One thing I found interesting that I think would be good to implement (even as soon as this semester) is the idea of building in pauses and prompts for students to monitor their understanding. The chapter mentions that students tend not to spend much time in planning their approaches or reflecting on the strategies they’re using. So these metacognitive tasks must be explicitly presented, otherwise we risk that students might miss out on understanding how to improve. 

One thing I could do, which would be especially pertinent to some of the asynchronous online elements I’ve created, would be to periodically prompt students to summarize what they’ve just learned in their own words (this goes along with the idea I took from chapter 6). 

This could be done in a fun way- for instance, asking them to turn to a family member, or “dial a friend” and take 2 minutes to summarize (of course they wouldn’t actually have to do this!). Perhaps I could invite them to express it through multimedia or video as well. This way, they would be invited (forced!) to monitor their own learning, and adjust if they find it difficult. They always say the best way to understand something is to teach it!

There are five distinct steps in effectively managing a change process—in doing project management:

• Defining the change objective.

• Developing a strategy and plans to achieve that objective.

• Creating a project management group to effect the change.

• Installing a control process to monitor progress.

• Managing the project by implementing the above four steps."

Morris, P. W. G. & DeLapp, S. E. (1983). Managing change through project management. Project Management Quarterly, 14(2), 60–70.

I would use the above template to create a project management team in my classroom.  The goal is to create a working


😳 Peck, M.J. & Scherer, F.M. The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis. Boston, 1962.
 

Teams of 8-10?

2 note takers - any concepts of words that need development - they send their notes to the reporters.  

2 reporters that take the information and send the summary notes and feedback to teacher (they will have a rubric) of how effective they feel the week was. Students evaluate and define their own needs in the class

2 on site researchers/ fact checkers. Students act as teaching assistants in the classroom, providing and contributing to the flow of information.  

2 pollsters. Responsibility to survey class and tabulate feedback. Power dynamic shifts as students provide evaluations. Teacher will have a clearer picture on how class is going.

2 developers. Based on the class/topics discussions and with the student poll reports -  what suggestions for direction do they think next week’s lectures should take. Students have an opportunity to take an active role in setting the curriculum. 

This is part of an overall participation grade. Thinking worth 25% of their final grade. Roles can change week to week. But they maintain the group for a month.

They team at the end of their tenure sends in a self assessment report describing how they felt the activity went and if they found it useful. 

I will meet with the team in the middle of their tenure

Andrea Strudensky 

The Storytelling Animal 

30 November 2021

Listen to The Heart

I am sitting in my office with a bag full of candy hearts on my lap, highly unmotivated to complete the messy pile of assignments scattered across the Black Walnut wood desk in front of me.  The mountains of papers waiting to be completed have at most two words written on them: my name, Noah Zahl. I ignore my tasks and continue shoving one candy heart after the other into my mouth, putting great effort into gulping down the large amount of chewed-up product.  I feel the lump of swallowed candy hearts slowly trail down my throat, so I realize that I should take it slower with the devouring of these sweets.  The next candy heart I pull out of the bag is light blue.  I hold it between my index and thumb and bring it close to my eyes.  I examine the pointiness of the tip of the heart and gaze at the cusp of where its curves meet.  In turning it around, I notice a message that writes:

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I think to myself. I pull out another candy from the bag. NO, THIS IS NOT A JOKE, the pink candy heart tells me.  I re-read the message, hoping I am experiencing a moment of deception by my own vision.  The message, however, remains the same.  I turn the bag over and forty to fifty colourful candy hearts rain on the paper mountains all my desk.  The candy hearts are filled with different messages telling me: YOU WILL SEE, YOU NEED TO GET TO THE HOSPITAL, YOU’LL FIND OUT, SEE A DOCTOR, etc.

I grab a handful of candy hearts, bolt to my car and drive to the clinic.  I dash through the waiting room, ignoring the receptionist’s loud instructions telling me to “get back here!” in a bitchy tone.  The obnoxious clicking noises her heels make travel across the clinic as she chases me.  I spot the copper plaque screwed into the wall reading Dr. Alexander Bodman, MD and barge into the office.  It’s empty.  He arrives a few moments later, holding a file in one hand and reading glasses in the other.
“I’m gonna have to ask you to kindly leave, Mr. Zhal,” he calmly tells me. 
“Please, you have to see me!” I cry out as I show him the bag of candy hearts. “I know it sounds crazy, but these candies have written messages and they said that I need to come here!”

I hand the candy hearts to Dr. Bodman.  A yellow one falls on the floor, he ignores it. “I’ll be right back,” he says as he places the papers on his desk and steps out of the room.  I immediately pick up the yellow candy heart.

I peek through the cracked door and see Dr. Bodman discussing with another doctor and the secretary.  I cunningly head over to his desk and read the papers he left.  

My eyes scan the document until I stumble upon a section that reads: Final diagnosis: Schizophrenia  

At the same time, I hear Dr. Bodman from outside the door. “Yes, I will let him know right now,” he tells those outside as he comes into the office and closes the door behind him.  

“Mr. Zahl, are you aware that all of these candy hearts are blank?”

 Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. 
 

It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen.

"The poem intends another, needs this other, needs an opposite. It goes towards 

it, bespeaks it.

For the poem, everything and everybody is a figure of this other towards which it is heading.

  

The attention which the poem pays to all that it encounters, its more acute sense of detail, outline, structure, color, but also the *tremors and hints* -- all this is not, I think, achieved by an eye competing (or concurring) with ever more precise instruments, but, rather, by a kind of concentration mindful of all our dates. 

“Attention,” if you allow me to quote from Malebranche via Walter Benjamin's essay on Kafka, “attention is the natural prayer of the soul.”

 

The poem becomes – under what conditions – the poem of a person who still perceives, still turns towards phenomena, addressing and questioning them. The poem becomes conversation - often desperate conversation."

In. my view, life on earth for us complicated humans is lousy with isolation, pain, climate crises, virus, war, refugees, colonial atrocities, and on and on. As CEGEP teachers, we have these young people in our classes. Mostly impressionable, and full of the comings and goings of their daily lives, carrying their families, their ancestry, their love affairs, and dreams. I want to create a space in my classrooms (as I have the privilege of this position) for their unique turning "towards phenomena, addressing and questioning," for their desperate conversations, and for listening so that we can build a more empathetic civilization. I do not want my classroom to reify a system of domination. Where I teach "content" and not students and ask them to work in isolation from the rest of their lives. I am not interested in factory workers that "produce" "work" that reiterates MY ideas to appease the authority in the room. (This does not mean I do not provide challenging content). I just do not assign work that has them stressed and scrambling (and often plagiarizing) because they have been taught "there is one answer, it is at the back of the book, and don't look, and don't ask anyone" (to loosely quote Sir Ken Robinson). I want work that shows the process, not the bottom line, that is collaborative and generative and not alienating. Work that leaves room for curiosity and/or questioning. Work that is not easily reproducible and in the end forgettable and disposable. 

bell hooks died yesterday (December 15, 2021) and the world lost a guiding light. While she is speaking in the essay I am quoting from below to the civil rights movement and struggles of black people (and especially black women) in America, it is a powerful statement of the need for community and healing. 

“Love as the Practice of Freedom”
bell hooks

Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to
systems of domination—imperialism, sexism, racism, classism. [...]
A culture of domination is anti-love. It requires violence to sustain itself. To choose
love is to go against the prevailing values of the culture.  [...]

To heal our wounded body politic we must reaffirm our
commitment to a vision of what King referred to in the essay "Facing the Challenge of a
New Age" as a genuine commitment to "freedom and justice for all." My heart is
uplifted when I read King's essay; I am reminded where true liberation leads us. It leads
us beyond resistance to transformation. King tells us that "the end is reconciliation, the
end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community." The moment we
choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment
we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate
ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.  "

   
Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar”

 "There are several definitions of social media, highlighting a variety of characteristics such as the promotion of user interconnectedness (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008), creation, dissemination and consumption of knowledge (Ricoy & Feliz, 2016) and the opportunity to develop relationships (Khan, 2013). In concrete terms, social media are web-based tools used to create and share content in a highly interactive way. Tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Blogs achieve this interactivity by allowing creators and consumers to comment on, annotate and repurpose content, together or individually."

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

Seaman and  Tinti-Kane (2013) also found that 78.9% of the time, digital communications and social media in particular had a positive impact on faculty-student communication. This demonstrates that social media can also be effectively used to simply enhance communication, and not necessarily as a tool to increase participation.

Moreover, due to the medium’s interactivity and to the multiple possibilities for co-creation, social media in educational environments can “yield new forms of inquiry, communication, collaboration, identity work, knowledge development” (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014)."

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

“I have the teachers break out their phones and examine the last few texts they sent,” Roberts says. “The goal is to have them figure out: ‘Who was your audience? Where was your conventional language? Your more conventional shorthand?’ Getting teachers really curious about how they engage in those platforms is a really nice first step.”

After that, teachers can consider how they might teach digital writing in their classrooms. “The best advice I can give is to respect the students space, but bring it into their classroom,” Hyler says. Tech adverse teachers may struggle at first, he admits, although even that can turn into an opportunity for learning.

“If you’re unsure of how that lesson would go, learn alongside your students,” Hyler suggests. “Have them show you how they’re writing and ask them questions: ‘Why are you writing that way?’ There’s a lot of power in that.”"

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

In particular, she points to the work of Chicago teacher Gregory Michie, whose work with students mixes written text with hand-drawn artwork, video and music. “All of that is storytelling,” Roberts says. “It’s the whole blend of images and words—it’s quick little videos or snapshots. That is a story that a writer is telling.”

Of course, there’s still a place for longform essays and formal writing, and strong writing instruction will effectively incorporate both, she says. “Instead of ditch that and teach micro writing, it’s more of an and you can teach micro writing,” Roberts says. “It’s an extension.”

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

Instagram photo effects offer an easy way to create a variety of visual images that can be used as writing prompts. 

Photo prompts can also be used for poetry and fiction assignments as well as an interesting lead-in to essays in other subjects. For example, distribute photos of landforms to students for them to identify before writing a geography paper.



3. Document science experiments and art projects
Any class activity that uses a step-by-step process could benefit from being documented via Instagram. For example, take a photo of each step of a science experiment or an art project and add a caption with instructions for that step. Then, upload to the class page so students can reference the instructions from anywhere.

4. Showcase class activities and student progress
Instagram offers an easy way to share classroom progress and activities. 

Instructors cannot make assumptions about students’ proficiency with social media. Student proficiency must be taken into account when designing activities.  For example, they may be proficient at communicating informally, but may not fully comprehend what is required to critically assess information, engage with information and present findings in an academic environment. Other challenges include:

There are steps that can be taken to help address some of these challenges. For instance, activities and assessments should be designed carefully, based on appropriate learning outcomes. Comments and posts on social media platforms are public. Have a discussion with your students about communication expectations, boundaries and what is not acceptable. Lastly, to help prevent online abuse, students should also be reminded that online behaviour is subject to the Student Code of Conduct.