process of following all the rules related to one of the formal academic citation styles, like MLA or APA. Sometimes citation does mean that, (like when your teacher or other academics are your whole audience,) but this isn’t the only possibility.
I like this flexible and broad approach to citation. It gets at the meaningful WHY of citation rather than focusing on formatting.
won’t ever finish.
Unfinished conversations/unsolved problems = students as knowledge creators who are entering an unfinished dialogue
The analogy of a conversation is a good way to describe scholarship in general.
This reminds me of the text "They Say, I Say" that I and others use in Composition. It's focused on rhetorical moves in writing, and it highlights the fact that writing is part of a larger conversation.
Narratives are a different matter. You may like the narrative of
As an English prof, this emphasis on narratives is important to me. How do narratives produce (or attempt to produce) particular "versions" of reality?
Understand the difference between news gathering and news analysis Know what processes are likely to contribute to the accuracy of a news source Understand the difference between bias and agenda
This is all related to purposeful communication, which includes reading as well as communication skills.
knowing the expertise and agenda of the source is crucial to your interpretation of what they say.
This is about understanding context and audience--a key aspect of purposeful communication.
Check your emotions. If a claim causes strong emotion — anger, glee, pride, vindication — STOP.
I just want to pause on this step here. It seems so obvious--so basic--but I think it's more vital and more challenging than ever. For instance, I don't think that I have strong skills in this area. I think about how easily triggered I become by headlines in a a social media feed, for instance.
: S.I.F.T.:
This seems like a literacy-based version of what Karolyn Kinane calls the "contemplative pause." Both are about slowing down and noticing critical details before jumping into less-helpful mental habits.
Why do you think we even talk about these databases if you might not have lifelong access to them? Do you think we are right to teach you about them?
I would love to hear some responses to this one!
Ideas for different ways to express your search concepts can come from the sources you read, from your discussions, or even from searching for synonyms in Google.
I think that this might be related to an aspect of purposeful communication (perhaps in the summit or climbing section of the detailed description). Thinking through keywords, search terms, and different ways of expressing those terms, is part of purposeful communication as well as the research process.
chapters you might remember that every message is created and received within a cultural and historical context.
purposeful communication!
Writing is really just a way of thinking.
Self-regulated learning and purposeful communication are combined here.
But using Wikipedia for preliminary research is perfectly acceptable. The introduction paragraphs, the table of contents, and any sidebars can be very helpful in putting your topic into context and letting you know about specific issues within that topic. It can be a great source of search terms, and the references section may even suggest other sources to consult.
Students could also check out the works cited or further reading sections to find scholarly sources or books related to the topic.
In the first column, list what you know about your topic. In the second column, briefly explain how you know this. (Heard it from a friend or family member, read it in a book, saw it on a blog, etc.) In the last column, rate your confidence in that knowledge on a scale of 1 (least confident) to 10 (most confident). Look over your chart and compare columns 2 and 3. Select three rows and for each one, write a reflection on whether the source of information justifies your confidence level. Underline any information that you think might need to be checked or that you would like to find additional sources on
I love how this exercise is structured!
We don’t need to tie our self-worth or the worth of others to how right or wrong we or they are on a particular issue.
I often feel embarrassed when I discover that I am wrong.
It is very hard to notice motivated reasoning in ourselves because this is an automatic process. But motivated reasoning does have big implications for research because it tends to reinforce what we already believe
What is the relationship between vulnerability and one's ability to challenge their own worldview/frameworks, I wonder?
If we’re scanning a list of search results, the sources that support our existing beliefs are more likely to jump out at us; they are familiar and require less energy to process. Similarly, we are likely to not notice results that run counter to our existing ideas.
This is making me think about my own research processes. If I'm looking for evidence of say, eugenic rhetoric in early environmental discourses, THAT is what I will look for. Ultimately, I have to go back into my work and my writing and moderate my claims: "Here's where we DO NOT see this happening in environmental discourse. Here are some examples that challenge and nuance my claims."
Were you able to improve on the skill you chose in exercise 3? What three words best describe how you feel about doing research at this point? Have they changed?
Self-regulated learning/metacognitive reflection
all sources are biased in some way.
This links back to questions of truth and accuracy. It's not that learners are doing research to understand what is "true" and then they are done. It's that they are gathering information to develop a thought-out stance and respond to an unsolved question. In other words, learners are researching not simply to find out the "answers" or the "truth," but also so that they are empowered participate in the conversation.
This also means that it is possible, (and also quite common,) to be exposed to a completely different set of information than the person sitting next to you.
Recognizing this seems like the first step to purposeful communication (understanding audience, for instance; recognizing that not everyone has the same information.)
Introduction
Hi everyone!
show themselves compassion
To what extent are we showing overselves compassion as educators? To what extent do successfully we model that self-compassion for each other?
empathy with strong emotional boundaries .
This is important.
mindfulness exercises can be beneficial for students who have experienced trauma.
Karolyn Kinane's work on the "contemplative pause" in the classroom seems revelant here.
Maintaining consistent expectations, limits, and routines sends the message that the student is worthy of continued unconditional positive regard and attention . I
Yes. I wonder how this squares with the CoLab's modules on "Rethinking Fairness" in the ACE framework.
Even if a student acts out and expresses hatred for or cruel judgments of the educator, the response must always be unconditional positive regard:
I think that it's worth highlighting here:
Just as no student should have to endure hate speech, harassment, or aggressive behavior, so too should educators (who can also be members of non-dominant groups) be free of that language and behavior.
Avoid romanticizing trauma narratives in subject content.
THIS is so important, particularly for white educators teaching about enslavement or racial trauma.
agency,
Agency for what? "Control over their lives" clarifies this a bit, but I am reminded--again--of Kevin Gannon's intro, which highlights that those who participated in the white supermacist march in Charlottesville were exercising a form of agency, What kind of agency does higher education seek to cultivate?
l flexibility
This part about consistency and flexibility reminds me of some of the slipper camp trainings that focused on modular training and hyflex pedagogies. On the one hand, we should offer consistency and predictability, but be flexible to learning opportunites as they emerge. This balance is challenging for me.
secondary traumatization (experiencing trauma-related symptoms from learning others’ stories)
I wonder how we can teach about the history of systemic violence against people of color in a trauma-informed way, without eliding or erasing that history of violence.
but they should validate and normalize students’ experiences, help students understand how the past influences the present,
The humanities and history can be helpful here.
How does the program handle challenges between role clarity and personal
This seems important at PSU, where we are such a small and close-knit community.
y promoting growth mindset
Yes--true for academic as well as social-emotional development.
Education
Yes, and this list is useful for cultivating safe learning spaces for all learners.
historical trauma, which can be defined as interpersonal losses passed down within and across generations
And I wonder about how we represent/underrepresent that historical trauma in our curriculum.
They become self-protective; they spend a lot of their energy scanning their environment for threats; their bodies act as if they are in a constant state of alarm; their brains are endlessly vigilant; and they may experience a constant baseline feeling of low-level fear, which leaves less space for curiosity, exploration, and learning
Yes. What are the ways in which academics are self-protective as well?
Fear of taking risks
This seems important, as we consider how to cultivate self-confidence in our classroom.
distrust teachers because authority figures failed to keep them safe in the past,
This last sentence seems really important. I'm thinking about the book Lost at School, which I read as a high school teacher. It had to do with the ways in which behavioral discipline and punishment in school systems often have damaging effects on students.
Historical trauma
I find this phrase useful, since it highlights ancestral trauma (of racial violence, or the "slow violence" of capitalism that rlyons highlights), but also the experience of massive historical shifts happening in realtime. We tend to see history as something separate--something that happens in the past, far away, "over there," but the notion that we are experiencing history RIGHT NOW--that we are within a historical upheaval--can indeed be traumatic.
College students are particularly vulnerable to experiencing a new potentially traumatizing event (PTE); as many as 50 percent of college students are exposed to a PTE in the first year of college (Galatzer-Levy et al ., 2012) . •Female college students with a history of sexual trauma are at higher risk for repeated trauma (Griffin & Read, 2012) .•Ethnic minority status and low socioeconomic status have been shown to be risk factors for trauma exposure (Read et al ., 2011) .
What are the ways in which institutions have historically compounded this trauma, by denying/covering up racist and sexual violence/bullying that occurs on college campuses? How has higher education worked as a mechanism to excuse and perpetuate this kind of traumatizing violence?
What matters most is that we focus teaching and learning on, well, teaching and learning, and that during a time of crisis, instead of abandoning our missions to a superficial set of patchwork technologies, we dig deeper to stay true to our commitment to our core values in higher education.
And we should consider the long-term life of higher education rather than the short-game. People will remember how institutions and leaders behave during a pandemic.
undue industry influence
I would like my life to be free from this.
In 2019, global ed-tech investments reached a staggering $18.66 billion, and as the novel coronavirus spread across the United States, ed-tech companies were right behind offering ideas, deals, gifts and promises.
Do we need them? ... ...
open platforms that allow the public to benefit from t
Lately, I've been wondering about the benefit of a "private" platform, which I've never used before. If we are trying to cut down on emailing our students, perhaps a place where they can just ask questions or work on drafts/projects might be useful, without everything being in public. I'm considering having both a public and private portal for my courses, but boy, I can imagine some confusion...
content to the reality of living during a crisis,
This framework is useful for pedagogical development, and not just in a pandemic.
students the opportunity to contribute their work to communities where it would be helpful or appreciated
I have to think about what this means in different contexts and different courses. I understand what ACE means, and what HyFlex means, but it is more challenging for me to think about what it means in an introductory, first-year course focused on basic "English major skills" that check specific curricular boxes. It's easier for me to envision this in an upper-level course, a project-based courses, or a General Education Directions course.
we can adopt technologies and build infrastructure based on the needs of our teachers
Let's always do this, not just in a pandemic! :)
chunk curriculum into smaller noncumulative modules that can be deployed in different modalities depending on regional scenarios with social distancing.
I'm still curious about what this looks like. Perhaps I'm overthinking this piece.
we can involve learners in assignment design or allow them to choose from multiple assignment options to make sure the parameters fit their schedules and circumstances.
A lovely colleague of mine framed this as outcome-based learning rather than assignment-based learning! This allows us to center learning outcomes over specific assignments, and create multiple pathways towards fulfilling those learning outcomes.
ot, pedagogy is a key part of how our learners understand and assess their experience at our institutions during this crisis.
And yet, as Jesse Stommel has emphasized, pedagogy (as a rigorous and prevalent field) does not get the attention it deserves in Ph.D. programs.
"our institution offers real-world experiences," "we offer hands-on approaches," "applied and project-based curriculum," "student-centered learning at its best."
YES.
adopt anticheating browser lockdown software for faculty
Hmm..
But these tech-based solutions often ignore the pedagogies that many of our colleges and universities center in our mission statements and admissions pitches.
YES. Pedagogy matters. Educational missions matter.
do masks make us as suspicious as the black hoodies do?
SUCH AN URGENT QUESTION.
But recognize how different the experience of Black professionals in the workplace or at school is from their White counterparts.
We need to think really carefully about what this means at PSU. What would it look like to dedicate time, resources, space, and curriculum to undoing and unlearning structural racism?
“Meg, see if your doctor will allow you to take long walks. Those will help to relax you.” Will they? On February 23rd, Ahmaud Arbery was hunted and killed while on a jog. “Well, at least you’ll be safe at home.” Will I? Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed when she was killed by unannounced police officers kicking in her door and firing indiscriminately.
This highlights that "safety" has different meanings based on the color of one's skin.
Bearing in mind that we represent about 13% of the population, we only hold 2.6% of the country’s wealth, according to William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr, the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. Moreover, the Urban Institute’s K Steven Brown found that over 40% of Black adults belong to families that experienced job loss, furloughs, or reduced income due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
These are really important numbers to highlight in conversations about higher education and the racial and socioeconomic inequalities that impact and permeate it.
providing a space and structure where they can think powerfully about themselves and the world beyond Fall 2020, beyond this plague, beyond trauma.
which means providing space for debrief, self-assessment, reflection in the class itself.
ask your students to apply what they learned in class today to some aspect of their life and write a 25 or 50-word "report back" on a course blog or other secure course site on what they did and how it worked out.
This is going to be essential for keeping students engaged and invested, for keeping us all connected to each other.
"meta reflection" (the single best way to ensure retention and applicability apart from applying, experientially, what we learn
And this is a foundational part of project-based learning!
A great place to start? Ask them!
I just had an idea: Normally, I open my "Rethinking Early American Literature" course with the prompt "What is American Literature?" and we spend the first week writing about, debating, and collaboratively developing preliminary statements in response to this prompt (to which we return later). I wonder if it would be useful to pivot that slightly and ask students what they need from an American literature class right now, or what American literature might mean in our current moment.
A little joy is a wonderful "learning outcome" to build into a class design.
And it provides us with joy too as educators!
agency.
Yes, and this paragraph describes an really inspiring, positive form of agency. Often, when we use the word agency, I want to ask "Agency for WHAT?" Kevin Gannon reminds us (in his book Radical Hope) that the some of the members of the white supermacy rally in Charlottesville were college students. This is not the kind of agency that we want to encourage in our students.
imagination,
I've been thinking about centerng wonder and imagination in my courses, ever since re-reading Sean Michael Morris's essay on this topic in An Urgency of Teachers.
building in ways students can be co-teachers as well as co-learners,
This reminds me of what we're calling cluster pedagogy at PSU. It also reminds me of what Paul Hanstedt refers to as encouraging student "authority" in Creating Wicked Students.
(even if they are partying, pretending they are invisible, not caring about their future: don't believe that for a second)
I love this aside.
And cognitive
It's useful to build in time for metacognitive reflection, and this can include time for processing trauma, recognizing when we or our students are distressed or distracted, and facilitating an openness/mindfulness in the learning community. I also think that self-awareness of distration, stress, and trauma is foundational to self-regulated learning. (Those who are not at PSU: "self-regulated learning" is a habit of mind in our Gen Ed program.)
So are we.
I think that, in our commitment to caring for students and developing high quality learning experiences, we sometimes forget this recognize this last part. Let's be kind to ourselves as teachers.
have left some assignment rubrics open and will facilitate student development of the rubrics and of a few small activities.
I have tried student-developed rubrics in the integrated capstone (INCAP) and I would love to learn more about how this works in a TWP context!
I have never witnessed it happening in such a collaborative and public way.
It's useful to hear about institutional memory in this way. I also want to highlight the public ethos of CPLC here. Working in public scares me, but it is also invigorating.
brush which they had laid upon the raft to sit upon, I did not wet my foot (which many of themselves at the other end were mid-leg deep) which cannot but be acknowledged as a favor of God to my weakened body, it being a very cold time. I was not before acquainted with such kind of doings or dangers. “When thou passeth through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee” (Isaiah 43.2). A certain number of us got over the river that night, but it was the night after the Sabbath before all the company was got over. On the Saturday they boiled an old horse’s leg which they had got, and so we drank of the broth, as soon as they thought it was ready, and when it was almost all gone, they filled it up again.
There's something going on in this text with reproduction, the maternal body, food and nourishment. One could trace all of this images throughout the text.
my son came to me, and asked me how I did. I had not seen him before, since the destruction of the town, and I knew not where he was, till I was informed by himself, that he was amongst a smaller parcel of Indians, whose place was about six miles off. With tears in his eyes, he asked me whether his sister Sarah was dead; and told me he had seen his sister Mary; and prayed me, that I would not be troubled in reference to himself.
Interesting that she does not name her son here but she names her daughters.
this wilderness condition
What does it mean to be in the "wilderness condition"?
there came to me
This phrase--"came to me"--is vague, and evokes a kind of ghostliness. "A premonition appeared before me," for instance.
vast and desolate wilderness,
We've been talking in my Wilderness Lit class about wilderness as a place of peace and recreation. But in Early American Lit, it was VAST AND DESOLATE -- a horrifying, dangerous place mean to be civilized. Now our positions have almost reversed. We go into the wilderness to escape civilization.
husband g
So we have the fracturing of the family unit here..
“What, will you love English men still?”
This question suggests some form of jealousy, perhaps sexual jealousy. Notice that it does not highlight English women.