Student-centered and Teacher-centered Classrooms

– Jeanne M. Slattery

I used this John Francis TED talk below in my freshman inquiry seminar, Living Life Well, because it raised interesting questions about wellness. Was Francis well? By what definitions? He didn’t talk for 17 years – does that make him more well or less? Was he a good person? How would you know?

Many of my students found Francis an odd duck. He didn’t speak for 17 years? He didn’t drive or use a motorized vehicle, even though he could, instead walking across the country? However, I admired his thoughtfulness, motivation, commitment, and passion for the environment. He didn’t just talk about saving the environment, he lived it. To me, Francis is a paradigm of wellness.

My freshmen had a particularly difficult time with the idea of Francis not speaking while teaching his classes (though he communicated nonverbally): Professors need to talk because how else can they teach? Even after a semester sitting in a circle, with our class being a discussion among peers and between professor and students, they had a difficult time believing that they could be in charge of their own learning. At that time most students could not see that perhaps the most effective learning occurs when students take ownership of their learning for themselves.

Figure 1. Differences in the teaching and learning paradigms of student- and teacher-centered classes.

Inquiry seminars are strange beasts for most freshmen, as they are student-centered classes rather than more traditional teacher-centered learning. See Figure 1. However strange they are, they are important to our students’ transitions to college, as our students begin to become active and empowered learners.

For most of our students’ lives, they have been taught using the teaching-centered paradigm where the Teacher is Authority and Expert. In such classes, faculty pour information into passively-accepting and sometimes grateful students. We can perform Teacher as Sage thoughtfully and engagingly, but our students are rarely expected to be active parties in their learning process. Many students believe they can text, sleep, or daydream and it doesn’t matter, as their learning is a function of their professor rather than themselves. This attitude puts them at risk in all of their later classes – and in life – when we expect students will actively question, create, decide, analyze, and produce.

Inquiry seminars adopt a learner-centered paradigm. In inquiry seminars, faculty are  facilitators of discussions, and questioners and provokers of other ways of thinking about problems. They may assign readings, but encourage students to take ownership for the direction that they go with the course. Rather than directly answering student questions, faculty may turn student questions to the other members of the class. Inquiry seminars offer and model a different kind of learning than students are used to and comfortable with.

My students, like John Francis’s own initially, had a difficult time believing that learning could occur if he did not talk in class. Yet, he said that two weeks into the semester, students were fighting to get into his course. If our student-centered teaching strategies make them uncomfortable, should we avoid them? I think not – at least when they have positive impacts on their learning.

Toward the end of his talk, Francis suggested to the teachers in the audience, “If you weren’t learning, you probably weren’t teaching very well.” For me, one of the perks of using a more student-centered approach to teaching is that I am always being provoked to think about things in new ways.

My experience with the inquiry seminars, including our discussion of Francis’s TED talk, were transformative. I can no longer teach an inquiry seminar, as there isn’t enough time in my schedule, but I continue to find ways to integrate the lessons I learned there.

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Jeanne M. Slattery is a professor of psychology at Clarion University. She loves teaching and learning and describes herself as a learner-centered teacher. She has published three books, Counseling diverse clients: Bringing context into therapy; Empathic counseling: Meaning, context, ethics, and skill; and most recently, Trauma, meaning, and spirituality: Translating research into clinical practice. She can be contacted at jslattery@clarion.edu

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Dear “Disrespected”

Dear Ms. Scholar, I clearly tell my students that there’s no texting in class; nonetheless, there’s a small group in one class who do. This bothers me for several reasons: it feels disrespectful, my student’s performance in class is compromised, and their peers are distracted. Any suggestions?

Ms. Scholar at work.

Dear “Disrespected,” I wish there was an easy answer to this one. People 18-24 years old text more than twice as often as the average cell phone user – which includes them as part of that average (Smith, 2011). Our students tend to see cell phone use as normal and without consequences for themselves or others. Ms. Scholar, on the other hand, perceives a break in eye contact, attention, and focus when students text. She is also distracted by some student texting and disturbed that research shows class grades are negatively correlated with texting (Duncan, Hoekstra, & Wilcox, 2012). Even having someone nearby texting can be distracting;  performance under these circumstances is poorer (Tindell & Bohlander, 2012).

Furthermore, such behavior is not acceptable in the workplace and, to the degree that we think about our goals as including teaching professional behaviors, Ms. Scholar wonders whether we should include and enforce policies consistent with the professional cultures students hope to enter in the future (Fulbright, 2013). Would you want your doctor, your psychologist, your priest to text when meeting with you?

Some faculty respond to the increasing influx of cell phones in the classroom by using them to support their classes (Fulbright, 2013). Perhaps they conclude, if you can’t beat them, join them! Such faculty may use phones as clickers (e.g., sites like Poll Everywhere). They may also encourage students to use their phones to answer the range of questions that get directed to us in any single class. We should get better at directing these back to them: “What does ‘pejorative’ mean?” “Good question! Let’s look that up.” If our goals include helping students engage with our material and develop a sense of agency, these could be useful and effective strategies.

Ms. Scholar would like to ban open cell phones and laptops in the classroom (although she also recognizes that she always has her laptop out when she’s at a conference or workshop). Nonetheless, she also thinks about the role of classroom culture: while open cell phones and laptops interfere with creating a positive culture, so does forbidding them. She is uncomfortable with the idea of setting up a situation where she needs to monitor the use of electronics and administer some sort of consequence.

Ms. Scholar has attempted to take a middle ground between allowing and banning cell phones. In her advanced courses that develop listening skills and other professional behaviors, she discusses the problems with cell phone use in such situations. In her lower-level courses, she discusses putting away cell phones as one of a number of learning-positive strategies, including previewing, asking questions while reading, and studying with Bloom’s taxonomy in mind. In some semesters, she has tossed this dilemma back to students: What do you think about cell phones in the classroom? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having them out?

Ms. Scholar starts this discussion as early as her syllabus:

You can use your computer to take notes on the PowerPoint, but be aware that the research suggests that we learn best when taking handwritten notes. People are also more likely to be tempted to multitask when their computers are open – which few people do successfully….

The research suggests that even having your phone out interferes with your learning and that of your classmates.

Ms. Scholar wonders whether a professor’s response to texting should be different than our response to any other off-track or “disrespectful” behaviors. What do you do when students sleep, talk to fellow students, or study for other classes in class? Why do you do it? It seems that whatever we do – and reasonable people may disagree – we should base our decisions on our course goals (e.g., empowering students to take ownership for their learning).

Given there’s no clear recommendation out there, tell us what do you do and why. Please leave a comment. – Ms. Scholar

References

Duncan, D. K., Hoekstra, A. R., & Wilcox, B. R. (2012). Digital devices, distraction, and student performance: Does in-class cell phone use reduce learning? Astronomy Education Review, 11, 010108-1-010108-4.

Fulbright, S. (2013). Cell phones in the classroom: What’s your policy? Faculty Focus. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/cell-phones-in-the-classroom-whats-your-policy/

Smith, A. (2011). Americans and text messaging. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/09/19/americans-and-text-messaging/

Tindell, D. R., & Bohlander, R. W. (2011). The use and abuse of cell phones and text messaging in the classroom: A survey of college students. College Teaching, 60, 1-9.

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If you have questions regarding teaching, student/faculty issues, or other comments/suggestions, please write to: Ms. Scholar c/o MsScholarCU@gmail.com

Ten (Unproven) Ways to Build a Growth Mindset

Photo from Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning (Spencer & Juliani, 2017)

– Jeanne M. Slattery

Like you, I want my students to succeed. I want my students to see themselves as capable of personal, academic, and professional success.

Unfortunately, many of our students see themselves as incapable of success: “I can’t write,” “I’m not good at math,” “I can’t go to graduate school.” Dweck (2006) refers to this style of thinking as fixed mindset (“I can’t change”). These statements easily become self-fulfilling prophecies that limit students’ ability to learn, their ability to succeed.

I want my students to see themselves as able to grow and change, to learn to write better, and to further develop their mathematical skills. I believe – and Dweck (2006) concurs – that we can help our students develop a growth mindset (their belief that they can grow and change) – if we know how.

Why would we want to do this? I want my students to own their own learning, become life-long learners, be self-directed, and think outside the box. When we develop their ability to own their own learning and to grow, we develop the kind of students we want to see.

Ten strategies for building growth mindset

How can we do this? Dweck (2006) describes a number of different strategies for building growth mindset, including talking about brain plasticity and neural development, focusing on behavior rather than traits (e.g., “You really worked hard on this,” rather than “You’re so smart!”), and challenging our students’ permanent attributions about their behavior (e.g., “You’re not a good writer – yet“).

With my students, I focus on behavior and performance and regularly challenge my students’ self-perceptions – and often self-fulfilling prophecies – that they are unable to perform a task. These are some of the other things that I do, including the actual assignments or tools that I use.

1. 

   Figure 1. Average performance in Psychology of Personal Growth across exams over time.

   Challenge students’ beliefs that they cannot do better on later exams. My students often do poorly on their first exam – perhaps due to failures to read the text, study for the exam, or study effectively. Because I want my students to succeed rather than perceive themselves as “bad in psychology,” I show them Figure 1, which describes average performance on exams across semesters (this is for Psychology of Personal Growth). I emphasize that, on the whole, students do get better as the term progresses.

2. 

   Figure 2. Differences between fixed and growth mindsets.

   Teach students about mindset. When I return my students’ first exams, I talk explicitly about mindset and why it matters. I talk about the impact of mindset using this table, which I display one row at a time. See Figure 2.

3. Mindset isn’t just a conversation for one day. I talk about mindset all semester, both as I talk about class content and as I respond to student concerns. If I want my students to believe me, I have to be genuine and consistent as I talk about mindset (or anything else). They have to believe that I believe they can grow and do better.
4. 

   Figure 3. Reflection assignment after first exam.

   Ask students to reflect on their study and test-taking behaviors. I ask students to reflect in several ways, but the first way that I do this is with an assignment due a week after their first exam, where they are asked to compare their study habits to descriptions of effective habits. See Figure 3. These resources include Chew’s videos (this is the first of five), a section of Dweck’s (2006) book, and an article by Mark Mitchell that helps students decode where they ran into problems on an exam.

5. Ask students to specifically consider their study behaviors. McGuire (2015) describes a number of behaviors associated with academic success. This semester I’m asking my students to reflect on their exams and behaviors relative to theories of effective study. I’ve asked them to complete this survey of their strategies for preparing for their first exam. (Feel free to crib this or anything else I have here.)
6. Describe and reinforce improvements in behavior. Their second exam is no easier than their first, but when students better do better, I tell them. In my Abnormal Psychology class this summer, after their second exam, I told them that they had performed 8% better on average than on the first exam, with 86% of the class doing better.
7. 

   Figure 4. One example of a study tip slide.

   Explicitly teach students how to learn more effectively. This semester, I am spending a few minutes at the beginning of many classes describing study tips that can make them learn more effectively and communicate well what they learn. See Figure 4. It does not need to be time consuming to help students learn well. In fact, McGuire (2015) suggests that this might be accomplished in one class period. I plan to distribute this conversation over the course of the semester.

8. Write syllabi to help students become successful. I include information on where their grades come from and what they can do to be successful including, in some cases, the research supporting my recommendations: “You can use your computer to take notes on the PowerPoint, but be aware that the research suggests that we learn best when taking handwritten notes (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). People are also more likely to be tempted to multitask when their computers are open – which few people do successfully.” (Abnormal Psychology, Fall 2017)
9. Ask students to reflect on how they’ve changed. In many courses, I ask students to reflect on how they’ve changed across time. In Senior Seminar, our department’s capstone, I ask my students to come to the first class of the semester with an assignment from early in their college career – something they performed well on, but something they would now complete more successfully. I am trying to get my students to think about how they have grown and changed – in order to help them grow and change as they transition into graduate schools and careers.
10. 

    Figure 5. Home page from Senior Seminar’s D2L shell.

    Include inspirational quotes and models illustrating growth mindset. Figure 5 is from Senior Seminar and shows my description of their first assignment – but also includes a quote from Cornel West: “If you graduate the same as when you entered, you wasted someone’s money.” In addition, I include quotes from Kay Redfield Jamison and John Nash, respectively, a major researcher on affective disorders, herself diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and a Nobel laureate, diagnosed with schizophrenia. Finally, I talk about my own learning process. It may look easy now, but it hasn’t always. (Although I am a strong teacher now, when I first started teaching, I wrote out my lectures – even my jokes!)

I have no systematic evidence that these strategies work better than others, although McGuire (2015) describes research on similar interventions. Generally, students do perform better across the semester and stay in my course rather than withdrawing.

Are there other explanations for their behavior? Quite possibly. However, if your students aren’t already performing better across exams over the course of the semester, then consider adopting these strategies.

And, if as a university we want to build growth mindset among our students most effectively, we all need to adopt this attitude: when our students say, “I can’t learn ____________ ,” we can chime – “YET!!!”

References

Dweck, D. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

McGuire, S. Y. (2015). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

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Jeanne M. Slattery is a professor of psychology at Clarion University. She loves teaching and learning and describes herself as a learner-centered teacher. She has written three books: Trauma, meaning, and spirituality: Translating research into clinical practice; Counseling diverse clients: Bringing context into therapy; and Empathic counseling: Meaning, context, ethics, and skill.  She can be contacted at jslattery@clarion.edu

A Passionate Why: What Drives My Teaching

– Leah Chambers

Leah Chambers

Throughout his book, Start with Why, and all throughout his TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” writer and entrepreneur Simon Sinek repeats the refrain, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do serves as proof of what you believe [about the world].” At the most basic level, Sinek is arguing the old adage, “Actions speak louder than words” when it comes to communicating one’s values. We all know people who are “all talk.” Their words don’t sync up with their behaviors, and—because of this—they struggle to win our respect, our loyalty, our trust, or our vote. These people are not “living” their WHY—their true purpose. They are more focused on WHAT they do and HOW they do it—more focused on achieving fame, success, or wealth, which Sinek would agree is all secondary to the WHY. From time to time, we are all “all talk”—in love with the idea of having a higher purpose or cause but more focused on earning a paycheck and just making it through the day. On the 35-year journey to discover my WHY, I have been quite the dreamer and often struggled to align what I was doing with what I really believe about the world. I’ve taken jobs just to pay the bills, not because I found working at Target or Arby’s or waiting tables to be particularly inspiring. But now, I think I have my WHY figured out.

So, WHAT do I do? I teach. More specifically, I teach writing to first-year college students, and it is WHAT I have been doing for the past nine years. Doing some quick mental math, I have taught 56 sections of first-year writing to approximately 1,120 students who have written about 4,480 essays. These essays tend to average 4 pages each, so that’s about 17,920 pages of student writing that I have read and assessed since 2008.

HOW do I do these things? I teach with an ever-evolving 
pedagogy that provides students with two, three and sometimes 
four opportunities to revise and to improve. I offer feedback, a lot 
of it. And yes, I know they don’t read it all. I give them choices—sometimes about topics and other times about readings. I listen—to what they say and what they don’t. I emphasize the importance of setting goals, in my course and in others, and I facilitate class discussion about success, motivation, and the difficulties of adjusting to college course work and of managing time. Last year, I had my students keep an “Academic Reflection Journal” in which they articulated and reflected on their goals, how well they were meeting them, and the difficulties and triumphs that they experienced during their first semester. This fall, I will be asking my students to reflect on how they learn and teaching them reading strategies. And, yes, I still teach writing. I teach focus, organization, transitions, how to write well in different genres, and—for five minutes every semester—how to use a comma. I view the first-year composition course as a site of enculturation—a place where students can develop their studentness. So in English 110, writing is not the content. It instead becomes the means through which to address these non-cognitive issues that often make or break a student’s chances of success.

WHY do I teach like this? Because when a student’s aspirations don’t match her motivation, I lose sleep at night. Because I am troubled when students disappear and drop out. Because I know that college is expensive, and the government will want its money back, regardless of whether my students graduate or find jobs. Because I don’t believe, nor did any of my teachers, that “sink or swim” is a teaching philosophy. And educators with this mentality should perhaps re-think their career choice. Because I care.

And WHAT I do also serves as proof of what I don’t believe about the world. This is my “negative WHY.” I don’t believe that everyone has a fair shot. I don’t believe the playing field is level or that no matter where a person grows up, he/she has a chance to succeed. In short, I don’t believe in equality of opportunity. This is an issue that has been addressed by numerous writers, including two of my favorites, Jonathan Kozol and Mike Rose. Like them, I do believe it’s a myth—even though my own life, when viewed in particular ways, could serve as an example of the contrary.

I grew up in a single-parent household. My mother worked long hours, and my sister became my babysitter when she was 12. I remember eating a lot of microwaved food; we weren’t allowed to use the stove. I took my first job at 14, a paper route, so that I could help pay for my school clothes and have spending money for mall trips with friends. At 16, I worked 30 hours each week at Arby’s, a job that necessitated a vehicle. I leased a little red Ford Ranger pickup for $200/month + the cost of insurance. I entered higher education in the year 2000, a first-generation college student financing a four-year degree on a lot of federal loans. Throughout college and graduate school, I worked 2-3 jobs at a time.

This snapshot supports the notion that even, with a lack of financial resources or a seeming lack of parental involvement, with hard work and determination, a person can raise his/her socioeconomic status and actually do better than the generation before—in essence, a “bootstraps” narrative. It’s true that I do live a relatively comfortable middle-class life. Sure, I will be paying off my student loans until my two-year-old enters college (no joke), but my children will never have to worry about working at 14 to help buy their own clothes.

But it’s not that simple, and I refuse to allow my story to be used to claim that equal opportunity does exist. Many people have tried to frame it that way: “Well you worked hard. Why can’t other people do that?” Maybe. But there are additional, essential details to consider, and it’s also really important for those who believe that everyone has a fair shot to understand that hard work and opportunity are not mutually exclusive. It’s far more complicated than that. I was smart, and I “played school” very well. In 20+ years of schooling, I earned only two “Bs,” both in the 6th grade and both in non-academic classes—woodshop and art. And in both cases, my perfectionist tendencies led me to not complete projects on time.

Leah’s letter from Beverly Cleary..

Beyond that, Lamphere School District, the public district I attended as a child, was well funded and offered me a high-quality education. I had teachers who genuinely cared for me, sparked my curiosity and helped me fall in love with reading and writing. In first grade, I was encouraged by my teacher, Mrs. Niesluhowski, to write a letter to my favorite author, Beverly Clearly. On the outside of the reply envelope, Cleary had printed “KEEP WRITING” in block letters, and inside, in shaky blue ink, signed with a red heart, she thanked me for the poems I sent her. My grandmother took the letter to work and had it laminated.

Although my mother worked long hours, she spent any energy she had left in the evenings making sure that my homework was done—and done well. We moved twice before I graduated high school, and both times my mom made certain we stayed in the same school district. She also signed me up for the summer reading program at my local library and any other free educational programming that was available. And when high school started, and she had trouble understanding my homework, she would call her brother or my [now] stepdad to help out.

I had a tremendous amount of family support and guidance that resulted in me being valedictorian of my senior class and earning a 50% scholarship to a private liberal arts college. I graduated in four years, second in my class, and made an easy transition to graduate school. Yes, I worked hard—but at Arby’s and Target—not at school. It was the combination of my innate intelligence, the quality schools that I attended as a child, and the support from home that gave me an advantage over many of the kids to whom I was statistically identical.

Today, most first-generation college students from low-income households don’t do as well. In fact, synthesizing information provided by the Pell Institute, Liz Riggs (2014) reported: “Just 11 percent of low-income students who are the first in their family to attend college will have a college degree within six years of enrolling in school” (para. 5). To summarize Riggs further, there are a myriad of reasons for their inability to graduate. Most of these students work full-time jobs while they attend school. They also tend to come from high schools not geared toward college preparation. Their lack of preparedness for higher education, combined with insufficient hours to devote to schooling, often leads to their failure.

Arguably, the colleges and universities that admit these students are the ones who are failing. Although they open their doors to these students and can anticipate their struggles, they often lack resources and programs that target this population for support, and they also don’t work hard enough to provide them. More of these students would likely graduate if more colleges and universities felt ethically bound to their success and cared about what happens when these students leave higher education with a pile of debt and no degree. But to do that, they would have to view them as people and not numbers.

I was more fortunate. My college offered a program specifically for low-income, first-generation students, the McNair Scholars Program, named for Ronald McNair, an African-American physicist and astronaut who died during the launch of the Challenger in 1986. The program was designed to encourage students to seek graduate degrees, and it did this by providing its members with financial support, as well as mentoring from a faculty member. In my three years as a McNair Scholar, I received over $5,000 toward my education. When I completed my doctoral work in 2010, I was the first McNair Scholar from my college to do so.

I would argue that at least half of the 1,100 students I have taught since 2008 did not have the level of sponsorship and support that I had growing up. As I have seen in my own courses, many of our students struggle to balance the demands of college with family and work responsibilities. For first-generation college students (42% of Clarion University students), this struggle is often compounded by a lack of understanding on the part of both students and their families of the effort and time commitment college demands. (I would argue that nearly all our students underestimate the rigor of academic work). More of our students than we realize are supporting themselves financially, or, in some cases, even helping their parents pay the bills. See map above. Not only do students tend to underestimate the amount of time they need to devote to their studies, some simply don’t have the hours in the day.  So, with all that our students have not working in their favor, ask yourself, what can WE do?

I teach in the ways that I describe above because I believe that in the classroom, we can level the playing field. We can provide the balance of challenge and support that students need to thrive. We can hold them accountable but also recognize their struggles. We can, quietly, walk over and wake up the student with her head on the desk and, instead of assuming she’s lazy, talk to her about why she’s so tired. We can open up a dialogue about making better choices to help juggle work and family with school. By not pretending that everyone has a fair shot and by opening our eyes to these inequities and to the baggage that students bring with them into the classroom, we can increase their chances to graduate—or to at least return for another semester.

The Community Learning Workshop further demonstrates my WHY. The Learning Workshop is the drop-in homework and tutoring center on Main Street that I co-direct with Rich Lane. The Workshop offers all of its programs and services free of charge. (To decrease costs, people have suggested that we charge for our services. My colleague Rich and I agree that we would close down before we would do that.) In essence, the Learning Workshop is what Deborah Brandt, a scholar of literacy studies would call, a site of “sponsorship.” Brandt (1998) defines literacy sponsors as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (p. 166). At the Learning Workshop, we support K-12 students and community adults in their education and learning. Many of these individuals come from low-income households, where resources to provide for their basic needs, like food and heat, are sometimes lacking. And in some cases, the children’s parents have low levels of literacy and are unable to assist them with their homework.

The Workshop exists to help these students excel and to increase their educational opportunities. I do not mean to overestimate the impact of the Workshop and what we do, but I do know that without it, many of these children would not be doing as well in school. And there is no amount of hard work and trying that would help them succeed. They aren’t lazy. They don’t desire to fail. What prevents them from doing well and what boosts the success of other children, who are equally smart or equally struggling, is often just a matter of support and resources. Those of us who have the means to provide the support, provide the opportunities, and make the playing field as level as possible—in our classrooms and in our larger communities—must make every effort to do just that. And it all starts with WHY.

If we can rediscover WHY we went into education, WHY we think any of it matters, and what it is about ourselves that made teaching our calling or career choice, we would likely be better and more effective at what we do. If we can look past the content that we bring into the classroom and focus less on coverage and on meeting the deadlines of our well-intentioned course schedules, we might actually catch a glimpse of our students—with their hopes, their goals, their challenges, their needs, and their ever-increasing loan debt. And then we might figure out how to really help them succeed.

References

Brandt, D. (1998). Sponsors of literacy. College Composition and Communication, 49(2), 165-185. Retrieved from https://wac.appstate.edu/sites/wac.appstate.edu/files/112BrandtSponsorsofLiteracy.pdf

Riggs, L. (2014). First-generation college-goers: Unprepared and behind. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/12/the-added-pressure-faced-by-first-generation-students/384139/

Sinek, S. (2011). Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Portfolio/Penguin.

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Leah Chambers has been an English professor at Clarion University since 2010. She specializes in teaching composition to first-year students and is also the coordinator of CU’s Freshman Inquiry Seminar Program. Her research interests include student retention and developing classroom strategies to support students through their first year. She lives in a small town 15 miles west of Clarion, PA with her husband, Tyler, an 8th grade Science teacher and her two daughters, Ava and Mia. When’s she’s not teaching or writing about teaching she enjoys running, baking and spending time with her children

Dear Left Confused

Dear Ms. Scholar, I watched the report from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) and was left confused. There were good ideas, although these ideas were often so vague that, as I read the media and listened to friends, I was pretty confused. Any thoughts on the report?

Ms. Scholar at work.

Dear Left Confused, Ms. Scholar had a similar response. On the one hand, the recommendations that I’d feared NCHEMS would make weren’t on their list, but the more I read, the more I was, like you, unclear about what exactly had been recommended. (Click the green button here for NCHEMS’s PowerPoint, and here for video of their presentation, starting at 3:00.)

Importantly, Dennis Jones looked around the room and suggested that all of us had dug the hole leading to PASSHE’s current problems – the legislature, the Chancellor, the Board of Governors, management, faculty, and the union – and that we needed to work together to resolve these problems (Slide 5). Jones sounded like the wise grandparent, admonishing the foolish children listening to his message (and there were a surprising number of us listening). Ms. Scholar watched the Board of Governors fidget in response to his words. They weren’t the only ones.

One of Ms. Scholar’s insightful colleagues summed up Jones’s message as: communicate, collaborate, be transparent, build trust, and support one other (e.g., Slide 37). These words rang true for many of us, who have increasingly felt as though the various parties comprising the System were in a rush to spitefully cut off their own noses. Effective communication, collaboration, transparency, trust, and support have been in short supply in recent years, a real change from even a decade earlier.

Many of us were elated to learn that NCHEMS adamantly recommended that no university should be closed, no universities merged, and none separated from the rest of the System (Slide 35). Gardner’s (2017) recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education argued that Georgia’s mergers – in a very different system – experienced minimal savings, but significant disruptions. Given this, Jones’s recommendations were not surprising. Meshing different universities, each with its own culture, rules, organization, and identity, is neither simple nor painless.

A Rorschach

Despite our initial elation, the NCHEMS report was vague and a bit of a Rorschach, with different parties projecting onto the report their own hopes and fears. For example, while most faculty initially felt affirmed by the report, some of us were surprised by comments such as this one from Jones, that apparently took place outside of the official airing:

“[Some universities have] got more staff than they can sustain, but you still want to provide service to the regions they serve, and the way you do that is to provide student services at those institutions and programs from somewhere else.”  (Snyder, 2017a, para. 14-15)

Slide 48 from NCHEMS PowerPoint.

What is Jones suggesting? Is he saying that some university services can be cut or is he suggesting that courses can be imported from elsewhere? Part of why we are confused is that Jones seems to be using the terms “staff” and “student services” differently than faculty do.

We now believe Jones is talking about cutting faculty and importing classes. Slide 48 seems to suggest greater reliance on a consortium model with schools working collaboratively to provide needed services, programs, and classes. This was also Joni Finney’s conclusion. She concluded that the NCHEMS “consultants effectively recommended mergers without calling them that, referring to the recommendation on consolidation” (Snyder, 2017b, para. 7). Finney is director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Students First

Jones observed that the System and its parts have primarily focused on maintaining and growing that system, following a typical business model. Jones made an impassioned plea that we put our students, not profitability, first. He noted, for example, that closing schools in the west would hurt students from Forest County, where families earn 1/3 of those in Chester County ($25,000 vs. $75,000). Students from the wealthiest families are becoming more common on our campuses, while students from poorer families are becoming less common (Slide 18). NCHEMS’s first and perhaps strongest recommendation was that we “retain and ensure sustainability of the State System’s capacity in every region to carry out its mission to serve students and communities with high-quality, affordable postsecondary opportunities for working-class families” (Slide 41, italics added). This is a an important goal that Ms. Scholar endorses, but NCHEMS does not yet offer a road map for getting there.

What did Jones mean when he asked us to put our students first? This was unclear, but Ms. Scholar suspects that Jones is suggesting that we remember our mission, that we look for ways to open vistas for our students (rather than mostly focusing on what is most profitable). As many others also suggest, he believes PASSHE should expand its use of services designed to foster student success (Slide 47).

However, while Ms. Scholar can envision forms of academic collaboration that would support our students well, she can also imagine disaster. Yet, Jones seemed to be indicating that the smaller, less financially-viable schools should increasingly import online courses from other schools (Slide 48). Ms. Scholar believes that there is a time and place for online education, but that our undergraduates also need the kinds of mentoring that often comes best from personal interactions between faculty and students, and from student to student. If we are really putting students first, as we strive to provide them with high-quality, affordable education, we need to be thoughtful and strategic about the nature of our collaborations.

“Students first” is a lovely catchphrase. However, Ms. Scholar expects that most people in the room during Mr. Jones’s presentation believed that they already do put students first. Let’s talk about what putting students first means and make this more than a catchphrase: let’s make it a central aspect of our mission and our actions.

The devil is in the details.

References

Gardner, L. (2017). Georgia’s mergers offer lessons, and cautions, to other states. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.chronicle.com/article/Georgia-s-Mergers-Offer/240390

Snyder, S.  (2017a). No closures, mergers recommended for Pa. state colleges. The Inquirer, Retrieved from http://www.philly.com/philly/education/no-closures-mergers-recommended-for-pa-state-colleges-20170712.html

Snyder, S.  (2017b). School report draws criticism, praise. The Inquirer, Retrieved from http://www.philly.com/philly/education/school-report-draws-criticism-praise-20170714.html

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If you have questions regarding teaching, student/faculty issues, or other comments/suggestions, please write to: Ms. Scholar c/o MsScholarCU@gmail.com

Final Assignments: What Did We Learn?

– Jeanne M. Slattery

Figure 1. Maggie Ditmore, describing her internship experience for our department’s Facebook page.

The end of the semester is a time for reflection.

My final class assignment is often some type of reflection about the semester. In my internship course, I ask my students to evaluate their experiences both for our department Facebook page and more formally in a Discussion Board shared with the class. See Figure 1. In my Intro to Counseling class, students write self-evaluations at the beginning and end of the semester, describing what they want to learn in the semester and then how they’ve grown over the course of the class. As I described in an earlier post, my Senior Seminar students begin the semester by evaluating their learning over the course of their entire college career. In a more relaxed setting at the end of the term, those same students reflect aloud on their semester: what worked, what didn’t, and what I should do differently next time.

In my lower-level courses, I ask my students a somewhat simpler question: What did they learn this semester? I asked my freshmen in my inquiry seminar, for example, to identify the most important things they’d learned and to communicate these in a group presentation. See Figures 2 and 3. Perhaps in the future, I’ll allow students to do a skit, poem, song, or dance, but for now, just a presentation.

Figure 2. Antonia’s description of what she had learned in her inquiry seminar.

Why do I give these assignments? At least four reasons. First, I want my students to consolidate their learning over the course of the semester, so they recognize what they have learned. Second, in classes like Intro to Counseling, as Emily Cornman describes here, I use this reflection as a type of formative assessment to help my students recognize their strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify growing points for the future:

When I was scheduling classes for this semester my advisor, Dr. Slattery, suggested I take this course. I had told her about my desire to be a statistician for psychological research and expressed that I had little interest in being a therapist. I felt I would not perform well as a therapist because I did not think I had the skills to do so. In the past, I have had trouble with empathizing with others, especially those I could not easily relate to. Also, I had difficulty listening to others and being insightful about what they were saying…. Not only has this course helped me improve upon the previously mentioned weaknesses I would have had as a therapist, but it has also inspired me to consider becoming a therapist. I have realized, it was not that I was incapable of these skills, I was just not educated on how to acquire them. – Emily Cornman, Intro to Counseling, Fall 2015

Third, while I use such assignments to help my students learn and understand themselves, they help me recognize what my students are learning and what I need to work on further. In the Fall 2015, most of my student groups referred to the Wellness Wheel in their presentations, but not to PERMA. I wasn’t entirely surprised, as the Wellness Wheel focuses on concrete behaviors – in the physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, career, and social domains – while Seligman’s (2011) description of PERMA emphasizes how one lives (i.e., feeling positive emotions, engaging, fostering relationships, finding meaning, and having a sense of accomplishment). This is a more abstract, thus more difficult, way of thinking about wellness, but an approach that I think is ultimately more important. In Spring 2016, I changed my approach to discussing wellness. When my students talked about both the Wellness Wheel and PERMA during their presentations, I concluded we’d discussed wellness more effectively that semester.

Figure 3. Paige’s description of what she had learned in her inquiry seminar.

When students only talk about content discussed in our course, I am disappointed, as that sort of discussion usually requires only a superficial analysis of what we did. In my inquiry seminars, for example, I asked my students to develop habits of mind that are often difficult for freshmen, but that can be helpful in the future (e.g., questioning, reflection, analysis, teamwork, self-observation). I want them to recognize these habits of mind as important to what we did that semester.

At their mid-semester evaluation, a number of my inquiry seminar students complained about their journals: too much writing, too frequent writing. I was tempted to cut back on this assignment, but the abilities to introspect, to develop ideas, and to observe and write about observations are skills that are important in psychology. Paige and I argued about her writing for most of the semester: she initially resisted developing her ideas (giving me a two sentence response when I asked for an essay). Her response at the end of the semester brought me to tears. See Figure 3. Similarly, Antonia entered the semester resistant to school and to psychological ideas – and she hated journals. See Figure 2. That she said that journals were valuable, as was the reflection done in them? Priceless.

Finally, I ask my students to reflect on their work at the end of the semester because I want them to begin to own their learning and to perceive themselves differently as a learner and a person. I am different now than when I started. I can do things that I thought were impossible. I am capable of growing and changing.

When I first started teaching, I didn’t use such assessment strategies in my teaching. I didn’t consider the skills I was teaching and, instead, focused on the content. I didn’t think about changing my course from one semester to the next based on what I’d learned from the first course. I now think about my teaching very differently – I’m less of a Sage on the Stage. I expect to learn from my students, and the assignments described here have helped me do so. I encourage you to explore similar opportunities to reflect on each semester’s work and integrate learning – both for yourself and for your students.

References

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and wellness. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

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Jeanne M. Slattery is a professor of psychology at Clarion University. She loves teaching and learning and describes herself as a learner-centered teacher. She has written three books: Trauma, meaning, and spirituality: Translating research into clinical practice; Counseling diverse clients: Bringing context into therapy; and Empathic counseling: Meaning, context, ethics, and skill.  She can be contacted at jslattery@clarion.edu

Everything Is Easy… Until It’s Hard

– Melissa K. Downes

Melissa K. Downes.

Earlier this term, Hand in Hand published Paul Woodburne’s essay, “Everything is Hard – Until It Is Easy.” As Jeanne and I read it over and edited it for publication, I knew it was a good essay, raising important points about our roles and responsibilities as professors—and yet, I disagreed with it—and yet, I didn’t. It took me a while to understand that I agree with it in a complex way—and that complex reaction of both agreeing and disagreeing is part of my point.

Paul stated that a professor’s responsibility is “to make the difficult easy, to make the mysterious obvious.” However, sometimes our responsibility is also to make the apparently easy complex and to take what our students perceive as obvious and help them discover its mystery. More, part of our job may be to help our students embrace and even enjoy complexity. It is certainly our job to help them learn to handle the complex effectively on their own.

Much of what I teach to first-year students is skill based, breaking down their easy assumptions about reading, writing, research, critical thinking, and learning: reading a book isn’t just picking it up and highlighting (or darn well shouldn’t be); writing an essay doesn’t stop at inchoate word vomit at 2 AM; all sources are not created equal; two people can disagree and both be ”right.”

I want students to engage with complexity often and well: I  ask students to embrace reflection and depth in their writing and thinking; to use and assess sources based on thoughtful criteria and not on ease or agreement, etc. I also ask students to dig into and find pleasure in poems and stories that require patience and attention and can be read in multiple ways. For example, I’ll ask students their initial responses to characters early in a text (perhaps Nora and Torvald from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House): since students may already have strongly differing views, we will often list the contradictory adjectives they use to describe the characters and consider what evidence the text gives for these different readings. Later, I will ask them how their responses have changed by the end of the play. Then I might complicate things further by giving historical and/or literary context that sheds a different light on what they’ve read: what might happen to an inexperienced woman who leaves her husband in nineteenth-century Norway? What choices does she have? What would happen to her children if she were to take them with her? Why would many audiences embrace this as a feminist text, but a number of critics insist it is not?

However, while complexity can be beautiful, it is not an end in itself; lack of sureness can slow us down, cause us to hesitate. Eventually, on some issues, one must take a stand. But awareness of the complexities of a problem can make one surer of where to stand.

We are all surrounded by complexities all the time: deep divisions in our politics and culture; local, national, and global problems that cannot be solved by an easy phrase or executive order; the spread of “alternative facts” and false narratives running parallel to legitimate and powerful differences in opinion and interpretation; ethical and interpersonal issues in our diverse professional lives; and the usual messy realities of our personal lives. The desire to keep one’s head down and cling to easy binaries and moral simplicities when faced with such complexities is understandable, but problematic.

When I was in high school and in the early years of college, I was often very sure of my rightness. (I have not entirely left that annoying tendency behind me.) However, over the years I have become more careful about a righteous surety in myself or in others. Even back then, my “rightness” was often grounded in research, reading, and thoughtful conversations; nonetheless, my desire for easy answers in something clear, true, and obvious got in the way of noticing and responding to nuance and difference. It also got in the way of understanding that what might be right for me could be legitimately wrong for others.

Yes, teachers should not assume that their students are like them; however, my desire for a world with easy answers—a world with simple rightness in it—is very like the desires of many young people entering college. Kidwell (2005) suggests that, developmentally, most college students in their first year move from being “dualists” to “multiplists” and, as they progress through college, their responses become more complex and the way they perceive the world more relative (see also Perry, 1970 and Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tartule, 1986). Part of our roles as professors is to actively foster that development.

Figure 1. “Easy” and “hard” are two parts of a single process that faculty help students traverse.

It is likely that Paul and I are talking about different stages of teaching, but on the same continuum (see Figure 1). We can and should give our students templates and scaffolds that help them manage challenging questions, difficult problems, and daunting tasks more effectively. For example, in my composition courses, I break writing down into smaller steps (i.e., invention, drafting, revision, and editing). I also provide handouts focusing on mastering key smaller skills within each step. I emphasize these processes as iterative; we are stronger and more thoughtful writers and thinkers when we loop back and use what we have learned to build on what we have done. I have them practice each step and often assess my students on both the product and the process.

However, if students stay at the stage of simply filling in templates, we have not taken them far enough. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a slippage in language, especially from many of our students. When discussing a desire to be effective, they use, instead, the word efficient. I want our students to be both effective and efficient. I don’t think their success will come easily if they (or we) sacrifice the effective for the efficient.

Of course it is not just young people who desire simplicity: I expect that most of us when encountering the new—or when angry, scared, or passionately involved —reduce complexity. Sometimes we ask our students to practice the discomfort of ambiguity, complexity, and failure without practicing it ourselves. We forgot how hard it can be to grow and change. We are better scholars and better teachers when we remember to challenge ourselves to move beyond our own perspectives.

As universities continue to change in this complex world, I believe we need to continue to advocate for the liberal arts and sciences—fields which can open up our students to complexity; allow them to see the world more richly and with greater empathy; and give them resources to adapt, problem solve, advocate, and thrive when things get hard. These skills are essential to an engaged and effective professional, civic, and personal life. I know that the teaching, learning, and advocacy of such skills is not easy—nor should it be—but it is a fine place to take a stand.

References

Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N.R., & Tartule, J.M. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Kidwell, K. S. (2005, July/August). Understanding the college first-year experience. The Clearing House, 78(6), 253-255. Retrieved from http://www.ecu.edu/cs-studentaffairs/saprofessionaldevelopment/customcf/Understanding%20the%20First%20Year%20College%20Experience%20by%20Kirk%20S.%20Kidwell.pdf.

Perry, W. G., Jr. (1970/1998). Forms of ethical and intellectual development in the college years: A scheme. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

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Melissa K. Downes is an associate professor of English at Clarion University. She loves teaching.  She is interested in talking about how people teach and enjoys sharing how she teaches. She is an 18th century specialist, an Anglophile, a cat lover, and a poet. She can be contacted at mdownes@clarion.edu