Tag Archives: Teaching

Cultivating Time for Research, Writing, and Thinking

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It’s so easy to lose a day. Or, at least, to lose track of a day.

For me, it’s easy to get lost in preparation for teaching.  I’m a teacher at the core of my professional identity and I always have been.

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Teaching comes easily to me and is always gratifying.  Students respond well. I feel accomplished, satisfied in the fact that my students are getting the best of me and I’m helping to contribute to their professional growth.

But, I’m also an academic–a really nerdy academic who loves going to conferences and listening to deep thinkers tackle important issues around education.

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And, for me, if I don’t start my day with writing, research and thinking, before all the “have-to” things for the day creep in, it’s unlikely that it will get done.

I’m writing this to remind myself to keep research, writing and thinking time sacred.  I can’t be the best me if I ignore a central part of myself and, as much as I love the naturalness with which teaching comes to me, I also am deeply fulfilled by the challenge of thinking and writing.

Honor, integrate and cultivate <3

Sense-Making & Note-Taking: Getting the GIST w/ a Twist

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I had so much fun this morning working with a great group of English Language Arts teachers at the Escondido Union School District where I have been working for 2 of the last 3 summers as part of the Escondido STEM Integrated (ESI) team around cross-curricular project based learning.

Today, I got to be with all ELA teachers (a departure from our usual science & math heavy summer institutes) and talk about meaningful note-taking with them.  I was so excited to start my day with these teachers–even after a 2+ hour commute:

It was such a great experience, full of rich conversations about how we, as readers, engage in sense-making, and how we, as teachers, can get students, not just to take notes, but to make sense of texts in various ways:

After talking about our experiences (including successes and struggles) with helping students make sense of texts, we engaged in two sense-making activities.  One, a traditional GIST strategy and the second, a “GIST with a twist” using todaysmeet.com where teachers got to “tweet” (micro-blog in 140 characters) their GIST statements. Here’s a sample of the conversation (around a text excerpt from Reading Rhetorically):

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The teachers then chose 2 GIST statements that they liked that were not their own and discussed what stood out to them about these GIST statements.

Using Todaysmeet.com (or social media as I do in my work at the post-secondary level) as a tool to help share ideas and make (more) public one’s thinking in an engaging and efficient way was awesome. I was bowled over by the thoughtful GIST statements and the depth of conversation with these wonderful teachers.

Now, I’ve got to switch hats and go teach in my own classroom, inspired by the work of these wonderful professionals and hoping to support my students in becoming thoughtful, engaged, reflective professionals themselves in the near future.

#Lovemyjob #Loveteachers

 

Focus on Identity

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I’ve been struggling with rewriting a journal manuscript which has been rejected 4 times, in varying iterations.  The piece centers around my work with secondary literacy teacher candidates and the ways in which their perspectives and practices integrating literacy into their disciplinary lesson plans change over their time in my course.

My friend and colleague, Monica, who has read through drafts of this piece from the beginning and seen its transformation, today, suggested a shift in framing from one focused on notions of disciplinary and general literacy strategies to one focused on identity.

Identity.

Of course.  Focus on identity. Because at the heart of all my work is identity.

Monica’s suggestion came at a particularly apt time, given that just yesterday, in class, we spent time sharing our literacy autobiographies with one another and responding in writing groups.

The literacy autobiography writing groups are one of my favorite times in the semester.  Teacher candidates share, in small groups, their literacy histories, in and outside of K-12 & post-secondary schools and connect their personal identities as readers and writers (or non-readers and non-writers) to their future professional identities as secondary teachers.

I am fortunate in that I get to read each one of their histories.

The literacy autobiography, as the first major assignment in this course, is an essential part of welcoming candidates’ identities into the classroom space.  Some have had strong, cohesive experiences with literacy throughout their home, school, and professional lives; others have struggled with literacy at various points in their lives: learning English; transitioning from home to school environments that were vastly different, or negotiating shifting demands in secondary and post-secondary classroom contexts. Some identify as readers and writers with great certainty, whereas others qualify that they are a reader but not a writer, or a reader in certain contexts, or that they simply don’t consider reading and writing a salient part of their identities.

Wherever they are at the beginning of the course, the voice and openness found in these initial assignments helps me to know who students are.  It inspires me to do my work.

Identity is the heart of my work.

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So, it’s back to the drawing board with my manuscript that never seems to be quite there.  But, like identity, it’s a work in progress, one that will eventually be bounded by the (authorial) choices I make, but a piece that belongs within a larger context of my life’s work.

Finding Inspiration in Others

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Above all else, I am a teacher and a learner.

Today, I’ve been reading some of my teacher candidate students’ reflections on their professional identities.  In reading them, I find myself, over and over again.

Earlier this morning, I also had a call with two fellow academic-mom friends outside of my field.  I shared with them my goals for the next month and the struggles I’ve faced recently. They listened empathetically, providing lots of encouragement and support. In speaking with them, I found myself again.

It is in moments like those I’ve had today that I realize how blessed I am to do the work that I do.  While I love the learning that happens through research, even my research always incorporates the voice of the participants.  Because I find truth in the voice of others.  They mirror my truth and I construct new understandings through listening to their truths.

When I forget who others are and who I really serve, I also forget myself.  When I focus on my flaws, I forget that my failures and circumstances help me to appreciate both my successes and gifts, and the contributions of others.  So, today, I wish you all a bit of connection–that you might be present to your purpose in the world, to those that are impacted by it, and to the difference you make–as the fallible, vulnerable human beings that you are.

Because, in the end, if we look hard enough, we can always find a bit of ourselves (and a bit of inspiration) in each member of our community.

We Stumble Through the Journey Together

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It’s been a week.

Both personally and professionally, this week has been challenging: trying to get in last minute play dates before my son started school on Wednesday; a daycare blip meaning I had both kids on my first day of classes; my son starting at a new school on a day that I taught back-to-back evening classes and wasn’t home in time to tuck him in; trying to do active learning in a lecture hall; smart panels gone awry; lost USB sticks for clickers; just generally feeling like my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders; and then today, being notified that a grant application that I had submitted (and worked really hard on for a month solid) didn’t progress past the first round.

Yeah.  It’s been a week.

But, it’s also been an inspiring week.  This week, I got to work with 65 credential candidates excited to inspire young minds and broaden their own horizons.  I got to watch them connect with one another, think about their practice in new ways and explore new ideas.  I got to watch them try twitter for the first time to make their thinking (and our practice) public.  I got to model flexibility.  Then I met 20 practitioner-scholars entering the first week of their masters’ program, not sure what they’d gotten themselves into, but who trusted me enough to help guide them on the journey of action research, and who trusted the process enough to examine and learn from their own practice.  They enter this journey with apprehension, but also with commitment to addressing problems of practice that can inform their work with students. This week, I also got to witness the remarkable resilience of my 10-year old as he adjusted to his new surroundings and I got much-needed support and encouragement from my partner through all the ups, downs and late nights.

As we were finishing my Introduction to Educational Research class last night with my masters’ students, a few stayed behind to chat.  We talked about balancing family, career and academia, and their nervousness at the overwhelming nature of the program.  I reassured them that we’ll all be okay together.  We’ll work through it together.  We’ll support one another.

We stumble through the journey together.

So, as Friday looms on the horizon to close out this week, I am thankful to be on a journey that is not solitary.  I am thankful to journey publicly, even when the road seems long and tough.  I embrace the vulnerability of not having it all together publicly, too, because the reality is that the journey of learning, growth and development is long: for new teachers, practitioner-researchers, academics.  But, it is worth it, for the possibility of becoming the change we wish to see….in spite of the bumps along the road.

Making It Work

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I am fortunate to be on a campus that has an incredible faculty technology support team and that is forward thinking in terms of active learning and technology integration.  As an early adopter and tenure-line faculty, I have also been lucky to be assigned to these active learning classrooms more often than not.  Sure, some semesters, I have chosen to teach off-campus, at local high school sites, where I face firewalls that block active social media engagement, but that’s a fine trade-off given that we’re actually engaged in a secondary classroom and actively a part of that campus.

This semester, however, I’m back on my university campus for all my courses.  And, because of a late schedule shift and a particularly popular course offering time, there were slim pickings in terms of rooms.  So, this is what I walked into yesterday:

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Yes, that’s right. Immovable rows in a lecture hall.  And, there was a VGA cable, but no smart panel input for the VGA cable (at least not one that could be figured out after a few minutes of screen pressing diligently).  While my students may have been ready for active learning, my seating was not.  It was pretty much my “anti-pedagogy” nightmare.

What’s a girl to do in the moment? (Besides silently cry via emoji and let my sorrows be known to the twitterverse?)

Well, if there’s anything years of middle school teaching have taught me, it’s that you’ve got to make it work.  Teaching is not about one’s circumstances.  It’s about how we can adapt to make the best of less than ideal situations.

So, we used the walls and the halls (or the aisles, in this case):

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When you’re committed to collaboration, if the chairs don’t move, you do. We held class, did people bingo, shared with and about one another, developed community, and climbed over some furniture. Your commitment has to be stronger than the bolts that tie the furniture to the ground if you want to make it work because there will always be obstacles. That’s our professional reality.

PS. I put in for a room change this morning.  Please keep your fingers crossed.  The extra distance to the room is worth the possibility of…wait for it…tables and chairs! (I’m easily satisfied) Stay tuned for updates.

Flipping and Creating: Innovations in Course Design

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This week’s entry is chronicling the beginning of a two-part journey that I’m engaging in this semester involving flipping one course I teach and adding discipline-focused seminar sections to the other.

Flipping and Course Redesign

For those not familiar with this idea of flipping the classroom, Knewton provides a lovely infographic on flipping here, but put simply, it turns the traditional classroom structure of lecture during class and activity-based assessment outside of class and “flips” it so that instruction or input happens before class through online lecture, videos and course readings with class time reserved for activities and collaboration that reinforces the lecture based concepts.

I’m super excited to be flipping my Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Classroom Management class.  This class is SO full that between lecture and activities, I’m constantly running out of time, have a lot of assignments/ assessments that are relegated to discussion boards and extended extra time outside of class, and have to spend a good 15-20 minutes at almost 1/2 of my sessions explaining and clarifying assignments.  After looking at my course redesign matrix and modules, I can see that the flipped version of the class will be more closely aligned to the course learning outcomes, will allow for me to more closely mentor and model activities for students, and will require less work outside of class and clearer understandings of what I’m looking for in terms of assessments and assignments.  And, engaging in course redesign has helped me to work with the backwards design model (Grant Wiggins, one of the Understanding by Design gurus discovers backwards design here), walking the walk rather than just talking the talk–thinking about what I really want students to walk away with from the class.

Innovating and Course Design

The other initiative that I’m working on, thanks to funding from a recent grant to my university, is adding disciplinary literacy seminar sections to my content area literacy course for secondary teachers.  This is a super passion for me, as I’m an adolescent literacy researcher and the research in this area notes the importance of discipline specific literacy perspectives for teachers, and although I also believe that it’s important for all teachers to know general literacy strategies to support struggling readers and specific language based strategies to support English Language Learners, these new lab sections will help prepare our future teachers for meeting all students’ needs within their classroom.

So, starting on the journey of course design and writing on this to document the beginning and my goals for the outcomes so that as the logistics get stickier, I’m reminded of the end and the goals for the design and redesign projects.

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Deviating from the Script

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It’s been a really interesting week.

Last week, when I wrote, I was on the brink of exhaustion and frustrated with myself for lack of self-care, struggling with prioritizing time for all of the priorities in my life.  Frankly, for people who follow this blog or who know me in person, this is nothing new.  My life has been variations on this theme pretty much since my mother passed away, which will be twenty years ago this Tuesday.  (Before that, she was good at making sure that I didn’t overcommit–something that frustrated me to no end, but in retrospect, I can see the intention behind her trying to make sure I had time to eat and rest instead of doing the 8-10 different activities I wanted to pursue.)

Anyways, after last week’s blog post, and because I’m really committed to my new year’s resolution of self-care, I decided that I needed to flip the script a bit.  I went to get a pedicure and largely took the weekend off (including a much needed Sunday afternoon nap).

Pretty toes and an hour off can do wonders in changing one's perspective

Pretty toes and an hour off can do wonders in changing one’s perspective

And, just that simple shift actually shifted my perspective in other ways this week.  Thursday, a co-authored manuscript of mine was rejected after a recent submission.  My co-author was pretty upset and, honestly, it has been a rough streak in terms of recent submissions, but I found myself strangely at peace.  I found myself thinking that, although rejection is never pleasant, I really enjoy writing (this after spending 4 hours revising another manuscript the day prior so really, if I were not going to like writing it would be on Thursday), and I would write (perhaps for publication, perhaps not), even if I was not an academic.  And then, I thought, what would be the worst case scenario? Not being granted tenure? Sure, that would be terrible, given that I pretty much feel like I was born to be an academic and I LOVE MY JOB, but you know what? I love teaching too and I’d be happy for the chance to return to a middle school classroom.  Stressing about this rejection wasn’t going to change the editors’ decision nor was it going to make an already long day any easier.  So, I let it go and I focused on being present to how blessed I am to be doing this work that I love, in spite of what the future might (or might not bring).

Later that evening, as I was teaching my class (this lecture is one during which I am always pressed for time because I try to cram a semester’s worth of literacy theory into a single lecture), a student made a comment that necessitated discussion, taking away precious time that was already scarce.  This, on top of the fact that our jigsaw reading activity had taken more time than planned started to make me stressed.  I ended up rushing the lecture, to the disappointment of some students, but for the benefit of the overall class.  Normally, I would still be beating myself up for this, almost 24 hours later.  But, in uncharacteristic acceptance, I realized that I made the choice that had to be made and that the semester still has 13 weeks ahead to help cover some other foundational topics.  I also realized that I can’t please every student every session, which is again a deviation from my people-pleasing script, but it’s a conclusion that after 15 years in teaching, I need to come to accept.

And, then there was today.  I woke up, after yesterday’s grueling back-to-back lecture day, hoping to get a lot accomplished (or at least to get in a nap), with only a couple of volunteer duties on the calendar for my son’s school.  But, between discussion board post responses, feedback on exit slips, and the volunteer duties which took MUCH longer than expected, I ended up not having accomplished a whole lot (and certainly not having taken a nap) by 2:15pm.  And, I found myself in a conundrum since I was at school when my son was getting out of school–should I sneak off campus, giving me a few more hours to finish the work I needed to d0, or should I take my son home early? Luckily, my friend Andrea was with me, and said, “Why don’t you ask Nate [my son] what he wants to do?” I thought for a second about the lecture I had to record and the responses I still had left and the 2 meetings I had scheduled over the weekend that I wasn’t really prepared for and on and on and on and I realized that, it will all get done, so maybe I should see if my son wanted to spend the afternoon with me or with his friends at daycare.

I went over to Nate’s classroom and asked if he’d rather come home early or go to daycare.  He looked at me with a bit of a puzzled look (that basically translated into, “Seriously, Mom? I can’t believe you’re asking me this.”) and said simply, “I’d rather go home early, thanks.” And that was that.  Instead of working, we spent the next two hours hanging out together, getting some errands done and just being around each other, prompting him to say, “Mom, you really are the best mom ever.  I’m so glad that you’re my mom.”

Those words brought me back to my own childhood and afternoons spent at daycare when my mom had to work.  I remembered how much I loved just spending time with her and how, now that she’s been gone for so long, all I would like is the opportunity to tell her that she was the best mom ever and that I am glad that she was my mom.  So, this weekend, when I go to leave flowers at my mother’s gravesite, I will do so in peace, knowing that in deviating from the script of overachievement and always having to get my work done first, I am honoring myself and my mom.  I’ve found, for the both of us, peace and relief from trying so hard to do it all.

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The Struggle: Starting a New Semester

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My last two days went something like this:

Thursday–Woke up committed to self-care in the face of back-to-back afternoon/ evening classes with a commute.  Went to coffee with some mom friends. Got myself lunch & packed dinner. Took a nap. Then took off for class #1 feeling good.  Taught from 2-4:30, got to campus, found parking, ate dinner, spent the time in-between classes answering exit slips.  Got to my 7pm class and actually felt okay. My good friend and colleague noted how relaxed and refreshed I looked.  Kept my energy up. Ended right at 9:30.

And then I hit the wall.

It took me 20 minutes to pack up. I forgot the add procedures for the extra students I let into my course. I felt a super wave of exhaustion and knew I still had to get myself home.  I got on the freeway, just in time to miss the freeway closure (that I had forgotten about because I’m no longer used to teaching the 7-9:45 pm shift)–whew, and got home around 10:15 where I proceeded to “wrap-things up” for 45 more minutes so I could go to sleep in piece.  Oh, but only after I had to pause at the bench in the hallway and make my husband get my stuff from the trunk because I had zero energy to drag my crampy, baby-bellied self up a flight of stairs (but I had the energy to work for 45 more minutes). I had trouble falling asleep and when I did, an uncertain amount of time later, I was awakened (far too early) by my fantastically adorable and wonderful almost 9-year old son, coming in somewhere around 4am with a tentative, “Mom?” and then a more certain, “Mom! I’m so glad you’re home! I missed you so much!” and wanting to cuddle in an already crowded bed.  But, I mean, seriously, how many more of these cuddle moments will I have, so I made room for the boy who told me all about his day then promptly fell back asleep (and my husband slept through this entire thing) while I went back into tossing-turning purgatory until about 5:45 when the alarms went off and the boy and the man got out of bed giving me a precious half an hour to semi-rest before dragging myself out of the bed (notice the dragging).

Friday: Got up (did I mention it was 6:15 am), ate breakfast, dropped off my son at school, stayed to do my duties at PTA treasurer and to volunteer checking off weekly homework in his class before heading to work. Got to work, dropped off my adds, checked-in with my new mom friend and colleague before realizing I was late for a SIX HOUR FRIDAY MEETING (which went the entire 6 hours) then had to go back to my office to “wrap [more] things up” from my class the previous night before. Left a nearly empty parking lot at 5:45 pm (commuter university parking lots at 5:45 pm are a lonely place) to commute home only to realize that I had forgotten a couple more e-mails and getting twitter notifications all along the way.

This weekend, I should probably work on a[nother] revision of a manuscript I’ve been working on for a few months; I’ve got to find some stickers for an activity on Monday to replace a pack that mysteriously disappeared; I need to keep up with discussion board posts & compose a weekly e-mail for Monday and I have to revise a proposal for curricular innovation that is due in a couple of weeks. I should probably also work on getting the props ready for the Super Mario Bros. obstacle course that I’m setting up for my son’s birthday party in a few weeks, but that can probably wait for another couple of weeks.

Conclusion: My self-care skills are weak.  The spirit is willing but the workaholic nature in me is strong. But, blogging is about the journey, not about having it all figured out.  I need to look at the last two days and figure out how to not make the rest of my semester into a perpetual cycle of these last two days.  I just don’t know.  But, I suspect that it starts with food, water and sleep (Wow, how low I’ve sunken on Maslow’s hierarchy).  Going to work on that now.  See y’all next week.

The Language of Feedback

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So, today, a colleague of mine and I received a decision on a revised manuscript that we submitted for review.  While the initial reviews were professional and constructive, the reviewers were less than pleased with our revision with one reviewer calling our revised work “quite alarming,” “self-congratulatory,” and saying that the manuscript quite possibly “detracted from the complex, messy and hard work we engage in everyday of working to sustain identities and compose lives as teacher educators” critiquing our lack of critical engagement and inquiry.

Okay, so, clearly, this was not the best work my colleague and I have ever submitted and the way in which our data was addressed could have been more critical and careful.  In fact, the content of the critique allowed us to think about our work differently and we admittedly should have taken more time to resubmit our piece.  However, reading the feedback and having received feedback that was similar in tone previously to an article (though substantively different), made me realize the importance of tone in feedback…

Web of learning during final class session

Web of learning during final class session

In our final class session last week, several students mentioned the importance of the feedback I provided for them over the semester as well as the importance of the safety of community in the classroom as they were learning about and establishing their professional identities.  Students emphasized how essential the timely, thoughtful responses to their work were in their development and one student who I’ll call “D” said something that really stuck with me, “You know, when I submitted something and Professor Hsieh gave me feedback, I never had to be afraid that she was going to yell at me.  She would just tell me what I needed to improve on and I would say, ‘Okay, I can do that’,’ and then I would know how it could be better.” I turned to him, with a bit of amusement mixed with concern and said, “D, did you really think I’d yell at you?” He said that he didn’t really think that but that sometimes other instructors had made him feel like he really didn’t know what he was doing without telling him what he needed to do differently.

In the case of our submission, there was clear feedback on what needed to be changed in the article, but the tone of the critique was condescending and problematic, exactly the paternalistic & oppressive tone that we had been accused of perpetuating in the paper itself.  While I am confident enough in my own professional identity to come back from this critique and while I have done extensive inquiry into and reflection on my own work as a teacher educator to know that this feedback certainly doesn’t represent who I am as a teacher educator (I’ve never been called self-congratulatory in my life before today), the tone of this review makes me wonder how we treat our colleagues, fellow scholars, and our students in giving feedback.

Words hurt.  And people’s lives, their work, their thoughts matter.  Even if a piece isn’t accepted for a journal, even if a student shouldn’t be a teacher (and there are some that truly and painfully shouldn’t), there is no value in devaluing the work, the life, the passion of others.  This doesn’t mean that we accept every submission or that we lower our standards for rigor in our courses, but it does mean that we recognize that what we say, particularly when we evaluate one another, has power, and we treat that power with the utmost respect and care–like we should treat the humans to whom we are responding.