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Evelyn S. Field Library: Access2Success Curriculum Resources: Access2Success Curriculum Resources

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Evelyn S. Field Library: Access2Success Curriculum Resources: Access2Success Curriculum Resources

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We're here to bring instructors and teachers inspiration, energy, and creative strategies that they can utilize in their everyday teaching.

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A good welcoming activity is also a proactive classroom management strategy-it builds community in the classroom, establishes a sense of shared values, and makes everyone feel included.

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A good welcoming activity is also a proactive classroom management strategy-it builds community in the classroom, establishes a sense of shared values, and makes everyone feel included.

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Begin by Embracing Four Beliefs

While we become teachers to positively impact students, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with day-to-day challenges, especially in these past few years. Still, ask any teacher, and they'll say that the goal of education is more than just helping students acquire and regurgitate knowledge. Instead, we want to equip children with tools for success-show them how to reach their goals and prepare them for ever-changing jobs and a world we can't quite imagine. So how can we do this?

I won't pretend it's easy, but it's crucial to commit to the UDL mindset in order to have success. Embracing the following four beliefs is the first step in designing learning experiences that serve all students.

1. All students can reach the high expectations we set. When we set firm goals for all students, we're sending the message that we believe they're capable. We start by clearly identifying the goals we're focusing on. Then, reflect honestly: Do we truly believe that every student can reach these goals?

As a teacher, I involved students in tracking and monitoring their goals by creating digital Data Notebooks where we tracked academic, behavioral, and other goals. We had frequent one-on-one check-ins and monitored these together. These opportunities to conference around goals made them more manageable and helped us all stay committed to them.

2. Barriers to success exist in the system, not in the students. After firm goals are set, we need to recognize that external barriers can prevent students from being successful. Therefore, we need to be flexible by providing multiple pathways for students to reach their goals. When planning, we can ask ourselves, "What barriers might arise within each of these factors: curriculum, teaching methods, resources, materials, and assessments?"

When teaching, I aimed to address many barriers before we began a unit. Sometimes students didn't have background knowledge, so we'd cover relevant topics and skills at the start. Other times, content wasn't academically interesting or culturally relevant, so we found ways to tie it to their lives. I realized that many students needed clearer directions, checklists, and check-ins, so I created systems within our classroom to address this.

3. Learner variability is the norm, so a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. We can empower students with choices and autonomy so that they can overcome those barriers and reach their goals. This belief allows us to embrace the three UDL principles that help us design more accessible, inclusive, and engaging learning experiences:

Multiple means of engagement: Learners vary in how they are motivated and want to engage in learning, so we can provide multiple options for engagement.

Multiple means of representation: Learners perceive and comprehend information differently, so we can provide multiple options for acquiring knowledge.

Multiple means of action and expression: Learners vary in how they navigate learning and express what they know, so we can provide multiple options for them to demonstrate learning.

We can put these principles into practice in many ways. Are there opportunities for students to have choice in what topic they study and how they take in information (reading, listening, watching)? Can we create scaffolds for students? Or offer choices in how they demonstrate their learning?

When I created units, I started by looking at our goals and brainstorming ways in which I could offer students autonomy that would still lead them to those goals. Sometimes, they chose their own text or topic. Other times, I offered materials in multiple modalities for them to choose from: reading, watching, and/or listening. Lastly, I saw so much creativity and engagement when students had a choice over how they demonstrated their learning-for example, choosing between a written response, a slide presentation, or a video.

4. Continual self-reflection leads to lifelong, expert learners. There's a lot of uncertainty around the future of work and our world. We know that the ability to learn is crucial. The ultimate goal of UDL is to develop "expert learners" who are purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal-directed. Even though this approach may make us nervous, when we show trust by giving students choices, when we teach them how to reflect on those choices and their work, and when we value growth as much as results, we are developing expert learners.

In my teaching, I focused on creating an environment where students felt safe and valued. To emphasize growth, I offered opportunities for revisions rather than only grading final work. I built reflection questions into both our end-of-unit review and our everyday work, mainly through exit tickets. Students practiced reflecting on their work and their choices: If they could do the assignment over again, would they have made the same choices? Why or why not?

Start Small

Of course there's more to great teaching, preparing our students for the future, and applying UDL than these four beliefs, but it's only if we hold these beliefs that the other pieces then fall into place.

With so much on their plates, many teachers are feeling overwhelmed right now. It's OK to start small: Commit every day to having high expectations for allstudents. Believe in them. You can print out this 4 Beliefs poster and put it on your desk. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. While it may not seem like you're doing much, you'll be able to feela difference. And better yet, so will your students. Over time, believing in your students can lead to their believing in themselves, which is a gift that'll last a lifetime.

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4 Principles of a Universal Design for Learning Approach

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While we become teachers to positively impact students, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with day-to-day challenges, especially in these past few years. Still, ask any teacher, and they'll say that the goal of education is more than just helping students acquire and regurgitate knowledge.

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Practice makes perfect. To become ambidextrous in basketball, dribble with your left hand, switch to your right, and repeat the process again and again. Likewise, to solve differential equations in math, pile them up and work your way through them diligently.

According to one popular school of thought, it's this active, repeated manipulation of material that lays the neural foundations for skill development. All too often, time away from the basketball court-or the math books-is seen as a break in the learning process, a way to cool off, reenergize, and then return to the vital work of actual practice.

But for Leonardo Cohen, a neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health and the senior author of a June 2021 study published in the journal Cell, the idea that breaks are a cooling-off period is a misconception.

Cohen and his colleagues used magnetoencephalography-a highly sensitive brain-scanning technique-to observe the neural activity of young adults as they learned how to type with their nondominant hand. After a practice session, the study participants were given a short break and then continued practicing for a total of 35 sessions.

When analyzing the data, Cohen's team made an intriguing discovery: They observed a spike in brain activity, mimicking the neural pattern seen during the practice session, but compressed by twentyfold. Rather than being idle, the brain was replaying the practice session over and over at an astonishingly high rate of speed-flipping the material from the neocortex, where sensory and motor skills are processed, to the hippocampus, the brain's memory center, over two dozen times in the span of 10 seconds. Stepping away from the activity, it turns out, is not stepping away from the activity at all.

The findings echo the groundbreaking discovery in 2001 that after successfully running through a maze, rats replayed those memories repeatedly during REM sleep, with the same spatial circuitry flickering to life as they slept.

An Inside Look

When we learn a new skill, we need to connect it to previous memories, explains Cohen, a process called "binding." For example, when learning how to play piano, our brains need to link a simple action-pressing a piano key-with a larger, more complex skill, such as playing a song. Until now, scientists have been unable to decipher how the brain connects these two discrete actions into a consolidated skill.

Cohen's team discovered that after learning new information, our brains continue to whir, using cognitive downtime as a virtual staging ground to process, organize, and integrate learned information. The key, they believe, lies in neural replay, the "temporally compressed reactivation of neural activity patterns representing behavioral sequences during rest." In other words, after practicing a skill, our brains rapidly cycle through the experience, compressing and imprinting the material to optimize storage and recall.

We greatly underestimate the value of breaks when learning, Cohen and his colleagues assert, commonly opting for an approach that views active practice as the only way to advance. But that's a mistake, because incorporating breaks into learning "plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced."

Brain Breaks During School

In the classroom, "brain breaks should take place before fatigue, boredom, distraction, and inattention set in," writes neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis, and that means they should be far more frequent. "As a general rule," Willis continues, basing her conclusions on decades of research, "concentrated study of 10 to 15 minutes for elementary school and 20 to 30 minutes for middle and high school students calls for a three- to five-minute break."

You don't have to overthink it, or add to your workload by planning entertaining activities. Willis recommends simple techniques, such as a stretch break, moving to a different part of the room, or singing a song to give students time to "replay" what they've learned and to prepare them for more practice or new material. Letting students chat informally for a few minutes should also work well.

As the school day progresses, there's evidence that brain breaks become increasingly important. A 2016 study found that "cognitive fatigue" sets in toward the end of the day, leading to a notable drop in test performance: For every hour later in the day, test performance decreased by 0.9 percent of a standard deviation, the researchers found-roughly the equivalent of losing 10 school days' worth of learning. Incorporating breaks, however, not only eliminated the decrease but actually increased performance. "Importantly, a break causes an improvement in test scores that is larger than the hourly deterioration," the researchers discovered. "Breaks, it appears, recharge students' cognitive energy, thus leading to better test scores."

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We Drastically Underestimate the Importance of Brain Breaks

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When it comes to optimizing learning, we don't value breaks enough, neuroscientists suggest in a new study.

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While direct instruction and lectures are not entirely synonymous-teachers impart knowledge directly during group activities and demonstrations, for example-the lecture remains a useful mainstay of direct instruction in classrooms around the world. Still, lectures have some obvious drawbacks: They can rapidly become boring or overwhelm students with information, causing them to lose focus and tune out. Here are eight tips to make your lectures more engaging, and the material more memorable, based on the research.

1. Review Background Knowledge

It's hard for students to engage with your lecture if they can't make sense of it to begin with. In a 2019 study, researchers discovered that student comprehension of a topic was severely hampered if they didn't meet a "knowledge threshold"-being unfamiliar with 59 percent of terms in the topic resulted in "compromised" comprehension.

A simple review of key vocabulary terms and concepts before the lecture is a useful scaffold, but there are more structured ways to bolster background knowledge. Before jumping into new material, Jeanne Wanzek, a former elementary school teacher and current professor of education at Vanderbilt University, suggests a " comprehension canopy," a review activity that involves making connections to previously covered material before posing a broad, engaging question that hooks students. You can also show an introductory video to help build interest in a topic, and then debrief with a short discussion before jumping into your lecture.

Finally, pretests are surprisingly effective, a 2018 study shows. When students are quizzed before they're exposed to new material, they make the kinds of productive mistakes that pique curiosity and lead them to seek out the correct answers as the lesson unfolds.

2. Take Breaks-They're More Important Than We Think

The longer you talk, the more students will struggle to pay attention. In a 2016 study, researchers concluded that elementary students were unable to focus for more than 10 minutes. Middle and high school students can hold on a little longer, but a landmark 2011 study reveals the same linear relationship between time and retention: Material presented earlier in a lecture is retained more reliably than material presented later.

Brief brain breaks -such as a short bout of exercise, a mindfulness break, or a fun off-topic activity to stimulate conversation-can reset students' attention and provide space to process new learning.

Such breaks are more fundamental to learning than we assume. In a 2021 study, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health concluded that "'much, if not all' skill learning occurs offline during rest rather than during actual practice." After learning a new skill, downtime allows the brain to process the information, resulting in improved skill acquisition and memory consolidation. Instead of cooling off, brain activity actually spiked during breaks: The researchers observed a 20-fold increase in neural activity between the hippocampus and neocortex, brain regions responsible for memory and higher cognitive functioning.

3. Check In to Make Sure You're Getting Through

Periodically, take a few minutes to check for student understanding. These probing exercises help unearth gaps in student understanding, briefly change the dynamics of your lecture, and provide an opportunity to review the materials and make the information stick.

You can try quick dipsticks like the popular Muddy Moment, during which you ask students, "What about this information so far frustrates or confuses you?" or ask students to use hand gestures like an up, down, or sideways thumb to signal their understanding of a concept.

Brief, low-stakes quizzes are also extremely effective. In a 2014 study, middle and high school students who took practice tests shortly after a lesson scored an average of 18 percentage points higher than their peers who didn't-the equivalent of almost two full letter grades. When quizzing, it's better to get all students to respond and to ask a mix of questions, ranging from factual to higher-order complex ones, researchers suggest in a 2013 study, because "repeatedly asking the same type of questions might intimidate students"-or bore them.

4. Slow It (Way) Down

It's easy to fall victim to the curse of knowledge, writes high school teacher Christopher Reddy. You may be an expert in the subject you're teaching, which can lead to assumptions about the clarity of your lessons. Try putting yourself in the shoes of your students, and explicitly walk them through connections that may be obvious to you.

Every new concept requires students to grapple with new vocabulary, connect information to previously learned material, and then formulate a coherent view of the topic. "A major threat to learning during lecture is cognitive overload, which occurs when the cognitive demands of the situation exceed students' cognitive capacities," explains psychology professor William Cerbin in a 2018 study, pointing to the "sheer volume of new information in lectures" as a common source of strain.

Students will follow your lecture at different paces-many will still be mulling information as you introduce a brand-new concept-so avoid going too fast, and build in pauses to let them catch up, ask questions, finish their notes, and process the material.

5. Provide Recorded Versions of Lectures

Traditional lectures can create a bottleneck, says high school math teacher Kareem Farah. "One size does not fit all in learning; there's no replay, rewind, or fast-forward button in a lecture; and a large group of students are all dependent on one teacher to access learning."

So instead of lecturing in front of his class, Farah creates his own instructional videos. Because student engagement drops after the 6-minute mark, he chunks videos so that each one covers a single learning objective or task, and to ensure that students aren't just passively watching his lectures, he embeds questions throughout the video using Edpuzzle.

Farah's approach-which can be used to replace or merely supplement in-class lectures-is based on a large body of research showing that instructional videos have a significant impact on student learning, largely because they are flexible and self-paced. In a 2022 study, for example, researchers discovered that the presence of a simple pause button on a video may "prevent cognitive overload if the complexity of the video increases." Meanwhile, a 2021 study found that while in-person lectures were often riddled with digressions and distractions, videos were condensed and thus "more time efficient."

6. Incorporate Visual Aids and Graphic Organizers

Lecturers can become too reliant on words-a mistake that may lower engagement and comprehension. Sprucing up your lecture by presenting information in multiple ways, such as verbally and visually, can help students see connections more clearly. Imagine trying to explain how an engine works without a visual aid: What may take a few minutes to explain verbally takes a few seconds with a diagram. In a 2015 study, students who listened to a physics lecture and were given visual aids scored nearly 70 percent higher on a follow-up test than their peers who listened to the lecture without the visual aids.

In addition to visual ways of representing information, you can also organize lecture information in different ways to boost student understanding. For example, while a model of the solar system can help students remember the order of planets, an anchor chart can serve as a reference point to help students learn the differences between terrestrial planets, gas giants, and ice giants.

7. Relate the Work to Students' Lives

Students are more receptive to lectures when they see their backgrounds and cultures reflected in the materials used in class.

In a 2019 study, researchers discovered that Black students were more responsive to lectures when the materials included clear references to Black people-leading to academic performance that was almost a full letter grade better than that of their Black peers who were exposed to materials that focused on White people. A 2014 study, meanwhile, demonstrated that a lack of diversity in the role models featured in school signaled who did and didn't belong, revealing a blind spot that had "far-reaching consequences for students' educational choices and achievement."

Before lecturing, audit your prepared materials and consider whether they reflect the diversity of your classroom. You can use a student interest survey to determine student passions and then incorporate relatable materials into your lecture-articles, song lyrics, speeches, or short video clips, for example.

8. Be Yourself-and the Rest Will Follow

Be careful with tone and disposition: Projecting an authoritative demeanor can come across as aloof and cause kids to tune you out. Students prefer teachers who have an authentic, conversational style, a 2017 study finds, and passion for the material goes a long way. Not only do students report richer, more meaningful learning in these environments-they're also more willing to invest time and effort into a lesson, stepping outside of their comfort zone to engage with the material.

Being authentic is more than just being yourself, however. It's also about signaling to your students that you care about their well-being. Avoid treating lectures as merely a transfer of information, and focus on making plenty of room for your common humanity: Promote dialogue, take brief breaks to relax together, ask questions about how students feel as you progress through lessons, and show concern if they struggle. "The process of teaching authentically need not be more complicated than making simple and direct statements regarding the level of concern and care that a teacher holds for their students," the researchers say.

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8 Evidence-Based Tips to Make Your Lectures More Engaging-and Memorable

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While direct instruction and lectures are not entirely synonymous-teachers impart knowledge directly during group activities and demonstrations, for example-the lecture remains a useful mainstay of direct instruction in classrooms around the world. Still, lectures have some obvious drawbacks: They can rapidly become boring or overwhelm students with information, causing them to lose focus and tune out.

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A look at how one teacher adjusted her policies to encourage learners to turn in quality assignments, even if they were late.

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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Every semester faculty are faced with students who struggle with completing assignments, understanding the content, or just find it difficult to participate in class activities and discussions. For many, these struggles are connected to low grades, negative perceptions of the instructor and class, increased absences, and indicative of a general lack of engagement. It is not uncommon for faculty to misinterpret these students as lazy, unmotivated, or just unprepared to do college-level work. Faculty regularly reach out to assist, but some students are put into the university machinery of "student support," where their worlds become more complex with emails connecting them to support services like tutoring and counseling, or notifying them that they are in danger of failing or not passing a course. Although this outreach is intended to motivate and help, there is a very real cognitive and emotional load that can be demoralizing if not debilitating. This is complicated, if not impossible terrain to navigate for all of us who genuinely want to see students succeed. Greene (2009) developed a framework for collaborative problem solving as a way to organize, support, and deeply engage students in identifying realistic ways to get back on track and succeed within the classroom. This framework has three steps that can be applied across multiple modalities. All three steps are based on the fact that we are not merely disseminating information, but teaching human beings to think through content to build disciplinary skills, insights, and understanding.

Step 1: Connect to identify the root cause

Meet with the underperforming student and work to identify the root causes for their classroom performance. It seems simple but getting to the root cause is quite difficult because it positions us to take into consideration different factors, many of which may be personal and that can be uncomfortable.

Observed behaviors/actions: Let the student know what you have observed and focus on the behaviors, not what you think may be the underlying reasons. Ask if the student agrees with your observations and/or has more to add or change.

Seek and clarify reasons: Ask the student for clarification as to why these behaviors are occurring.

Successfully completing Step 1 requires that we, as faculty members, be specific in identifying the behavior. This step may also be the first time you have spoken with this student in a one-on-one setting and offers an opportunity to break down the barriers that may exist while opening up the opportunity for a conversation.

Step 2: Explain impact on oneself and others

Explain to the student how their behavior is impacting their success in the classroom and what impact it is having on the rest of the class. This is an important step since often the student does not realize that their behaviors can take away an opportunity for the class to be a community of learners, where students' voices are heard and learning is done in small and large groups through the sharing of information. This may also be the first time the student has looked beyond their own learning and viewed their own behavior as a negative impact on the learning of other students. Below are some prompts to get the conversation started.

"Now that we understand what the problems are, let me explain the type of impact I believe it is having on you, me, and the rest of the class...."

"How do you think that your behavior may be affecting others in the class?"

"Have any of your class peers asked if you are doing okay?"

"We previously discussed your reluctance to engage in the class discussions, have you thought about how that has impacted the learning of yourself and your peers?"

Step 3: Collective Problem Solving

Now is the moment for mapping out solutions. The problem(s) have been identified, the points of view and implications have been clarified, so the stage is set to create an action plan. What makes this step different from traditional problem-solving approaches is that the student takes the responsibility to lead the discussion. Specifically, students work to identify ways in which they can get back on track. Your job, as the instructor, is to support and guide the student, being honest of their own expectations and what is possible based on the academic expectations of the course. We should remember that most students upon meeting during office hours or after class are waiting to be told what they have to do. This system of faculty problem solving for the student does not address the larger issue. It may also further decrease the motivation of the student by putting unrealistic expectations in front of them and does not address the problem as to how the student arrived in this situation. Greene (2009) points to the power of this phase as the opportunity for the student to identify a new strategy that can support them now and in future situations that are similar.

Teaching is no easy task, but strong and consistent approaches can help us help students to help themselves. With restrictions put in place across a majority of universities, and students possibly feeling more disconnected from the instructors of their courses, the chances of students encountering different unforeseen obstacles has become heightened. What we can say with confidence is that the current landscape of higher education has reminded us that often the best path to supporting student learning is focusing on what we can control...and that is what we do in the classroom.
David Adams, PhD, is an assistant professor of kinesiology at Cal Poly Humboldt (HSU). He teaches classes within the kinesiology department. His research focuses on improving the movement abilities for children with disabilities, as well as improving the learning experience and academic experiences of students in higher education. Enoch Hale, PhD, is the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cal Poly Humboldt. Dr. Hale has 18 years of teaching experience of which 12 of those years are in higher education. His research focuses on faculty development, teaching and learning in higher ed, and embedding critical thinking into curriculum, instruction, and classroom culture. References
Greene, R. W. (2009). Lost at school: Why our kids with behavioral challenges are falling through the cracks and how we can help them. Simon and Schuster.

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Supporting Struggling Students Through Collaborative Problem Solving | Faculty Focus

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Every semester faculty are faced with students who struggle with completing assignments, understanding the content, or just find it difficult to participate in class activities and discussions. For many, these struggles are connected to low grades, negative perceptions of the instructor and class, increased absences, and indicative of a general lack of engagement.

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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In his personal writings, Marcus Aurelius wrote, "People who labor all their lives but have no purpose are wasting their time-even when hard at work." At a point in our history when we are aware that illness can visit us without warning; that all of our carefully constructed plans can be derailed in minutes; that some of our greatest ambitions can fall prey to the harshest realities; that we may encounter tragedy without exploring some very important parts of life, examining our purpose regularly will not only save us from becoming prisoners of our own success, but help us become better for our students. Because we are what we do every day, and the actions we do most make up who we are, it's important to remember the impact this has on how we show up in our classrooms and in our interactions with students.

Have deep conversations

Prior to becoming a college professor, I taught International Baccalaureate (IB) classes at an urban high school. To establish greater connections, I not only shared my career goals but also my spiritual ambitions. I could see some students quiet down and sit up as I talked about how to avoid being consumed by the rewards of money, power, and status. I shared that although I might experience career decline at some point in my life, it was important to continue to define my purpose and goals. I then asked my students to share their life goals and was left speechless when one student said, "I just want to make life easier for my friends and family. Isn't that what life's all about?" It seemed they never had a chance to share what mattered most to them. Whenever the situation allows, I do this with my college students and always find relief and joy come over them as if to say, "Thank you for recognizing both my goals and me."

Make time for the little things

In Charles Darwin's deathbed reflection on what makes life worth living, he wrote,

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
Charles Darwin

People are often tired and distracted, wearing "busy" as a badge of honor, not because they have done too much work, but because they haven't done enough of what speaks to their inner being. The more present, purposeful, and self-aware we are in our everyday lives, taking in the true beauty and good in the world while on our journey, the more likely we are to find more moments of joy. We can then effortlessly bring this spirit into our classrooms, and our students will find it refreshing and uplifting to be in our presence.

Create a reverse bucket list

A reverse bucket list is a list of goals you've already accomplished. Some examples are becoming bilingual, getting an A in a difficult course, learning how to cook, being consistent at the gym, etc. I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have now. Gratitude makes life so much sweeter. "A 2015 study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology looked into how 'grateful recounting' enhances a person's overall well-being. The study showed that participants who recalled three good things from the past 48 hours-and briefly wrote about them-every day for a week had an easier time accessing positive memories. And by routinely recalling positive experiences, it sparked an increase in their subjective well-being" (P.C. Watkins, J. Uhder., & S. Pichinevskiy, 2015 as cited in Meyer-Shine, 2017). One approach is writing five to 10 of your strongest memories and alternating between big and small accomplishments so as not to make light of the smaller ones. Ask your students to do this from time to time so they feel a sense of pride in how far they have come and feel motivated to continue striving for excellence.

Keep your goals way out in front of you

Without something "big" we're working towards, it's hard to wake up in the morning and give it our best. Having both worldly and spiritual goals not only helps us find more meaning, but also models what it looks like to be someone who defines success in more than pecuniary terms. It allows students to see how having a strong sense of purpose creates the discipline and determination necessary to achieve anything they desire.

Three random acts of kindness

Frederick Lenz once said, "Whenever we do something for someone else, we affirm that we are not simply in it for ourselves, that our self is someone else, is everyone else." Committing to performing a few acts of kindness throughout the week can go a long way in making us feel more fulfilled. Sharing these stories with students will make them feel closer to us and may even inspire them to pay for someone's cup of tea or offer a kind word and smile to someone who really needs it.

Write down your values

Write down the things that are important to you and circle the top three. Use these to guide your decisions at work. Ask students to do the same and have a discussion with them about it. Watch how overtime many students show up more authentically and with stronger faith in themselves and the world around them. Remind them of the words of C.S. Lewis, "You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the end."
Dr. Noura Badawi has 15 years of higher education teaching experience online and on-ground. References
Aurelius, M. (2002). The Meditations. Random House.

Darwin, C., & In Barlow, N. (1969). The autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With original omissions restored. New York: Norton.

Meyer-Shine, A. (2017, November 20). How making a "reverse bucket list" Can make you happier. Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/40497651/how-making-a-reverse-bucket-list-can-make-you-happier

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Engaging Students at a Deeper Level | Faculty Focus

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In his personal writings, Marcus Aurelius wrote, "People who labor all their lives but have no purpose are wasting their time-even when hard at work."

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This graphic organizer guides students to categorize information while they're taking notes, leading to deeper engagement.

Wavebreakmedia Ltd UC5 / Alamy

Close your eyes and imagine a classroom of students deeply engaged in critical thinking. My bet is that you are not imagining a lecture or anything that resembles a traditional sit-and-get learning environment.

This is unsurprising. As I travel across the country with thinkLaw, supporting teachers with strategies to integrate critical thinking into their daily instruction, I find that teachers are always eager for practical opportunities to get students collaborating, thinking deeply, and engaging in critical thinking.

It is less popular to admit an important reality about instruction: Teachers must plan for and ensure student learning of key vocabulary, procedures, algorithms, and other content-specific and context-specific topics. Even if the idea of the permanent sage on the stage has rightfully been largely discarded, the temporary sage on the stage still has an important place in the classroom. The quadratic formula is still the quadratic formula. The structure of a five-paragraph essay is still the structure of a five-paragraph essay.

Whether you are guiding students through content yourself or having students read, research, or watch a video, the WICK charting process gives students an easy-to-implement method to deepen their engagement during this portion of your lesson. Instead of being stuck in sit-and-get mode, they will shift into sit-and-get-and-scrutinize-and-discuss mode as they process the lesson.

Step 1: Creating your WICK

Have your students divide their notes into a graphic organizer with four quadrants labeled as follows: Weird, Interesting, Confusing, and Knew This Already/Kinda Like. Here is a completed sample WICK on the (not-so-exhilarating) topic of corn prevalence in the United States. The instructions for what goes into each box are straightforward.

Weird: List any facts or details that stand out as weird, strange, or out of the ordinary. This is where students place shocking statistics, surprising scientific phenomena, or "can't believe that works" shortcuts that simplify problems. Students should include anything they might want to fact-check here.

For example, students learning about the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly may find it weird that the eggs caterpillars hatched from end up being food for the same caterpillar. It would be like chickens eating their own eggshell.

Interesting: Students should list any facts or details that intrigue them here. This includes information that speaks to their passions, interests, and curiosity. Information in this area of the WICK chart should include topics students want to explore for further research.

For instance, a student studying Shakespeare might find it interesting how dedicated this playwright was to iambic pentameter. Ten syllables in nearly every sentence? That's real commitment!

Confusing: Any facts or details that do not quite add up go in this area of the WICK chart. Include anything that seems contradictory, arguments that are not well reasoned, and ideas that feel flat-out wrong.

Students in racially homogenous schools learning about the Brown v. Board of Education case may find it confusing that their school is so deeply segregated decades after this decision ruled segregation unconstitutional.

Knew This Already/Kinda Like: Students can list any facts here that they knew already or that remind them of a fact, detail, or piece of information they previously learned. Any information that is "kinda like" other things they have learned in the past and can make a connection to goes here.

Discussing The Scarlet Letter in English? Here is where students might note that the protagonist's treatment reminds them of the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy-era hearings on communism. These kinds of connections are a personal way for students to engage in critical thinking.

Step 2: Discussing your WICK

After students have completed their individual WICKs, have them engage in discussion. Talking is simply thinking out loud, so the discussion part of the WICK process allows students to simultaneously integrate critical thinking and transform passive content.

When students discuss their WICKs, a one- or two-minute conversation is often enough to share some deep reflections. Depending on the context, students may not have every quadrant completed. One student's "interesting" could easily be another student's "kinda like," which generates even more opportunities for students to push each other's thinking.

You can also use WICKs to break up the typical "I do, we do, you do" pattern of instruction. If your direct instruction is set to last 10 minutes, consider pausing at the halfway mark to have students share their WICK responses so far. This way, the WICK serves as a helpful classroom management tool during the part of lessons that often leads to off-task behaviors.

In sum, the WICK process helps students critically analyze information as they learn it. Students will actually enjoy taking notes, and gain a deeper mastery of the content in the process.

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A Critical Thinking Strategy for Student Note-Taking

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This graphic organizer guides students to categorize information while they're taking notes, leading to deeper engagement.

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I have been trying to incorporate more active learning strategies. I think that I tended to use think-pair-share or jigsaw puzzle activities, but I wonder if that became too predictable for the students after awhile. So, I'm hoping that I can have more of a variety.

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I would hesitate to publish any in-class activities in Canvas, because I wanted students to have an incentive to come to class.  However, the next time when I would teach the course, I have to go hunt down the activity files.  Why not publish when I want?

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I want to integrate technology tools more consistently and more intentionally throughout the term for two key reasons: 1)to ensure more accountability and engagement with the text materials and 2)to help my students to build their teacher toolboxes for their current and future professional practices.

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Intentional discussion of how to work effectively in groups

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Intentional discussion of how to work effectively in groups

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In my Gen Bio II class (BIOL 102) I always have the students work on group  projects in their lab groups. In that class it's very common to have some students not pull their weight on group projects and other students pick up their slack. Although I have all the students evaluate themselves and their group mates and those evaluations affect their participation grade, I find that's not enough of a carrot/stick to ensure better group dynamics. I've resisted it up to this point, but I think it's time to have intentional instruction on effective group dynamics and to formally assess them on their ability to work collaboratively. I welcome your suggestions for resources that can guide me in developing this content!

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To improve my students' learning experience, I would like to try some of the strategies and tips offered in the articles referred to here on this padlet. I saved the links in my online Reading List for future reference! I'm always appreciative when the research is done for me, and the resources are ready to use. :)

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Incremental benchmarks for longterm projects, ie. open pedagogy project

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Incremental benchmarks for longterm projects, ie. open pedagogy project

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This term, I introduced a new project in EDUC 212 late in the term, and now, moving forward I want to introduce it sooner so that it becomes a term-long project. In so doing, I want to embed benchmarks with peer, self, and instructor feedback to ensure that the final products are more polished and include accurate, appropriate content for future EDUC 212 students to use as a learning tool.

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I eliminated a couple of assignments in my ENVI 102 class this semester, and it was truly a breath of fresh air for me. Even though the students don't know it, I really think it lightened the load for them too. I found that this helped me focus on the topics and assessments that mattered the most to me without feeling all this pressure to prepare them and provide context for the next assessment.

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To improve my experience as an instructor, I would like to emphasize in class more encouragement to my students to look at the Pathways to College Success videos, such as the one on note-taking.  If they do better with things like that, then I can teach better!

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Integrating "ungrading" throughout this last academic year has taught me a great deal about student agency in regard to their motivation. Students are not motivated to complete something if they are not being "penalized" for not doing it. I still don't want to penalize students, but I have to find a way to create a more authentic experience around assignment submissions because my students cannot not submit and cannot not show up when they become practicing educators. I have to create some more structure and dispense with being "caring" and "compassionate" as I am doing them a collegial disservice with my actions.

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I would like to built in more intentional brain breaks during in class discussions. I do a lot of kahoot quizzes, in class think pair share and role play activities, but they tend to take more time and I would like to built in a few short individual reflective activities. I would also like to work on helping my students learn strategies for effective note taking during class.

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I would like to reevaluate how many outside of class assessments I am assigning to students. I would group them under the course learning objectives they help the student achieve and then compare it with in class assessments that we do to see if am I doubling the work or were they all necessary.