Joanne Munroe- What's Your Story ?
"My Story"-
Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It
is not the conviction that something will turn out
well, but the certainty something makes sense,
regardless of how it turns out. It is hope, above all,
that gives us the strength to live and to continually
try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless.
(Victor Havel)
To earn my tenure at Whatcom Community College, I developed an Interdisciplinary Studies program with a vision of playing a small part in the “reculturing” of higher education. I took a risk and my colleagues accepted my invitation. Each of the courses labeled IDS was thoughtfully structured around all five of our core learning abilities in an effort to change norms, values and relationships in the classroom and to transform the way that instructors and students work together. Based on the most current research around scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning, each course was designed and each course was revised each time it was taught to ensure that issues and contexts were “compelling” to students and to “balance challenge and opportunity, stimulating and utilizing the brain’s ability to conceptualize quickly and its capacity and need for contemplation and reflection upon experiences” (Joint Task Force on Student Learning).
Personal Pedagogical/ Androgogical Approach:
The courses I designed shifted the focus from teaching to learning and were built around the “hallmarks of learner centered teaching” (Huba and Freed, 2000) including the following goals and values:
· Learners are actively involved and receive feedback
· Learners apply knowledge to enduring and emerging issues and problems
· Learners integrate discipline-based knowledge and general skills
· Learners understand the characteristics of excellent work
· Learners become increasingly sophisticated
· Professors coach and facilitate, intertwining teaching and assessing
· Professors reveal that they are learners, too
· Learning is interpersonal, and all learners- students and professors- are respected and valued.
Personal Philosophy around Assessment:
As I designed and taught courses I focused (as almost every college instructor does whether implicitly or explicitly) on what the AAHE has called “principles of good practice for assessing student learning”. It is my belief that if our students are learning in our classes, it is because we already realize that:
· The assessment of student learning begins with educational values
· Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated and revealed in performance over time
· Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes
· Assessment requires attention to outcomes, but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes
· Assessment works best when it is ongoing, not episodic
· Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved
· Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions people really care about
· Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.
· Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.
The Shift from the Classroom to the Center for Teaching and Learning
As a teacher, my dream was (and still is) to shape, to redesign some aspects of the educational experience that I care about. As part of my discernment process in accepting this position as Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning here at Olympic College, I had to think about and define my strongest skills, my greatest areas of knowledge and expertise, my personality strengths and my accomplishments. I had to take a hard look at the things that I do best and I had to address my weaknesses. I continue to do so. In making the shift, I had to ask myself; “What is it that is worth giving up the safety and the security of my role as tenured faculty”?
In 2006, I was faced with that transition from “classroom instructor” to educational leader of a different sort. This means facing the world with " a beginner's mind" again. Not easy. In fact, I have included an article from Change on avoiding "trial by fire" and as I look at the stages of teaching outlined in the article, I draw analogies to the stages of taking on this new role. (For how long does one act from "survival" mode in a brand new profession? ) Whatever my misgivings, I knew that in my new role, I would be called upon daily to bring out the best in others and to learn to tolerate the friction that will be inevitable. I have to be strong and caring and compassionate and learn to walk that tentative line, being a part of a system without being co-opted by it. In my new role, I know that I need to listen more and suggest less. I have to think long and hard about what inspires the best in folks and I have to be self-disciplined enough to make things happen while remembering that it will be the combination of pragmatism and empathetic regard that will get me the furthest in motivating change while living within my value system.
From my work in instructional design to the passion that I brought to my teaching as “transformative”, “high investment, low risk” learning, I’ve had to ask myself those questions that we all ask at some point about core values and goals and aspirations . I want the chance to have an impact, to share my expertise, to lead and to create and to learn. I am willing to take risks to ensure that I can be of meaningful service to this community, and, relating all of this to our recent conversations around the climate survey, everything that I am reading and learning about high and low performing systems indicates that when motivation, morale, communication and trust are eroded, the organization loses balance.
I need to be an authentic human being. There is nothing more important or less negotiable to me. It is vital to me that the values and the ethics that I espouse are palpable in the actions I take. It is important to me to continue to be a resource person, a communicator and a visible presence who works to “make things happen” and whose ethics, values and actions are congruent. These are my core commitments, and you can expect the programs that are offered and the efforts that are undertaken by the Center for Teaching and Learning to reflect them . . .What's your story?
Charles "Chip" Barker
The eldest scion of an Olde New Englande family, I didn't understand why some of my playmates were "off-limits". I was actually told I could tell who "they" were because they had vowels at the end of their last names.or by looking at them. I refused continuous multigenerational family pressure about prep school and Ivy league universities and found my own way to Foothill College in Los Altos, CA where Stanford grad students and tenure-escapees/rejects actually liked students and teaching. I was smitten.
In the early 70's, at Southern Oregon College (now University), I became a teaching assistant in a 70 member learning community housed/taught in a student dorm and focused on human rights and ecological science. At both institutions, the faculty provoked learning from our post-adolescent rebelliousness and curiosity. We were empowered to grasp the world with strong hands.
Empowerment became the underlying motive of my 25 yr career in public mental health. I didn't want to be a "therapist-guru" or drive the fanciest car. I wanted to teach people how to how assume and manage power in our society just like my forbidden childhood friends lacked in order to be "ok" in the WASP-dominated world of Connecticut of the 50's.
This current field of my efforts, OC, is the most heterogeneous and challenging so far. No expert on what was discovered today, I am always absorbing and translating new information in my field to increase my student's access to self-knowledge, self-management and purposive choices. I have a purpose and it fills me up.
What's your story?