Category Archives: Joyful Tidings

Joyful Tidings #26: Discussing Discussions

Classroom Teaching, Designing and Facilitating Discussions, Joyful Tidings, Online Teaching

Greetings Friends:

I come to you today in yet another pathetically transparent attempt to encourage us all to chat a bit about teaching and learning at our college.

I know, I know, it is week eight! What is wrong with me!

But week eight is just the right time for some rejuvenation — just the right time to bring that pulse of energy back into our onsite or online classes with a new discussion technique for your bag of tricks.

You may even find yourself injecting discussion leadership strategies into some of your meetings (they worked for me when I was on jury duty).

And every one of us — staff and faculty — has experienced discussions both enthralling and stultifying. We all have opinions, ideas, and tips to share.

Not surprisingly, we are not alone in our interest in this topic. And during this week-long celebration of discussion (wait…what?!), I will be sharing web sites, and books, and other tools we can use to sharpen, expand, reinvent, renew, restore, recalibrate and otherwise transform our discussion skill set.

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Joyful Tidings #25

Classroom Teaching, Conversation Starters, Joyful Tidings

image of video

Our new Canvas PDP site offers all sorts of wonderful opportunities for exploration, especially via our Project Joy link which highlights faculty led teaching and learning related initiatives at MiraCosta.

Today, I would like to focus on our Integrative Learning page, which pulls together resources gathered by faculty working in our learning communities and health start programs, all of which focus “fostering students’ abilities to integrate learning—across courses, over time, and between campus and community life” (“A Statement on Integrative Learning”).

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Joyful Tidings #24: Two Highlights from the Mailbag

Classroom Teaching, Conversation Starters, Equity, Joyful Tidings, Musings

image of open mail bag

So while we wait for the thousands of responses to Joyful Tidings #23 to roll in, I thought I would take a moment to highlight two wonderful follow ups to previous conversations from Maria Figueroa and Sunny Cooke:

From Maria Figueroa in response to our conversation about empathy…

So I’ve been reading your emails..well, most of them and I always come back to the Mayan philosophy of InLakEch. InLakEch roughly translates to “tu eres mi otro yo, you are my other self,” following is a poem:

 
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Joyful Tidings #23: Teaching Students to Learn – An Invitation to a Conversation

Classroom Teaching, Joyful Tidings, Student Success

book cover

Last week I served on a jury in Temecula (I know…I know…scary huh?)

Reading on the Sly

While I spent most of my days frantically trying to keep up with my classes and PDP work during the hours I was not in court, I also used my downtime during the trial — waiting in hallways and jury rooms — to start reading Saundra Yancey McGuire’s Teach Students to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation.

Springboard to Our Conversation?

I will not burden you here with all of Yancey McGuire’s cool strategies (which she summarizes neatly in some very helpful jury-trial-lunch-break-friendly appendices).

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Joyful Tidings #22 “Love Over Fear” More on Empathy and Real World Learning

Cultural Competency, Joyful Tidings, Student Success

heads speaking to each other

Greetings Colleagues:

Last Monday’s email​ about the connections I was discovering between the ideas I had heard recently from colleagues about empathy and “real world” learning resulted in some wonderful further reflections by colleagues.

I share those ideas here. I hope you will spend some time exploring the smart, creative, and inspiring thoughts of your colleagues.

Alicia Lopez (Sociology and Chicano Studies)

I am happy to know how Darder has inspired you and the role that I played in helping that happen.

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Joyful Tidings #21: It’s Here, It’s Here, The New PDP Website Is Here!

Flex Planner, Joyful Tidings

Greetings Colleagues:

PDP has combined and moved its previous two websites into one simply spectacular Canvas site. You can now find us here: Cool, Shiny, New PDP Canvas Site.

But don’t worry, if you forget about this momentous change in the history of the college — nay, the history of higher education itself — you will find a redirect link at our old site: Old, Abandoned, and Shamelessly Discarded Site.

Please take the time to explore the new site; I think you will be able to complete a quick tour in no more than 10 to 15 hours.

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Joyful Tidings #20 Conversational Synergy

Classroom Teaching, Equity, Joyful Tidings, Musings

While we could debate what aspects of and approaches to teaching and learning we wish to discuss as a community of teachers and learners, I hope we can all agree that the conversations themselves are essential.

Talking to each other about our teaching and learning opens us to ideas, relationships, and inspiration we can miss as we focus on our day to day work at the college. (It took me three hours to write that sentence without using the phrase “hunkered down in our silos,” which just shows how educational jargon has corrupted my very soul!).

I want to share an experience I have had with this kind of conversational synergy over the past few days.

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Joyful Tidings 17: Sharing First Day Ideas

Classroom Teaching, Conversation Starters, Joyful Tidings, Online Teaching, Student Success

Last week, I sent out a friendly email celebrating the arrival of our new students and calling on colleagues to share their ideas about first day strategies that work.

Six of them very kindly did so: dara, Rick Cassoni, Lisa Fast, Louisa Moon, Chad Tsuyuki, and Marti Klein. Thank you so much to each of you. I have included everything they shared below in this email, but in case you lose this inspiring email, you can always find it forever archived on our joyful teaching blog.

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