Hi everyone! Here are my videos. Yes, videos, because I talked far more than I thought I was, and ScreenCast cut me off, so I had to finish up quickly in a second video.

VIDEO 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgefuCUiwxo&feature=youtu.be

VIDEO 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsshhzsjqYc&feature=youtu.be

Hi Everyone! Please find my video here or simply click the video directly below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzgIkcEdjnI&feature=youtu.be

It’s a bit long, so feel free to click to a random spot and tune in for a few minutes!

Mary’s Video on Course Organization & Design

Hi Everyone,

I am late for this conversation, but I have really enjoyed reading everyone’s posts. I have a lot of thoughts on equitable teaching practices in the classroom because of the themes and readings that I focus on. I am curious to see what happens when a class migrates to an on-line setting.  To me, the biggest challenge of any class is establishing a warm, safe classroom culture that makes students feel connected.  I have stolen Ta-Nehesi Coates’ book title (which he stole from Richard Wright’s eponymous poem) because I am struck by the challenges that we face as instructors who strive to break the perpetual loop (and for some, this loop is traumatic) that students encounter in formal school settings.  Putting pressure on the phrase, which appears again and again in critical race theory, I think that “between the world and me” captures the challenge of online teaching, specifically equity-minded on-line teaching practices. Here are just a few of my thoughts on Woods’ presentation and the reading.

On-line intrusiveness and performance monitoring:  I understand the idea that we need to intervene before students fall too far behind, and often do that with my students f2f. It’s easy to pull someone aside before or after class, but I’m wondering how one does that online? What are some creative ways to be intrusive?

Empower students: I think that group projects and discussions are a great way to empower students, especially when the group is diverse and students come from different subject positions. Equity-minded practice can simply be showing students how to turn their lens on their everyday life, bridging the gap between what some people have called high and low culture. One way of doing this is to teach culturally relevant texts paired with other texts to show students how each writer is thinking about a similar issue. For example, I have taught William Wordsworth with Tupac Shakur and Eminem. It’s an interesting pairing and makes for a lot of spirited discussion.

Not everyone is a computer geek: One thing I appreciated from the reading is that students need to understand that they do not need to be technical experts to succeed in an on-line class. That point resonated with me because of my own hesitation over migrating on-line. (I tell myself: you don’t have to be a computer programmer or an expert on technology!!!)

Make lessons universally inclusive and accessible: Right now, I have a challenging situation where my current student underwent two neurosurgeries and has significant deficits. I check in with him regularly and am intrusive, but I don’t always feel effective in the classroom. Interestingly, I discovered that communicating with him online is better and more successful. I think that it is because he can take extra time to process his thoughts and reread material. (He can’t move at the same pace as everyone else.) Working with him has made me appreciate what an online teaching environment can offer.

As I explore this week’s discussion, I’ll start with Dr. Wood’s two-fold paradoxes.
But, since Dr. Wood and I share a love of statistics, a thought about math…

1. We teach how we are taught

When I look back on my educational experiences, I consider myself lucky to having experienced a variety of educational methodologies. Reflecting on this I can see how my ever-developing teaching style has been forged from these experiences. Having grown up in Europe my educational institutions drew heavily from Piaget, Pestalozzi and Steiner. My American educational experience introduced me to new approaches and perspectives in educational instruction.  As part of that I’ve also endured the large format undergraduate lecture classes (where I was one among two hundred plus), however, many of my upper-division educators were amazing (UCSC) in how they challenged us to engage, question, think critically and examine the issues we face in our world.  They were builders of individual agency and through that helped empower students to reach new goals. Some of my teachers became mentors, and I ended up working on a research team for one of my professors. However, the experience that made the biggest impact on me was from a year that I had spent at a community college in an Anthropology class. Yes, I was (and still am) a huge Indiana Jones fan and that certainly had something to do with me taking this class initially. But to my surprise, this class uncovered some teaching style artifacts that would heavily influence me as an educator.  This educator’s passion and love of the art of teaching was palpable.  He brought the subject matter to life (no pun intended). This combined with interest in his students was truly inspiring. He was the type of teacher whose class you simply did not want to miss.  So, “we teach how we are taught…” and I continually try to strive to be like those teachers who have and continue to inspire me so that I can make a positive difference in the life of my students.

2. We ignore the diversity we don’t see

I am an ESL educator so I have the good fortune to experience a tapestry of diversity and culture on a daily basis! I truly enjoy and appreciate the rich learning experience that such a class provides as students share cultural experiences from which I gain new insights. Having grown up in a small country, that speaks four national languages, certainly contributed to my understanding of the value of diversity and how it can strengthen us as a society.

However, I understand that it remains a difficult challenge and needs to be at the forefront of our conversations, not only in the online environment but in f2f classes as well. In addition to the race and gender discrepancies, Dr. Wood’s examination of invisible factors, i.e., environmental pressures (housing and food insecurities) schooling experiences, and structural racism bring to light the increased importance of educators that are guided with Empathy particularly as front line civil rights workers.  That being said, it is a challenge to truly put yourself into the shoes of another person’s experience if you have not experienced those things first hand yourself.

3. Equity Minded Educators – the 5B’s

Well, based on the 5b’s outlined by Dr. Wood, I am glad to say that I feel that I’m well on my way to being an equity minded educator.  But I’m fully aware that it is an ever-changing landscape and requires continuing education on behalf of us, the teachers. Below are some of the elements mentioned that I try to incorporate into my teaching to be more equity minded:

Be Intrusive

I teach both credit and non-credit ESL classes. For the f2f non-credit classes I particularly emphasize how important it is to be in attendance to avoid falling back.  I have found that placing this emphasis early in class, combined with setting clear expectations and individual accountability have provided good attendance results.  For my hybrid classes I monitor discussions and assignment submissions and follow up with students who did not submit assignments as well as those who partially submitted the assignments.  However, I realize that that might not be enough for all students.

I like Dr. Wood’s example of the “early warning system” to get students back on track rather then having them fall further and further behind. I try to do this, but can certainly invest more energy beyond emails (digital feedback) to make sure that I catch those students who are showing early signs of struggle to ensure they have the necessary resources and support.

Be Relational / Be Community-Centric

As part of the “early warning system,” I really liked the idea of holding office hours using WhatsApp or FaceTime. I know that several of you have done this, so; perhaps it is time for me to explore this so that I can bridge the gap I’ve expressed in my previous posts about that “human” connection.  As for setting up f2f meetings with online classes, I’ve not actually done that as an educator, but as a former student I pursued my online teachers and requested f2f meetings. At the time it was quite challenging because they were not really that interested in the idea of meeting their online students f2f. But, when I did meet them, it changed the dynamic and future online interactions in a positive way.

As for personal feedback, yes, I’m a big believer in that. We’ve covered this topic in prior posts so I’ll keep it short. As do many of you, I feel accountable to students to provide feedback that is personalized to the individual. It goes a long way to building trust and a strong relationship. Because my feedback is mostly in digital form (and I type fast) I can get through it even though it is time intensive. I’ve considered pulling from an archive of prewritten generic feedback statements, but in the end always start writing directly to a student. I know, finding a balance here is important.

Be Relevant

Ok, this post is getting too long so I will summarize how I try to have relevance that students can relate to:

• In all my presentation materials I incorporate ethically diverse images.
• I often have students write on a figure of importance in their native community. Finally, they present on those individuals and in the process educate other class members about the value and contributions of their culture to society.
• The last book I used in my class was Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street.
• Because I enjoy gamification, I often incorporate options for assignments and assessments allowing students to pick and choose the manner in which they wish to demonstrate the skills learned.

Be Race Conscious

I feel that I “infuse” race consciousness into my classroom and the assignments that we do.  I looked into the CCEAL site as well as the programs that are offered through CORA and am interested in learning more about Racial Microagressions.  If anyone has taken this certificate program, or others, I would like to hear your opinion on the program or the content.

Dr. J. Luke Wood’s lecture was really helpful in grounding the overall goals we strive for when it comes to teaching equity focuses classes: Be Intrusive, Relational Relevant, Community Centric, and Race Conscious.

Being Intrusive is something I strive for in my f2f classrooms, this is as simple as asking students, “Did everybody understand the homework assignment, anybody need me to rephrase or clarify the objective.” I also go over the syllabus schedule everyday before we transition into the day’s objective. I feel this further enforces students to visually see upcoming deadlines, plug in reminders into their phone, and ask questions.

I’m constantly creating micro-interventions when students work on low-stake assignments that aim toward building an essay or a larger project. I intentionally make myself sound like a broken record to welcome students to evaluate their confidence with the course.

Thinking about OW Course, I can see myself replicating this by monitoring their submissions, sending friendly email reminders to ‘submit’ assignments, to ask questions, to encourage students to communicate with their instructor when necessary.

I also thought about how to build safe spaces for our students via OW courses, and implementing discussion courses on the first or second week regarding microaggressions and helpful tips on how to maintain respect on discussion boards. Normally in a f2f, these are conversations I would have based when introducing the syllabus. But I love the idea of discussion boards where students lead the discussion on the topics and setting some kind of collaborative agreement on guidelines for maintaining respect among their peers via discussion board or private emails.

There’s so much more to think about, but it’s exciting to see so many awesome resources on how to execute the practice of equity via OW courses!

A few years ago, I took J. Luke Wood’s course on Teaching Men of Color in the Community College. Many of the same suggestions made here for the online environment were discussed in that course, but more specifically in the context of how we address and welcome men of color in our classes and in the college community in general. I remember thinking that much of what he advised seemed so inherent to what I was already doing. In particular, one suggestion he made was so simple yet powerful: when you are walking around campus and encounter a man of color, look him in the eye and say hello. Of course my thinking is we should be doing this for every student as basically we are acknowledging the individual and reinforcing that s/he is important, valued, and belongs. As instructors at a community college, I believe that much of our work is assisting underrepresented students gain that sense of empowerment and belonging that may evade some in other walks of life. I suppose because I have focused my career on teaching composition to ESL students, and my classroom is home for underrepresented, often disenfranchised students, much of what he promotes is what I have dedicated my life to ensure happens in my classes.

So as not to have too lengthy of a posting, I will focus on responding to how I address some of these issues in my classes and how it will happen online. First, I was happy to read his take on working with ESL/multilingual students and how the focus should be on communication of ideas (content) over form. This paradigm shift happened in ESL pedagogy back in the 1960s-’70s when the audio-lingual approach was replaced with the communicative approach (and all the later iterations of pedagogical constructs that grew from here.) But this is an important message to share with all educators: a second language learner will always have some “language variation” to vocabulary, syntax, usage etc., that might not be to exacting standard American English, but that should not drive our response to students’ work whether in speech or writing. But the challenge becomes where is that line when these issues interfere with communication? How do we address issues of language proficiency that might still need some development in order to address the higher order concerns? This continues to be a challenge for all of us and it is likely to become even more prevalent as developmental and even ESL classes are no longer viewed as positive or necessary in the era of placing all students directly to transfer courses. But is it equitable to not hold any standard or basic expectation? This is what I have been struggling with to find a quality answer (and sorry, I still do not have one.)

I appreciate that Wood’s also clearly states that as equity-minded instructors we need to continually reflect on our role in and responsibility for student success. I do think we need to be “intrusive” (I wish there were a better word) with regularity in our work with students. The first day of class, I have students complete a basic survey (phone, email, college schedule, work etc.), but one of the most important questions I ask is: is there anything happening in your life situation you would like me to know about? This has been a very eye-opening experience, and sometimes I am surprised by how candid the students are to share some very intimate and personal details with me in the first week. I have learned that some students are temporarily homeless; others dealing with a court issue; some concerned about deportation; others sharing their sense of insecurity or depression. This information helps me understand the student and their larger life and the impacts these can have on their education. Then within the first couple weeks in the semester, I have a mandatory office visit. It is simply a fifteen-minute chat at my office where we see each other outside of the classroom. We can talk about these issues or any other the students might be experiencing. It also gives me an opportunity to offer some personalized feedback of something they have done in class. I think both the survey done electronically and the office hours converted to the online classroom with Skype or Zoom would work quite well.

Another important aspect to equity and accessibility in my classes is ensuring that all students are active, contributing members to our learning community. I don’t want any student to feel invisible and in fact have created multiple opportunities that require that each student’s voice is heard each class. For example, in my first class meeting, students are put into groups of four, and each group member is responsible for recording and then reporting out information discussed in response to one of four prompts. This is a low-stakes way for each student voice to be heard in the class by all. They will receive positive reinforcement for their efforts and this helps build their confidence. I can see this translating online quite naturally in other group work and/or by simply having students record a video doing things like introducing themselves, responding to a reading, or sharing a journal response. Then ensuring that I provide personalized feedback to the students not just publicly but also individually is very powerful. It takes me a few minutes after each class to compose a couple sentence email to individual students identifying something positive they did in class and thanking them for it. Students have regularly told me that this simple email was impactful and a great motivator for them to continue those efforts.

Yikes, this post is getting long, so I will move to my final issue of universal design in an online course. I have commented on this in the past but I think it is critical that we structure our courses so they are completely accessible to view and work through on a cell phone. Yes, this is an issue of accessibility for students who don’t have computers or easy access to them, but most of our students do have smart phones. Even for the students who do have laptops, I think the phone is becoming the device from which students conduct their lives, including school. So it is critically important to me as I design my online class that I pay attention to the details and learn the coding necessary to ensure as seamless transition from a computer or tablet screen to a phone screen. I know I have slowly moved more of my work away from the laptop and to my phone- my email, my calendar, my checking in on Canvas, my composing of ideas. . . I am not at the point of composing lengthy text like this on my phone, but as the cell phone screens get a little larger, it is a distinct possibility. I think for many of our students, the cell phone will act as their primary computer.

To start, Dr. Woods outlined five pillars that must absolutely structure our course design and interactions with students. I feel pretty confident in floating the hypothesis that none of disagree that we need to be intrusive, relational, relevant, community centric, and race conscious. However, after watching the video and reading the “NCTE Principles for Online Writing Instruction,” I feel like a sixth pillar is needed: be intersectional. As feminists, queer theorists, and Black studies scholars have stated, “intersectionality” refers to the idea that we need to attend to the multiple, intersectioning dimensions of a person’s identity (i.e. gender, class, race, sexuality, religious identity, ethnicity, etc.). As this post unfolds, I’m gonna use just a few of Dr. Woods’s pillars to imagine strategies that push us to be intersectional—at least I hope.

Be Relevant:

When discussing course texts, Woods implores us to make them inclusive of students of color. Every syllabus needs to have Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous writers that are integrated throughout the course rather than segregated to specific sections. This is, of course, a substantive issue that we must to tackle in the early stages of conceiving our OWCourse. However, I think there are some important day-to-day ways that I will take to ensure that I remain culturally relevant.

1. Proactively Countering Deficit Messages: As Woods suggests, we need to actively push against negative stereotypes that our students encounter. However, as we do this, I need to be sure to think about how these messages differ according to race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, age, ability, etc. As we select course texts and images, we must think about the broad range of student identities. Can our course be truly relevant if there are no texts by ciswomen? What if there are no texts by queer authors? What about writers from the working class? If we have gaps in our syllabus, how do we turn these into teachable moments?
2. Proactively Developing Writing Methods: I think we need to develop assignments and strategies that encourage students to think critically about Standard American English (SAE) AND NON-Standard forms of American English. As we include pieces of writing from various backgrounds, we notice that the grammar, syntax, mechanics, organization, and evidence can change in small and large ways (Borderlands/La Frontera, for example). As we incorporate more perspectives, we need to develop strategies for making our modes of evaluation relevant and responsive while still preparing students to write SAE. What might assignments that critically analyze alternative grammatical forms look like? How might we develop alternative rubrics for various styles of English? What do those look like? How could we get students involved in that process to teach them about the variety and values of English comp?

Be Community Centric:

Woods suggests a few strategies for developing a sense of community in our online courses. These range from making introduction forums to sharing reflection essays/videos. Are there ways that we can make these practices self-reflexively intersectional? When thinking about potential answers to this, I recalled an idea proposed by a friend who studies digital media (and something that reminds me very much of Karla’s fantastic post from two weeks ago):

1. Introductory Tumblrs (or Instagram) Mirror Assignments: To start the class, I will ask all my students to create and curate a Tumblr page that will give the entire class an idea of who they are. They will need to choose a theme. They will need to find and share images that they like or think are interesting. With these images, they will need to write captions that explain why they chose what they chose and create hash-tags to link them to other conversations. I’ll probably get into some pretty heavy restrictions too (ya know, be respectful/appropriate kinda stuff). But I hope this project can teach students about how we carefully and consciously craft digital personalities that respond to various parts of our identity, even when we might just think that we are sharing a meme. I hope this kind of assignment would be a low-stakes and playful way to introduce mirror assignments—assignments where students are asked to reflect critically on their own self.

Be Race Conscious:

Representation matters. Woods rightly implores us to embrace race discourse (Black minds matter) and to address microaggressions seriously and immediately. Additionally, we need to ensure that our stock images are racially sensitive and diverse. 100% agree. I think we need to go even farther though to be not only race conscious but gender conscious, sexuality conscious, class conscious and then think about how these different identities link up in an online format.

1. Monitoring Microaggressions Online: How do we most monitor for microaggressions related to race and to gender? In my f2f course, I have been conscious of making sure that my women students and students of color get to speak in class, that they are not interrupted, and that their perspectives are heard. I challenge myself to ensure that I have gender parity in my course readings and am working to have better racial representation as well. While I’m pretty attentive to gender dynamics IRL, I have to wonder how these might manifest in online formats. Are these issues that are diminished or exacerbated by an online format? How do we ensure that students engage equally with posts by women? How do we ensure that our diction does not cross the line into hostility? How do we ensure that we don’t erase students who do not subscribe to the gender binary? How do we ensure that we don’t erase trans students without forcing them to out themselves?
2. Analyze EVERYTHING: When selecting “stock” images for our course, I think we might consider how to turn every image into a teachable moment. I’ve been trying to put this into practice more and more in my class as students become increasingly comfortable calling out the gaps in cultural representation. This has been an expected problem this unit, which focuses on children’s toy advertisement (which are disproportionately feature white kids). Because of that, I’ve been working on developing ways of turning gaps into productive moments of teaching that I think lend themselves to online formats!
   1. Follow up example: In my comp class, we talk about race and Barbie (a lot). We discuss the traditional gendered, classed, and racial dimensions of Barbie and how they erase particular groups of people. In particular, we think about the exclusion or Black dolls. However, this semester, students also began pushing on the absence of Asian, Latina, and Native American dolls. In migrating this course, I feel like this assignment could lend itself to having students think about the intersection of race and gender. Students would find an example of a doll and discuss how its representations of femininity are influenced by race (or vice versa). Students will write up their responses and share them with the class to see the variability in answers (especially if they do Ken dolls). By doing assignments like this, I hope to teach students to identify gaps and absence and to think about what those gaps might signify.

Be Intersectional.

            I feel like I’m rambling so I’m gonna wind down. In the end, intersectionality, taking a kaleidoscopic inventory of a student, is an unacknowledged sixth pillar that must necessarily inform our approach to online course design.