parenting or being a parent.

 

 

 

Fall 2017 New Faculty Syllabus Workshop

Many thanks to my new faculty colleagues for a great first day together.

Here are some resources related to our syllabus workshop you may find useful.

• The official office of instruction syllabus guidelines (remember to distinguish between required and recommended!).
  
  
• A powerpoint I often use to share my ideas about syllabi on which you may find some useful thoughts building on yesterday's discussion:  Download Syllabusworkshop
  
  
• A few more sample sylalbi:
  • Sample 1
  • Sample 2

 

Sharing the Joy

About three weeks ago, over 100 MiraCostans gathered to celebrate the joy of teaching and learning. While the organizers of and participants in this event recognize how the data informed analysis anchoring program review and Achieving the Dream are necessary drivers of institutional growth, we also believe powerful ideas for change can emerge from exploring our shared excitement of what is happening in so many learning spaces across our campus.

 

Putting jokes about data packets and consultants aside (at least for the rest of this post), Project Joy is meant to supplement rather than undermine these more formal processes, bringing to them ideas and approaches that come from creative, playful, and intellectually engaged reflection about what happens when we teach and learn together.

 

Over the next week or so, I will be sharing with you some of the suggestions we developed for investments Miracosta could make in practices and resources to help us build on what we already do and bring new tools and approaches to the work at the heart of the college experience: teaching and learning.

 

In this post, I begin that process by sharing with you our responses to the first question we explored: what do we love about teaching and learning?

 

I have gathered the many answers to that question developed by the Project Joy participants on this google doc (of course there is a google doc!). It collects photos of the collaborative efforts of more than a dozen tables of passionate educators invested in a celebratory conversation. I hope you can take a few minutes to browse through them. For me, these sharpie adorned sheets provide hope, inspiration, and creative fuel for progress and growth.

 

I am sure that as you browse through these ideas, you will see all sorts of patterns related to your own teaching and learning related passions. Here are four clusters I noticed:

 

1. Change

 

​So many of the comments and reasons for Joy collected here are about change: helping students learn new ways of thinking and imagining, cultivating light bulb moments, empowering students with new skills to change their academic, work, and personal lives -- and, of course, changing how teachers think and learn and see the world as well.

 

​2. Connection

 

​In many ways, the conversation itself captured the belief in the centrality of connection to the teaching and learning experience -- connections between teachers and students (one to one, in small groups, in larger discussions, through projects, via collaborations, etc.) and connections between what we are learning and the world beyond the classroom -- the communities we live and the larger professional, intellectual and cultural conversations we participate in.

 

3. Creativity

 

​For me, these sheets underscore how much of the positive energy surrounding teaching and learning comes from the experience of creativity both for the students as creators of things and ideas and artifacts of all imaginable forms but also for the teachers as the creators of learning experiences -- activities, readings, labs, internships, lessons, lectures. I also see creativity celebrated in terms of how teachers and students in college learning spaces can think and create in new and unexpected ways that may not have a direct and immediate application in the "real world" but feed the human spirit in ways both sustaining and liberating.

 

4.  Challenge

 

​The desire to challenge and be challenged -- culturally, intellectually, aesthetically, psychologically -- informs many of these sheets and informed much of the conversation in the room that day. The thrill of taking on the difficult problem​, thinking critically, or cultivating a rigorous and demanding skill set energizes much of what we most value about teaching and learning. Many of us push ourselves and our students to work hard and think hard because from that effort and discomfort comes growth -- growth as teachers and learners -- growth as contributors to our families and our communities. 

 

​Those are some of the big ideas I see in these sheets and lists. What do you see? Which ideas from among these many collaborations intrigue you?

 

​In my next post, I will begin sharing some of the Project Joy participants' ideas about how we could invest as an institution to support and promote the excitement generated when we asked each other what we love about teaching and learning.  

 

I will do so in the hope that the time we spent on one Friday afternoon in March spins off into many follow up conversations that can, in turn, inform the many plans and processes we have on campus to structure change and growth.

 

Thanks for taking the time to explore the ideas of your colleagues.

 

Jim Sullivan

who is grateful for the time and energy his colleagues have invested in this conversation

Project Joy

Group Sharing Google Doc

PDP Teaching and Learning Library Suggestion List

Resources / Notes for Quizzing to Teach Not Assess

Why Are We Here?

Practice Space

Principles

• to help students learn rather than to test learning
• highlight, review, clarify, apply, etc.
• deploy explanatory apparatus
• use SLOs and objectives

Samples

syllabus quiz (sample syllabus)

week one and questions throughout semester

success guide

highlighting key ideas from readings

 

highlighting student discussion forum contributions

practicing / developing skills

 

How Claims Focus Paragraphs

Please click on your group link, read the prompt and rubric criteria, and complete the group activity.

The goal here is to change and revise the paragraph so that it better achieves the rubric criteria.

 

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

 

Blogging Across the Disciplines Workshop

Workshop Tools

• Workshop Description and Evaluation Form
• Google Doc
• Wordpress
• One Awesome Blog
• Reflections on Practice
• MiraCosta GE Outcomes 

Jim's Blogs

• write2think
• writingwithmachines
• figuringamerica
• studyingamerica

PDP Meeting November 13

Agenda:  Download PDP_agenda_11_13_15

September Minutes:  Download PDP_MINUTES_09-25-15_DRAFT_v1 (1)

November Minutes:  Download PDP_Minutes_10-9-15_DRAFT_v1 (1)

Survey Questions

Subcommittee Google Doc

New Faculty Syllabus Workshop

Welcome New Colleagues!

I am thrilled to have this opportunity to talk about teaching and learning with you. I hope our time together will help us develop syllabi that reflect who we are and provide powerful student success guidance for our students.

Here are some of the toys we will play with during our time together:

Powerpoint:  Download Syllabusworkshop

Sample 1

Sample 2

Office of Instruction Guidance

Designing 21st Century College Classrooms

Because we are doing some upgrades in the classrooms at my college, I have been thinking about and researching the possibilities of creative technology design for college classrooms.

Apparently, I am not the only one trying to re-imagine the classroom space to make it a richer learning environment (surprise, surprise!). Touring the web, I have found some inspiring images about the possibility for transforming onsite teaching and learning spaces, and I have compiled some of the most compelling images into this Google presentation: The 21st Century Classroom?

In particularly, two interesting models for designing classrooms that use different chair/desk configurations and technology integration seem to have emerged that look to me to have tremendous potential. 

One, which the University of Minnesota seems to be spearheading, is the Active Learning Classroom Model. And here is Berkeley's variation to this theme  For a discussion of these classroom innovations designed for the general public, check out an interview from Here and Now about Active Learning Classrooms.

The second approach, which MIT seems to be leading the charge on, is called Technology Enabled Active Learning. 

Both models seem to focus on more interactive chair and table configurations (some with multi-modal possibilities) and integrated technology (multiple projection units/screens in the room, lap tops and other small computers at desks, integrated recording and video technology, etc.).

And here is a brief youtube video I believe the folks at the University of Minnesota put together.

 

 

Quizzing to Teach Rather than Assess

Three resources we will use today:

1. a powerpoint:  Download Quizzingtoteach

2. miracosta webcms

3. blackboard

Re-imagining the Syllabus

Powerpoint:  Download Syllabusworkshop

Sample 1

Sample 2

Office of Instruction Guidance

Mid-Semester Meeting

I have collected some resources for our mid-semester meeting here:

Powerpoint 

Rubric Assignment

Link to Google Doc for Writing with Machines Workshop

English 100 Resources

Here are some resources for colleagues working on their English 100 Syllabi.

1. The official Course Outline of Record

2. The handout with all of the elements from the COR that you must include in your 100 Syllabus

3. A sample syllabus that includes the required elements from the COR.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the COR and/or  your English 100 Syllabus

Contextualizing Equiano

"Equiano's Nativity: Negative Birthright, Indigenous Ethic, and Universal Human Rights"
Yael Ben-Zvi
Early American Literature
Volume 48, Issue 2: 399-424.

This scholarly journal article analzying Equiano's Interesting Narrative enhanced my ability to contextualize early American literary texts through three lenses: indigenous studies, religion, and Enlightenment political philosophy. In this sense, the piece contributed to my teaching skills in both my American Literature and American Studies courses, and I have used ideas from this piece in both classes during this academic year when teaching works not only by Equiano but by other early American writers ranging from Samsom Occom and John Winthrop to Anne Bradstreet and Mary Rowlandson.

Chrisitianity:

I have long taught students to pay attention to Equiano's appeals to Christian idealism as a way of challenging slavery through Anglo-Europeans own moral system. So Ben Svi's ideas were not particularly new for me on this level, but I did appreciate the passages he chose to analyze and will be including some of those in my own teaching to students about this text in the fall.

Indigenous Studies:

Ben Zvi's contextualizing of Equiano within the tradition of indigenous studies suprised and impressed me. (although I do like the passages he chose to highlight and his interpretation of them). But what I had not thought of before was contextualizing Equiano within the tradition of indigenous studies. I have long considered the Valladoid debate between Juan Gines De Sepulveda and Bartolome de Las Casas a crucial moment in early American history, but I had not considered the parallels between Equiano's argument nearly two hundred years later and the logic developed and presented in the Valladoid debate. Like Las Casas, Equino repudiates the label of barbarians by associating Eboe and African culture with the Christian idealism articulated early in the colonial process by Las Casas. And like Las Casas, Equiano argues that those who brutally impose slavery upon a people are themselves the cultural and theological "barbarians."

As I read up on the Valladoid debate to better understand Ben Svi's essay, I rediscovered a site I have long been impressed by put together by the amazing Edward Gallagher at Lehigh University: The Literature of Justification. This text provides scholarly essays and primary texts that provide vital context to understanding how Europe justified its theft of indigenous peoples and lands.

Another helpful moment in this Ben Zvi's article comes when he compares Equiano to Samson Occom: again, a move I had never thought of before. He writes  that "Equiano might never have met Occom, but both writers were associated witht he same evangelical milieu, and both treat rights and liberty as universal Christian imperatives." Because we also read Occom in my American literature class, I will definitely explore this connection with my students this fall. 

 

American Studies: A Model Approach

 "The Balcony and the Street: Gender, Virtue, and Politics in George Caleb Bingham's Antebellum America"

Wynne Walker Moskop
American Quarterly
June 2013: Volume 65, Number 2. 243-270.

Moskop's article -- organized around a close study of George Caleb Bingham's 1855 painting The Verdict of the People-- modeled for me the kind of interdisciplinary approach to American Studies I believe is essential for the development of our Humanities based American Studies course. At most colleges, American Studies stands alone as its own department, but at MiraCosta, we teach American Studies as part of our Humanities program. This imposes a burden to present the history of American visual and performing arts in a way that most American Studies courses do not need to address.

In its exploration of the connections between the paintings of George Caleb Bingham and the great reform movements of the first half of the nineteenth century (women's movement, temperance movement, and anti-slavery movement), this piece practices exactly the kind of approach we need to organize our American Studies courses at Miracosta around. For this reason, I not only began to immediately apply ideas from this piece in my American Studies classes this year, but I also found inspiration in this essay for a fundamental shift in how we approach humanities based American Studies, a shift that characterizes the two new course outlines of record I composed this year for our American Studies classes.

Moskop's piece also encouraged me to visit some key terms and critical resources on colonial and 19th century women's issues:

Republican Motherhood

• Kerber, Linda K. Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment-An American Perspective (1976)
• Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1980)
• Lewis, Jan. "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic," published in the William and Mary Quarterly (1987).

The Cult of True Womanhood (or Domesticity)

• Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood; 1820-60." American Quarterly, 1966 (Volume 18, Number 2).

Patrick Sullivan on Accelaration, Motivation, and the "Lens and Artifact" Assignment

Patrick Sullivan
"Just in Time" Curriculum for the Basic Writing Classroom
Teaching Engish in the Two-Year College
Volume 4`: Number 2, December 2013: 118-134

Sullivan advocates for advancing high achieving basic students more rapidly through the composition sequence by allowing these students to earn credit for the next course in the sequence by completing a department approved accelaration assignment during the last four to six weeks of the semester.

Sullivan's piece gave me three sets of useful ideas: 1) a clear overview of the pedagogical and political parameters of the acceleration discussion, 2) a reminder about the importance of motivation in academic achievement, and 3) a detailed discussion of his "Lens and Artifact" writing assignment, a tool I hope to incorporate in my own courses.

Acceleration Overview

I like Sullivan's proposal very much, and I agree with his enthusiasm for how the debate over the success rates for students in our developmental courses challenges faculty and educational leaders in important and productive ways. I remain concerned, however, about draconian political responses that may result in excluding people from college without providing the kinds of alternative learning environments those students will need to progress toward economic security and personal happiness. That last phrase may make some people uncomfortable, but I am old school on this one. I believe a college education empowers people in ways that transcend simple economic opportunity.

I also like the resources Sullivan's piece introduces. I have created links to a few of them below:

Accelerated Learning Program

The California Acceleration Program

Hern, Katie. "Acceleration across California: Shorter Pathways in Developmental English and Math." Change May/June 2012. Online.

Connecticut Legislation Relate to Acceleration:

An Act Concerning College Readiness and Completion

An Act Concerning College Readines and Completion
Topics: Remediation, Placement, High School / College Allignment

 

Motivation

Sullivan's  proposal also reminds me of the importance of motivation in student success in developmental courses (or any course for that matter!). He has written about this concept of motivation before ("A Lifelong Aversion to Writing: What If Writing Courses Emphasized Motivation?"). The potential to complete two courses in one semester has obvious motivational benefits for Sullivan's students, and I suspect this played a major role in the success of the students he tested his acceleration assignment upon. But on a larger level for me, the question of motivation is at the heart of a required transfer course like English 100 as well. How can I construct assignments that students want to complete--assignments they find engaging and beneficial. That is a question I constantly ask myself. Most recently, I have responded to that question by shifting the focus of my English 100 to ideas about work and the relationship between work and a college education. So far, I have seen significant progress in student engagement but I need better tools for direct and anonymous student feedback to help me continue to refine and evaluate these new assignments. How can I find out what students really think about my assignments via an anonymous tool that I can make sure they actually complete? Voluntary surveys do not give me the comphrehensive views I need have an authentic understanding of where my students are in terms of motivation and my class. So I will keep exploring and experimenting.

The Lens and Artifact Assignment

Sullivan's idea of having students apply one text to another--examine what one text says in terns of what another text says--strikes me as a superb tool for final assessment of the 100 level transfer writer. While I have not completely shifted one of my three key writing assignments to this lens and artifact model yet (students do apply course readings to their own experiences and their own experiences and beliefs to a full-length text) I use this approach frequently to structure classroom activities, blog posts, and the student's blog portfolios. I hope to eventually find a way to link one of my three core papers more effectively to the Lens and Artifact assignment model because I think such a model would be a good tool for our department to explore as a vehicle for SLO evaluation. 

 

Going off the Grid for Online Discussion

I found this image here

Sometimes re-imagining the discussion space--moving it from inside to outside your course or learning management system can open up the discussion and elevate engagement. Here are a few ideas that might help unleash your own creative powers:

1. Standard Discussion with a New Look

2. Filling an Open Space

3. Multimedia / Multimodal

4. Brainstorm and Discuss

Singing Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman With MiraCosta's LIFE Group

Presented today to MiraCosta's Learning Is for Everyone (LIFE) group. They were an amazing audience that transformed my "lecture" from something pedestrian to something exhilirating. Thanks to all who attended and to the group for inviting me.

Presentation Description:

This year we mark the 194th anniversary of Whitman’s birth (May 31, 1819) in the context of the 150th anniversary of many Civil War related events. With these American cultural landmarks in mind, this talk will explore Whitman’s epic "Song of Myself" and his powerful and moving meditations on the Civil War.

Powerpoint: Download Whitman2