March 31, 2025 • 49 mins
Learn practical strategies to teach with purpose, innovation, and heart. Let’s get one thing out of the way: Yes, Kelly Spoon is a math faculty member. But no, this isn’t just a “math thing.” Whether you teach biology, sociology, English, or automotive technology, you’ll benefit from what she brings to the classroom. Kelly Spoon of San Diego Mesa College isn’t just teaching derivatives—she’s reshaping how students experience learning itself. In this episode, we translate her powerful practices into actionable strategies any faculty member can use, with a special focus on designing your classroom and professional development around care, curiosity, and continuous improvement.
The Student Success Podcast episode page includes action steps to achieving 10 key topics she discussed.
1. Reframe "Rigor" to Reflect Learning—Not Compliance
2. Let Students Show Their Brilliance, Not Just Yours
3. Embrace Productive Struggle with Thin Slicing and Whiteboards
4. Redefine Assessment with Standards-Based Grading (SBG)
5. Flip the Classroom Strategically
6. Foster a Culture of Reflective Teaching
7. Redesign PD to Include All Faculty, Even the Resistant Ones
8. Close the Loop on Professional Development
9. Believe in Every Student—and Show Them They Belong
10. Keep Growing, Keep Reflecting
00:00: Intro: Welcome and framing: why Kelly Spoon’s approach benefits all faculty, not just math instructors.
01:05: Meet Kelly Spoon: Background, teaching at Mesa College, and work in faculty development.
02:47: Kindness in the Classroom: Centering students as whole people and honoring their lived experiences and thinking.
04:01: Productive Struggle and Student Brilliance: Using the zone of proximal development and student choice in how they demonstrate learning.
05:55: Building Thinking Classrooms: How Kelly uses whiteboards, random groups, and thin slicing to foster deep engagement.
08:04: Responding to the “No Rigor” Critique: Debunking false dichotomies: lecture vs. active learning, rigor vs. kindness.
11:49: Standards-Based Grading: Grading for understanding, not compliance, and letting students grow over time.
14:44: Flexible Learning and Reassessment: Using the ESIL framework and allowing multiple attempts to show learning.
20:34: Bringing PD to All Faculty: Strategies for engaging resistant faculty through low-stakes, high-interest approaches.
25:55: Creating Non-Evaluative Coaching Spaces: Using feedback tools like “Three Ideas” and aspirations for peer observation.
32:06: Closing the Loop on Professional Development: Building reflection and iteration into PD to increase its long-term impact.
36:30: Addressing Equity Gaps in STEM: Centering student voices and identities in math to foster belonging and growth.
43:53: The Power of a Learning Community: How social media and peer influence helped Kelly take risks and evolve as an educator.
47:23: Teaching as a Profession: Closing thoughts on the depth, difficulty, and rewards of being a truly reflective teacher.
For the full transcript and detailed show notes, visit the episode page.
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Episode Transcript
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AL (00:01):
Welcome to the Student Success Podcast.
If you work in higher ed andwant to learn ways to support
students, check out today'sepisode.
Kelly (00:09):
[Quote teaser] If rigor, whatever that means, matters to
you as an instructor, yourgrades really need to reflect
student understanding and notcompliance.
[Quote teaser] I don't care ifthey know week four how to use
the chain rule to take aderivative.
If they figure it out by weeksix, I'm still happy, right,
they still shown that they'vemet that standard.
(00:32):
And so then you realize, ok,there's this whole world of
standards- based grading thatvalues this learning progression
and where students end up, asopposed to where they are at
that moment and maybe how theywere feeling on that particular
day that they took a quiz, thatidea of just like, oh, I don't,
I don't think I care about, Imean, obviously I need it by a
(00:53):
certain time because math buildson itself, right, so I might
have to have some cut off forwhen they have to learn it, but
maybe it doesn't have to be sorigid.
AL (01:05):
Welcome to the Student Success Podcast, Kelly.
Kelly (01:07):
I'm happy to be here, Al.
AL (01:10):
So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kelly (01:12):
So I'm a math faculty member at San Diego Mesa College
, where I've been lucky enoughto also be part of our teaching
and learning team.
We have this Mesa's OngoingSupport for Teaching, our MOST
team, which has been reallyfulfilling, and then I've also
worked on some stuff at thedistrict level in terms of OER,
open educational resources.
(01:33):
It's been nice to be able to doa little bit more than just
teach math but also help othereducators realize things like
zero textbook costs in theirclasses and how to do anything
they want to do in their classeslike working on course design
AL (01:48):
So I've been a fan for a while.
I would check yournotifications for your social
media and I've been to at leastone of your webinars, and one of
the things I appreciate aboutyou is that, in my view, you
center kindness in your craft.
You truly, genuinely care aboutstudents and you do this by so
(02:13):
many ways.
But I really appreciate how youare always looking to
continually improve your craftand then sharing that with your
colleagues.
So for today's episode, I'dlove for you to tell us a little
bit about what you do in theclassroom, and it could be
whatever you want, and I'm surethat, yes, it's going to be math
, but we have so many listenersfrom different disciplines, it
(02:36):
doesn't matter.
They're going to learnsomething from you because
you're a teacher at heart.
You know we use the wordfaculty in higher ed.
I still kind of like the wordteacher, but anyway, love to
learn about some of the thingsyou do in the classroom.
Kelly (02:47):
Yeah, thanks for that question.
I think when you say kindness,I think of like I don't know,
like that's not what I think ishappening in my class
necessarily.
I think it's more just caringabout students as a whole person
, and I guess that is kindness,right, to want to know what
students are interested in, whatthey're doing in their lives,
(03:08):
what things they value.
Thinking about your commentabout just like following folks
on social media, that's part ofwhat has made my journey.
The journey that it has been isthe folks that I've followed.
And thinking about this bringsme back to a really old Dan
Meyer post on Twitter, like athousand years ago I mean, I
(03:29):
have no idea how old this is,but he basically said that his
teaching journey started withphase one I want to show
students the brilliance of mythinking.
And then, phase two, I want toshow students the brilliance of
math.
Phase three was finally to thispoint that I think I'm finally
out of my career, which is, Iwant to understand the
brilliance of your thinking likeno longer centering themselves,
(03:50):
no longer centering even thecontent, but more the students
thinking about that content.
In my classroom I feel likethat looks a lot like me.
Stepping to the side.
I do a lot of what I realize nowis probably putting my students
in that zone of proximaldevelopment, if you want to like
, use fancy terms, right, whereI'm constantly giving students
(04:14):
problems that are just beyondwhat we've talked about in class
, just beyond what they'vepreviously seen, and putting
them in this sort of space wherethey have to get used to being
uncomfortable and not knowing,and then seeing what resources
they have, both withinthemselves, like what do I know?
And then what did my peers know?
(04:35):
Like how can I solve thisproblem?
It highlights their brilliance,right.
It highlights that they can dothings that are beyond what
they've seen before.
And then I do ask them a lot ofquestions about themselves.
I do really try to value theirprogression and their learning
by doing things likereassessments and giving them
(04:55):
options when I think thingsdon't need to be an exam.
To how would you like to showme you understood limits in a
calculus class?
I don't think that that needsto be an exam.
Here are four options for howyou could show me that you
understand this.
And then, if you think ofsomething better, feel free,
pitch it to me, I'm happy tohave you create something that
(05:18):
you feel like is something thatshowcases what you understand.
AL (05:21):
That was beautiful.
Zone of proximal development.
Oh, I haven't heard that in solong.
And a lot of the qualityresearch around pedagogy comes
from our K-12 brothers andsisters, so we learned a lot
about that there.
And also there's a lot ofreally good research around
productive struggle in thesciences, especially math.
So I would love to learn, ifyou wouldn't mind, could you
(05:44):
give us an example of thatproductive struggle.
If you have with a particularmath problem or concept or topic
?
Just to kind of unpack that alittle bit more.
Kelly (05:55):
Trying to think what were we doing in class today.
So in class today I've justtaught Calc 2.
Today I would not say it was agreat example.
We started with simple problemsand then we just kept adding
more and more complexity to them, so it wasn't like it was more
of what Peter Liljedahl, there'sthis whole building thinking
classrooms.
You mentioned K-12.
I feel like I have learned somuch more from K-12 than I have
(06:19):
ever learned from the higher edfolks in terms of teaching,
because they actually have timeto do all this PD and that's
part of what they're reallyassessed on, I think, as
teachers, and evaluated on.
There's so many brilliant ideasfrom them, but one of those
ideas which is now gaining a lotof traction in higher ed is the
(06:39):
Building Thinking Classroomsmovement of Peter Liljedahl.
The way I think he frames thisis as thin slicing.
So you have students and thisis what's happens in my
classroom.
I have whiteboards all aroundthe room and students are
randomly assigned to a group andthey go to those whiteboards,
and I have Google slides thatjust have math problems.
(07:00):
Essentially, usually it'llstart with math problems they've
seen before and then they'llslightly transition to things
that are beyond what we've seen,but still right at the cusp,
where I know that they can addsomething to it and they can get
there, and so he calls thatthin slicing.
A lot of us might call itscaffolding, but I mean that's
(07:20):
all students being in that zoneof like just putting them right
in the like.
You don't know this, but youhave to actually think and pull
out all the information that'sin your brain.
And when they're at thewhiteboards it's really lovely
because they can look over andsee another group start and get
an idea that maybe, oh, I shoulddo that, or see that some other
(07:41):
group has a different answerand then try to compare and
contrast and do some of thosemetacognitive strategies that
you just can't accomplish with alecture right.
Like you can't show studentsall the possibilities and have
them make mistakes and trythings in a lecture quite as as
beautifully as you can in thislike thinking classrooms
approach.
AL (08:04):
Oh, Kelly, that sounds like a lot of hooey.
You're not preparing ourstudents.
They're going to fail.
There's no rigor in what you'redoing.
You're oh, I'm so disappointedin you.
You're not preparing them.
So that was my worst sarcasticvoice ever, but I think you get
the idea.
How do you respond to that?
Kelly (08:22):
So this is one thing when I run professional development
and webinars for math faculty, Ithink we tend to make
dichotomies of things that arenot really dichotomies.
Right, like the lecture versusactive learning and anyone you
talk to who's an active learningadvocate, Right, someone who's
(08:43):
doing similar board work?
This, you know, some peoplecall it 360 whiteboards, some
people call it like non-vertical, like whatever non-permanent
vertical spaces.
Is the thinking classroomslanguage for it has using a
flipped classroom, they havevideos that they want their
students to watch.
Almost everyone I've heardpresent on this.
(09:06):
They're doing play posit and sothey're requiring their
students to watch those videosand providing points for
watching those videos outside ofclass.
So those faculty are stilllecturers at heart.
Right, they're still wantingtheir students to see an expert
speak about the actual math.
And then when you talk to alecturer right, I have a lecture
(09:27):
down the hall, a good friendand a colleague of mine and I
listen to him talk to studentsand he'll tell students you need
to go home and practice this.
You need to do like justproblem after problem until this
, because, and that facultymember is also an active learner
like, they're telling theirstudent you need to engage in
active learning and they'll evenbe like explain it to someone,
(09:48):
like any friend, a dog.
Just find someone to explainthe math to and you'll
understand it better.
The way I teach is I'm doingboth.
I don't lecture as much assomebody who might be lecture
based.
I provide a lot of that outsideof class.
But also I find that if you letstudents play with the ideas
before you lecture, you don'tneed to explain every possible
(10:10):
situation.
And when you're comfortableknowing that your students are
going to be successful withquestions that don't look
exactly like the ones you'vedone, you don't need to do every
single iteration.
Because I think when I firststarted teaching, I really
believed I have to show themevery possible thing that might
happen, like my lecture has tocover everything that could go
wrong.
And now I'm like I don't needto show them everything.
(10:32):
I need to give them the tooland then the tools to understand
what to do when things fallapart.
I think there's that falsedichotomy there of like, oh, if
you're having them work on stuff, you're not, but I don't grade
my students on that classwork.
Their only grades in my classare based on understanding, so
their grades are solely based.
I mean, I'd say 70 to 80% arequizzes and exams, things that
(10:57):
they have to do in front of mewith you know, maybe no notes,
things like no formula sheet,none of that.
I've heard from colleagues whoteach the higher level classes,
who teach physics, that mystudents, even my C students,
are doing really well in thoseclasses.
So I think I'm doing somethingright.
I'm doing something right evenif it sounds fluffy.
AL (11:19):
No, you are.
And I want to touch on grading.
Then, right, the way, the wayyou assess because and look, I,
in the same way, I don't have astudent deficit mindset.
I don't have one for faculty,because it's how they were
trained, right, this is how theylearned in graduate school and
they then pass on a lot ofthose, I'll call them antiquated
(11:42):
practices, but they don't,because that's all they know,
and so, and grading has been anissue.
I did a little study at acollege that I coach, I worked
with the researcher, and it wasreally fascinating.
We did a survey of how facultyin pre-calculus grade.
Long story short, after allthese questions of how they
(12:04):
weigh and how they don't, dothey drop a test or not, we saw
that it's basically a lotteryfor students.
So if I'm lucky enough to takepre-cal with Kelly, I will
probably have an 80%.
But if I'm not lucky enough tohave Kelly and I have this other
instructor who weighs thingsdifferently, who's more about
(12:24):
points than the learning he orshe may not know that, but
that's really what happens,you're going to have like a 40%.
I mean, the data wasfascinating.
And so tell us a little bitmore about how you assess
learning.
Kelly (12:41):
Yeah, so I'm really influenced by Josh Eyler, Jesse
Stommel, Robert Talbert, DavidClark, all these kind of big
names that thankfully I ran intoearly on Twitter when Twitter
was still Twitter.
I've had a lot of opportunitiesto read the book Grading for
Equity with different readinggroups, like different groups of
faculty.
(13:02):
So I read it with a group ofjust statistics faculty as part
of the electronic conference onteaching statistics.
I read it with faculty here atMesa and there's just so many
pieces and points that JoeFeldman makes that really
resonate and that one of them isgrading on understanding
instead of compliance.
And to me, if rigor, whateverthat means, matters to you as an
(13:27):
instructor, your grades reallyneed to reflect student
understanding and not compliance.
So like I have still like alittle bit of a visceral
reaction when those reallyamazing faculty were telling me
how they require their studentsto watch those play posit videos
and they're giving points forthose play posit videos that
count towards their grade,because I'm sitting there going,
but like that's just, did theywatch the lecture?
(13:51):
Like yes, but they should beintrinsically motivated to watch
that lecture because they wantto come to class and know what's
going on and be able to engagewith what we're doing in class
for me, not every student isgoing to find me the best
teacher for them, right?
Like?
And maybe video is not the bestmethod for them, like, maybe
(14:11):
they know that they'd muchrather they're me, they'd much
rather just read some text andbe able to scan.
And it's a lot harder to scan avideo, right?
A video is a set amount of time, even at two times speed, that
I have to sit through, whereas,like, I can scan a PDF, try a
problem, see my understandingand move on.
There's no real universaldesign for learning, right, in
(14:33):
the way that these other facultyare doing that.
And the same thing for homework, right?
Not every student needs thesame number of practice problems
.
Not every student needs thesame type of homework, right?
Sort of realizing that a longtime ago, especially because
there was a big movement in likeK-12 to not assign homework
grades, and I think that was oneof those moments where I was
(14:56):
like I never liked homework as astudent.
I never needed to do all of it.
All it did was lower my gradebecause I refused to do it.
And we all, like all of us asfaculty members, I'm sure I've
had the situation where you havea student who turns in all the
homework and still fails thetest, and yet the student turns
in like none of the homework andaces the test, and so you know
there's no correlation betweenthe homework and the test scores
(15:19):
, like the understanding score.
Whether the test is a goodmeasure is another question, and
so I think that was the firstthing that resonated with me of
that book was I need to get ridof all the things that are
grading, compliance, grading,students just doing things and
focus on do they understand?
Another huge piece, and this,all of this he does with nice
(15:40):
little examples in grading forequity of like two different
instructors, sort of what youtalked about, the Kelly versus
the not Kelly, like the lotteryof going into a class of like
what, what matters is that theylearn the thing.
It doesn't matter when theylearn it.
And so when you go yeah, that'strue, I don't care if they know
(16:01):
week four how to use the chainrule, to take a derivative if
they figure it out by week six,I'm still, I'm still happy,
right, like they still shownthat they've met that standard.
And so then you realize, okay,there's this whole world of
standards-based grading thatvalues this learning progression
and where students end up, asopposed to where they are at
(16:21):
that moment and maybe how theywere feeling on that particular
day that they took a quiz.
That idea of just like, oh Idon't think I care about.
I mean, obviously I need it bya certain time because math
builds on itself, right, so Imight have to have some cutoff
for when they have to learn it,but maybe it doesn't have to be
so rigid was a really big ideathat resonated with me.
(16:44):
And then I've been lucky enoughto go to the Grading for Growth
conference that they do onlineevery summer a couple of times,
and having a bunch of folkswho've experimented with this
and can kind of tell you if youwant to go into the ungrading or
alternative grading world,there's no right way to do it
and you can take little bits andpieces that work for you.
(17:07):
So for me, from standards-basedgrading, you come up with all
your standards that you wantstudents to be able to do and
then you decide okay, what is mymetric?
Like some folks are, like, Ineed them to pass a standard
twice.
I need them to show me not justonce that they can do something
, but twice, or is it just once?
(17:28):
Finding those standards was afun activity.
I was actually lucky enough tobe in a like a community of
practice, a faculty inquirygroup with other faculty where
we came up with our whole listof topics from calculus.
We came up with the things thatwe actually were our standards
by ranking everything as E isthey They just need to know its
(17:50):
existence.
This is all based on MariaAnderson's work.
It's an ESIL ESOL framework.
I'll get you all these cutereferences.
E is like existence.
I just need them to know thisexists.
I don't need to ever assess it,but I should probably mention
in a lecture.
They might need to see it.
S is they need to be able to doit.
They can do it with support.
So this might be on a homeworkor a group quiz or a project,
(18:10):
something where they can go outand get some support.
They could use AI if they want.
You can use their peers a tutorI'm fine with that.
I just want to know that theycan do it with support.
I is independent, so somethingI want to know that you can do
independently.
So this is going to end up on aquiz in my class or an exam,
and then L is lifetime.
I need you to have this skillfor the rest of your life.
(18:31):
Like this, you gotta know thesethings and those need to be
like on all of the things, right, and then probably a final exam
.
But we ranked as a group, weranked all of these ideas in our
calculus class, using thatframework, and then had a
discussion when there was adisagreement, when we weren't
all aligned, as like, oh, thisshould be just existence.
(18:52):
And then that person who waskind of off would maybe sell us
on why, like Gina Abbiate was inmy, in this group, and she had
rated uh, the epsilon deltaproofs this precise definition
of a limit, uh, which I thinkacross the board we had all done
, existence.
She put supported, and we werelike, justify, justify this.
(19:13):
And so she, you know, she waslike, let me explain what I
think this is really important,it's their first formal
definition.
And so she's explaining it andwe're like, okay, we're not
convinced.
But you know, maybe I'll move alittle bit that direction next
time, I don't know.
But all those things that wesaid were I ended up as our
standards, and then we decidedthose are going to be our quiz
questions, we're going to quizthose every week and then we'll
(19:36):
reassess them the following week, and those reassessments are
not going to be the same.
I'm going to make my students doa slightly harder problem.
I'm going to maybe change it upa little bit so that they're
not just looking at my key,memorizing and regurgitating a
procedure, but they have toreally show their understanding
in that second attempt.
And then, since I teachsupported calculus, I actually
(19:58):
give my students a number ofattempts because for me I have
students coming in with reallyvaried skills and so I can't
assume that you know, after twoweeks they're going to get
something down.
It might take them a little bitmore time going back and
reviewing material, but that'sjust the only thing I do.
Standards-based are my quizzes.
So it's an interesting ideathat I'm still doing these
(20:18):
weighted grades, because I'mkind of it's uncomfortable to
move away from something you'veused for so many years.
But I'm just doing one littlepocket of it as the
standards-based where I'm doingthese reassessments and letting
students show their growth inthat one section.
AL (20:34):
Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful.
And the unfortunate part abouthigher ed is it can be such a
lonely profession.
And you had the space to dothis activity with your
colleagues and create thisstandards based grading oh my
gosh, I wish that can happeneverywhere.
So I have a question for you,because when Twitter went to
(20:58):
this hellscape, a lot ofeducators moved over.
It was funny because you wouldthink, isn't this a platform for
jobs?
And no, not really.
It's become much more than that.
There's a lot of educators thatmoved over to LinkedIn,
actually.
And it was funny because I sawone of your posts going to a
particular college to do somekind of engagement with math
(21:20):
faculty and I wrote as a comment.
I said I don't know if youremember.
I said, oh, were you able toleave unharmed?
Right?
And the reason I say that isbecause I've been put in as a
coach and as a facilitator inspaces with math faculty.
And boy, they can be so effingbrutal.
(21:43):
And here's the thing, right.
So you have this group offaculty like you, right, that
are willing to try things.
Right, they understand that ourinstitutions are not only
places of learning for students,but they're places of learning
for us like you're trying somestuff right and then you're not
ready yet to like overhaul.
(22:04):
Your waiting, that's fine, butyou're doing things.
Little bits and pieces here andthere, right how, and I don't
know if there's a right answerto this.
I have an idea of how to do it.
I've done it over the years,but I'm wondering your
perspective.
What do you do when it's alwaysthe same people that go to the
(22:24):
PD who are willing to change,but you still have a significant
percentage or even if it's onlyone faculty member that's one
faculty member too many thatjust don't want any of it.
They're still going to do whatthey're going to do.
And is there a way to helpthose faculty, to kind of bring
(22:47):
them on board?
Do you have any experience ofsomething that might've worked?
Kelly (22:51):
I will say as a facilitator, when I work with a
campus where I know there'sgoing to be faculty who are not
in the camp, right like the LukeWood and Frank Harris used to
have this four quadrant thing,you have your allies, you have
your choir, the people who knowwhat to do and are doing it, or
your choir are willing to do itbut don't know what to do.
They're your allies.
And then, like there wasresistors, like what do you do
(23:12):
with that group of facultythat's just resisted?
They don't know what to do andthey also aren't really willing
to change.
And I think the only thing youcan do is as a facilitator.
Hopefully you're in a spacewhere the department has brought
in everyone, right, like youactually get them to show up and
I think for me part of that isdoing PD within spaces that
(23:35):
they're already there, right,like making that a regular part
of your department meetings, ofyour school meetings.
Too often it's not, and ourschool meetings and our
department meetings,- are justcompletely informational.
Get people who are not going toever sign up to show up to a
(23:56):
here's how to teach right, orhere's an idea for teaching, and
then I think, once you getthese people in the room, a lot
of it is just putting them inthe shoes of a student.
So for me, I tend to have abunch of really fun math
problems, whether it's the openmiddle questions that Robert
Kaplinsky has on his site, or acard sort or something that's
more of like a puzzle meets amath problem, or just a really
(24:18):
interesting math problem thatyou lead off with, you'll find
the resistors kind of open up,because we all fell in love with
math, we all love math, right,or whatever the heck we might be
talking about.
And so when you give them thatpuzzle that, they just naturally
kind of become a student andsee, oh well, this could be fun.
And then, if you can tie it tothe curriculum of like okay,
(24:42):
here's how I use this in mycalculus class, here's how this
is like a really good lead off,and if you keep it something
tiny too, like a lot of the Idid a whole blog post on like
warmup routines and I think ifyou can do something that you're
going to be like this is onlygoing to take 10 minutes of your
class time A lot of facultywill kind of buy in on this idea
of all I have to do is fiveminutes and I thought it was fun
(25:05):
.
Like, if you have them,participate, you sell them on.
It's not like overhaul, likeit's not doing the whole
thinking classrooms, you don'thave to give up all the control
and let your students go to theboards, right?
I think those things help a lot.
And then letting faculty reallyhave space in those places to
voice concerns, because I thinktoo often as people who run PD,
(25:28):
we go in and we're just likehere's the right way to do
things and we don't reallyacknowledge that this is the way
I do things and it works in myclass in these, these
constraints, and it might notwork in your class.
Like, if you have reasons youthink it's not going to work,
let's chat about them, because Ican't problem solve things that
you don't get to vocalize.
Right, you're just going tointernalize oh yeah, this
(25:50):
doesn't work for me and you'rejust sit back and not have a
conversation.
So giving folks that space wherethey're not taking the whole
room down, so giving them a wayto share, maybe in a smaller
group setting, maybe in anasynchronous or not asynchronous
, but like a separatenote-taking space, is a really
nice way to be able to hopefullybring them in, but I think you
(26:12):
need to treat those faculty asexperts, right?
You're doing something amazing.
Let's pull out what you'redoing and have that conversation
.
I mean, there are some that arejust it's never going to move.
We know that.
I mean the tenure is a problem.
AL (26:26):
Yeah, and that's the reality , right, that we have to realize
that some won't change and somecampuses, what where they're
doing, they're taking drasticmeasures to work with counselors
to make sure that especiallyour most disproportionately
impacted students don't go tothose sections.
I mean, I'm telling you that'sactually happening.
And here's the other thing again.
It's higher ed.
(26:48):
It's not really set up for usto be learners as educators.
So, I work with campuses wherethey actually don't have
department meetings anymore, sothey've lost that space.
In some ways.
I understand it, because itused to be just these meetings
that you're talking about.
That could have been an email,right, but now there's zero
settings and all they rely onare these once in a year, the
(27:10):
beginning of the school year,they're often called flex days
and every campus has differentright.
Some campuses have one day offlex.
You get your PD for one hourout of the year and you better,
like, go do something with it,right.
And then you have campuses thathave an entire week dedicated
to that right.
That's the difficult part, andI think if we can somehow embed
(27:34):
in our practice I don't know,this may end up being
contractual, but can we build acommunity of practice where we
meet almost at least biweekly,where we just discuss our craft,
what we're doing, what works,what doesn't, and we're not
pointing fingers.
One of the things that I loveway, way, many, many moons ago,
when I was doing my doctoralwork, I wanted to know what
(27:58):
other countries were doing, andI became very interested in
Japan, because faculty there dosomething you might've heard of
it called lesson study, and theyactually take the time to
observe each other teach.
Kelly (28:13):
A non-evaluative observation, like that's the key
right, undefined this is notpart of the evaluation process,
it is just let's go like seewhat the other people are doing.
AL (28:33):
I think that's such a beautiful way kind of to frame
it.
But in the United States areyou crazy?
We can't even get ourdepartment meeting to talk about
teaching and learning, letalone observe one, although I
got to tell you I am workingwith a campus and that is what
they're doing.
Their math department puttogether a formal they call it
learn from your peer program,and we came up with this whole
(28:54):
schedule of opting in facultywho want to observe other
faculty, and so, but that's rare.
Kelly (29:01):
Yeah, well, it's something that does exist in the
US in K-12, right, I think theycall it like pineapple charts
or something.
There's some weird name for it.
AL (29:10):
You know, at first they used to call them data teams because
I have a background in K-12,right, and I used to, years ago,
I used to visit this data teamsand I go, oh my gosh, come on,
come on, people, because allthey would do is look at data
all day long and never, never,actually do anything with it.
Right, and they are PLTsprofessional learning teams
(29:31):
that's what they call them ink-12 and they try to do what I
tell you.
But, again, sometimes withoutthe right facilitation, without
the right process, it ends upbeing kind of complaining
sessions.
Kelly (29:46):
But, it is rare and it's something we wanted to get off
the ground here as, like ourMOST team, because we do a
asynchronous coaching optionthat we call three ideas and the
idea are capitalized forinstructional design, and what
happens in that situation is wethree of the MOST coaches get
put into a development shell ofa faculty and we just give them
(30:10):
three ideas.
We each give them an idea forhow they might change their
course that we think would helpstudents and that's it, and they
can take them, they can leavethem.
It's like a non-evaluative like.
We just provide you somefeedback.
Here's what I would do.
I might reorganize the modulesthis way, or I'd consider using
the transparent assignmenttemplate or whatever we want to
(30:31):
suggest, and then that's it.
And we really wanted to dosomething like that with, like,
the actual on-campus classes,like invite coaches in and ask
them, because even as part ofthat three ideas, you can put
what you want feedback on.
If there's something inparticular like I'm really
interested in, like is my courseaccessible?
Can I get accessibilityfeedback?
But I can imagine doing thesame thing in my class, like hey
(30:53):
, today I'm doing this boardwork.
I'd love for someone to come inwho's not me and look and say,
like are there students who arenot engaged?
Like is there something I coulddo better?
Could you give me some feedbackon what you're seeing, because
I'm only one set of eyes and askfor that sort of information?
It would be really, reallyhelpful, but we just never got
(31:15):
that off the ground thissemester.
This is probably our lastsemester with that team, because
we're completely block grantfunded and we're out of funds,
and so we'll see what happens inthe future, but I do still
think that some version of thatis like the right way to open up
the conversation about teaching.
AL (31:37):
I think so.
I really wish we can structurethat somehow.
And the fact that you had a,you had a grant right, that it's
not embedded in our practice isis a problem, right?
It's a challenge.
I want to ask you about how canwe be pragmatic about closing
the loop on PD.
So I mentioned earlier someplaces, it's a one-time shot.
(32:00):
Here's a brown bag lunch PD.
Try this out.
Or your three ideas.
My pet peeve has always beenwell, how do we close the loop?
How do we know that theyactually did something?
Can we do a simple reflectionform?
It's not evaluative, we justwant to know your reflection on
how it went.
Like three questions, right,what did you try from your three
(32:23):
ideas?
How do you think it went, whatevidence do you have of how it
went, and what would you do next?
So and it's not about oh well,you should have done it this way
or gosh, darn it, you shouldhave done it that way.
It's just a learning right.
Closing the loop, because wereally don't know if people are
doing the things that theylearned in PD.
Do you have any suggestions onhow we might be able to close
(32:46):
that loop?
It's another challenge inhigher ed.
Kelly (32:49):
Well, and I like that.
You didn't, I mean you call ita loop but, like you actually
said as one of the tasks, likewhat would you do next?
Like so that you are making ititerative, right, you are making
this a reflective teachingprocess about how are you going
to continue this or how wouldyou refine it.
Like maybe it doesn't work,like what, what are you going to
do next?
I mean for that, three ideas.
We do actually have a closedthe loop where they can to get
(33:12):
their flex credit for it, theyhave to submit that, basically
reflection, like hey, what didyou change type of a deal.
And most of our workshopofferings here, I would say
probably not in workshops,that's a little bit harder to
close the loop on because thoseare so one off.
You're just hoping thatsomebody gets a good idea, right
, like, if anything, you maybeare asking them in your
(33:36):
evaluation survey, like what'ssomething you're going to try
based on this?
Why do you think it's going tomake an impact?
What support might you need tomake that a reality?
So, just a quick little what'sgoing to be changing?
Was this the right level foryou too, but for most of cohorts
, after each, at the end of eachmodule of learning, they have
(33:57):
to post something that showswhere they were originally right
, like so, here's this week inour humanized course.
Right now, we're doing ahumanized course and this week
is all about student to studentinteraction online, and so one
of their options is to improve acurrent discussion board, and
so faculty have to post what theoriginal discussion board was,
(34:18):
what idea they were inspired bywithin the content of the week,
and then what their updateddiscussion board looks like now
that they have used, likeinfused, that idea.
So that might be providingoptions for replies, right,
instead of just saying reply totwo students, it's you know,
when you reply here's, here'swhat I'm looking for.
(34:38):
I'd like you to know, provideanother example of what they're
talking about, or I'd like youto contrast that with what you
said, or whether that's justmaking their discussion board
more authentic in general,having students tie something
back to their real life.
So those to me, and they'relike, not only are we closing
the loop, but, these facultymembers are getting something
(34:59):
that they can immediately putinto their course, there's no,
they're not doing busy work,right, they're kind of right
away having something that theycan change in their course, and
so that's something that's partof those bigger cohorts that we
run.
I think it is hard, though, howdo we do that in something
that's more one-off right,that's more of a workshop, right
(35:20):
?
We're running a communitypractice right now, and every
week it's sort of like we'rejust sharing ideas.
And you've got me thinking nowabout like, okay, how do I have
us close the loop on what welearned in the previous week?
Like, did you take anythingaway?
What were the changes you made?
Because it's happening, we'rejust not capturing it
(35:44):
necessarily.
Like our first meeting, a bunchof folks were inspired like, oh,
I love the idea of a card sort.
Oh, I love this idea of one ofour faculty shared plickers,
which are the yeah.
And so another faculty memberwas like, oh my gosh, I love the
idea of a plicker, because,again, he's more of an old
school lecturer.
But this example that sheprovided is like it takes you
like three minutes to do aplicker activity and now you
(36:05):
have an idea of where yourstudents are in terms of an
understanding on something andthen you can launch into your
lecture.
And so for him, it was ano-brainer and he was super
excited about it.
And the very next meeting waslike can I actually share about
plickers and the things he hadmade between the two weeks
between our meetings.
So it's really hard withone-off things, but I think with
(36:26):
the other pieces we can closethe loop on what we're doing.
AL (36:30):
I want to ask you about issue in STEM of equity gaps.
They tend to be a bit morestark in STEM when you look at
the data across the country.
Depending on the year, I workanywhere 60 to 70% with faculty.
That's my jam.
I developed this inquiry andaction process.
(36:52):
The Community College ResearchCenter recently featured it just
a brief Q&A and this is abouttaking a group of faculty to,
they come up with a homegrownpractice and I call it a
treatment.
We're going to try thistreatment.
We're going to be scientistsand we're going to do these
things and we're going to comeback and actually look at
(37:12):
student work and make theconnection between some sample
student work and what we said wewere going to teach.
And we asked the question, thestrengths that we see in the
student work, what do you thinkour instruction led to that?
In addition, if we see somecontinuing needs in the student
work, what can we do withsubsequent instruction?
(37:34):
Right, and in this work, whatI'm finding when we elevate our
practice, when we continuallyimprove, it doesn't happen all
the time, but in this so-calledall students approach, when we
try to elevate our pedagogy, Ihave worked with faculty that
closed equity gaps and I'mwondering if you have
(37:55):
experienced that.
I don't know it can vary byyear and section, but have you
experienced that by bringingyour pedagogy, your assessment,
to this level that you havesignificantly reduced or closed
gaps from your experience?
Kelly (38:08):
So I haven't looked at my data in a bit, but I would say
I would hazard to guess that Ihave reduced but not closed,
right.
I still think that those equitygaps persist and some of those
it's more institutional, rightor, like, just structural.
These poor students areovercoming other life hurdles
and it doesn't matter what I doin my class if a student is
(38:31):
unable to make it to class forwhatever reason that might
happen.
But I will say I think lettingstudents, valuing students
thought process and showing themthat they belong in the field,
like, or that they matter, theirideas matter in the field, is a
huge key to reducing thoseequity gaps, especially in STEM.
(38:51):
Because I think too often whenwe do that, what Dan Meyer said
where his first two phases rightto bring that back of focusing
on my ideas or focusing onmath's ideas my ideas and math's
ideas are pretty white centric,right, I mean, it's pretty
Eurocentric in general and sowhich isn't necessarily a bad
thing but it's about connectingstudents' ideas to like okay,
(39:19):
your ideas are beautiful, wejust need to add all this
communication that is reallyit's just learning a whole new
language math and so why does itmatter that we do these things,
like let me explain why thiscommunication matters, why what
you wrote could be ambiguous andwhy we would need to clean it
up.
But, all of your thinking isbrilliant, right, like having
that moment to sit there with astudent and be able to say, hey,
you're doing great things.
(39:40):
To do that, cheerleading that,yes, and of like this is some
good work and we could improveit, right, um, I think really
helps students see themselves inthe material in ways that I
can't do.
When every single math thing isnamed after some European dude,
or like I'm a white womanstanding at the front of the
room, I can't, I can't make astudent feel like they belong in
(40:02):
any way other than lettingtheir voice be heard, making
sure that they realize that thethings that they're saying are
really smart, right, likethey're doing great math.
I think that's the key is likenot only letting students see
their own brilliance, see thatthey belong in the subject in
that way, but also believingthat students can belong,
(40:24):
because I think too many of our,too many faculty, have a
deficit mindset in STEM of likewho can, who can be prepared,
who, and it's like I mean if youcome in with that mindset, of
course they're going to struggle, like you, you have to believe
that your students are capableof doing this, at least until
they've proven to you, like 10times, that they're not right.
Make them prove to you that theycan, as opposed to making them
(40:46):
prove that they can't, which Ithink is where the mindset that
most faculty come from is thislike well, and then they only
end up teaching to thosestudents who are well-prepared,
and that's not many of ourstudents in this day and age.
Not with the COVID learninggaps, not with AB 1705 and AB
705.
We have students who aremissing some of these skills
(41:07):
that we're used to them having,and we just need to believe that
they can overcome that andlearn those skills as they also
learn the course material.
And let them make the mistakesso that we can actually discuss
and have those moments to say ohwait, here's why we can't do
that thing you just didalgebraically.
AL (41:25):
Yeah, no, and you're right, Equity gaps are stubborn.
I have to sometimes remind someof my colleagues who work at
the university level, they're mytheorist buddies who get mad.
Actually they're like " got toclose and be like hey look, we
can work on what we have controlover.
(41:46):
We're going to elevate, we'regoing to improve our pedagogy,
we're going to rethink, butthese gaps are stubborn.
For what you mentioned, right,it's funny.
Just the other day I was lookingat the three-year completion
rate for one college versusanother.
So this particular college hassomething like a 9%, right.
(42:06):
And, by the way, we can say, ohwell, you know, part time,
they're mostly part time well,the six years, not that much
better.
And then another college waslike 35%.
Here's the thing, theinstitution that had a really
low, it's in a super, supereconomically depressed zip code,
right.
And the other college was in avery, very high income area,
(42:31):
right.
So I don't want to make excuseswhen we have, you know, a 10%
and just blame it all on oh well, it's the zip code.
But there is the reality thatthere are things we cannot
control that happen to thesepoor, disproportionately
impacted students.
It makes our mission at theseinstitutions that are in these
(42:53):
kinds of zip codes, that muchmore critical, mission critical,
if you will.
And, by the way, when you're ina very, very high income area
and the highest is 35, that'sstill not the best right.
So in fact, I'd love for someresearch to come out there.
Maybe the RP group will do it.
I'll ask them is I'd love to seewhere you have higher
(43:16):
completion rates in those veryeconomically depressed areas,
'cause if we can find those, wehave so much to learn from those
campuses and what they're doing.
So the point of me saying thisis yes, equity gaps are stubborn
, and two context is important.
We can't just look at the dataand think that, oh, the faculty,
they're must be so much better.
(43:36):
By the way, I know these twocampuses and no, they're not.
As we wind down here, Kelly, doyou have any other parting
thoughts about your journey,your continuous journey, that
you would like to share?
Kelly (43:53):
I would say one thing that came out the other day.
I was part of a panel at anaccessibility week session and
one of the questions is asked,how did you end up learning as
much as you've learned aboutaccessibility and I think you
can replace that with grading oractive learning or what you
know insert topic and the otherfolks were like, oh, I went to a
(44:16):
lot of workshops, so I went toa lot of webinars and for me,
yes, I've done that, but I thinkmost of the learning that I've
had that has been the mostimpactful is finding those
voices that are into the thingthat I'm curious about and
following them on some sort ofsocial media, whether it's
LinkedIn, whether it's, you know, even, Instagram or Facebook or
(44:39):
you know, Blue Sky, whatever itis finding wherever you are
already have that trickle in allthe time is really, it makes
you constantly think, it makesyou a more reflective person and
it gives you those little ideasthat maybe in that moment
you're not ready to to do right.
I think back to I think one ofthe biggest impacts of like my
(45:00):
teaching was I was at a workshopand seeing a bunch of really
great stats activities from RoxyPeck and I raised my hand.
I was one of those stubbornpain in the ass faculty members,
um, that I hate now as afacilitator.
No, I don't hate me, but I waslike how am I supposed to do
this with the three unit statsclass?
I can't even cover thecurriculum.
(45:21):
Our curriculum is a mile long.
I cannot cover stats curriculumand do these, these activities
are fabulous.
I'm not gonna.
They're great, but I can't doit.
And in that moment, um, mosteveryone else in that room had a
four unit stats class, so theyall just sort of went.
Well, I don't know how you doit in three.
I have four.
(45:42):
Um, and at the break, my friendAmbika, who taught at College of
the Canyons, where this was,came over and she's like you got
to flip your classroom.
She's like the only way you'reable to do this stuff is if you
flip your classroom.
You got to put your lecturesonline.
You've got so you can actuallymake time for this.
I didn't do anything in thatmoment, but the next semester I
(46:03):
was like I think I'm going totry this.
I have this pile of activitiesfor stats and I can't use them.
I'm going to try to flip myclass, not only putting yourself
in a space where you're goingto get ideas constantly, but
also surrounding yourself withpeople who are going to make you
question and, who will tell youthe harsh truth of you know,
(46:23):
you're going to have to do workif you want to do these
activities.
You need to flip your classroombecause I think when you
surround yourself by people whojust tell you you're doing great
, you don't see any reason toimprove.
Right, do everything the same,as you find those folks right
who maybe you can both push eachother to be better, and then
just realize this is allreflective work, right, it's all
(46:45):
iterative.
It's all thinking about, okay,that went well, could it have
gone better?
Did it go well for everystudent?
Being really intentional as youlook around your class and
seeing, especially if it's not,thinking about that
disproportionate impact, who'snot actively engaging in this
(47:06):
class and how could I fix that?
Because I think too often wefocus on the students who are
actively engaging, right, theones that are smiling and
nodding or giving us their inputor chatting and we don't pay
attention to who's not talkingand sort of why and really
figuring out ways to interrogatethat.
AL (47:23):
So outside of education, unfortunately, there's so many
stereotypes.
You hear it all the time forK-12.
Oh well, they get to work fromeight to three and have their
summers off.
And they have no idea that whenyou are a good teacher and you
care, you're putting in 70, 80hours a week.
(47:43):
And the same thing in higher ed.
Oh well, they just teach twosemesters.
They can have the summer off,no winter session, whatever.
But when you take great care,like you, to continually improve
your craft, to take thisteaching and learning as a
profession, I see it really nodifferent as a doctor.
(48:03):
But in society we elevate, wethink doctors right, well, I
mean right, it's important, theytry to keep us healthy, right,
although in my opinion they giveus too many drugs, which
there's other ways, like can wejust eat better sometimes?
Anyway, I'm not gonna, I'm notgonna go there.
Point is, I think teachers,faculty, that profession, that
teaching profession, is sodifficult.
(48:25):
It is so difficult and peopleoutside of education don't
really understand that, but yetrewarding.
I said in the beginning that Iwas a fan and I'm even a bigger
fan now that we've unpacked whatyou do.
Kelly, thank you so much forparticipating in the Student
Success Podcast.
Kelly (48:43):
Thank you for having me Al.
AL (48:45):
Thank you for listening to the Student Success Podcast.
You can subscribe to the showand newsletter on the Continuous
Learning Institute link belowand, of course, on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube orwherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you.
Welcome to the Student Success Podcast.
If you work in higher ed andwant to learn ways to support
students, check out today'sepisode.
Kelly (00:09):
[Quote teaser] If rigor, whatever that means, matters to
you as an instructor, yourgrades really need to reflect
student understanding and notcompliance.
[Quote teaser] I don't care ifthey know week four how to use
the chain rule to take aderivative.
If they figure it out by weeksix, I'm still happy, right,
they still shown that they'vemet that standard.
(00:32):
And so then you realize, ok,there's this whole world of
standards- based grading thatvalues this learning progression
and where students end up, asopposed to where they are at
that moment and maybe how theywere feeling on that particular
day that they took a quiz, thatidea of just like, oh, I don't,
I don't think I care about, Imean, obviously I need it by a
(00:53):
certain time because math buildson itself, right, so I might
have to have some cut off forwhen they have to learn it, but
maybe it doesn't have to be sorigid.
AL (01:05):
Welcome to the Student Success Podcast, Kelly.
Kelly (01:07):
I'm happy to be here, Al.
AL (01:10):
So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kelly (01:12):
So I'm a math faculty member at San Diego Mesa College
, where I've been lucky enoughto also be part of our teaching
and learning team.
We have this Mesa's OngoingSupport for Teaching, our MOST
team, which has been reallyfulfilling, and then I've also
worked on some stuff at thedistrict level in terms of OER,
open educational resources.
(01:33):
It's been nice to be able to doa little bit more than just
teach math but also help othereducators realize things like
zero textbook costs in theirclasses and how to do anything
they want to do in their classeslike working on course design
AL (01:48):
So I've been a fan for a while.
I would check yournotifications for your social
media and I've been to at leastone of your webinars, and one of
the things I appreciate aboutyou is that, in my view, you
center kindness in your craft.
You truly, genuinely care aboutstudents and you do this by so
(02:13):
many ways.
But I really appreciate how youare always looking to
continually improve your craftand then sharing that with your
colleagues.
So for today's episode, I'dlove for you to tell us a little
bit about what you do in theclassroom, and it could be
whatever you want, and I'm surethat, yes, it's going to be math
, but we have so many listenersfrom different disciplines, it
(02:36):
doesn't matter.
They're going to learnsomething from you because
you're a teacher at heart.
You know we use the wordfaculty in higher ed.
I still kind of like the wordteacher, but anyway, love to
learn about some of the thingsyou do in the classroom.
Kelly (02:47):
Yeah, thanks for that question.
I think when you say kindness,I think of like I don't know,
like that's not what I think ishappening in my class
necessarily.
I think it's more just caringabout students as a whole person
, and I guess that is kindness,right, to want to know what
students are interested in, whatthey're doing in their lives,
(03:08):
what things they value.
Thinking about your commentabout just like following folks
on social media, that's part ofwhat has made my journey.
The journey that it has been isthe folks that I've followed.
And thinking about this bringsme back to a really old Dan
Meyer post on Twitter, like athousand years ago I mean, I
(03:29):
have no idea how old this is,but he basically said that his
teaching journey started withphase one I want to show
students the brilliance of mythinking.
And then, phase two, I want toshow students the brilliance of
math.
Phase three was finally to thispoint that I think I'm finally
out of my career, which is, Iwant to understand the
brilliance of your thinking likeno longer centering themselves,
(03:50):
no longer centering even thecontent, but more the students
thinking about that content.
In my classroom I feel likethat looks a lot like me.
Stepping to the side.
I do a lot of what I realize nowis probably putting my students
in that zone of proximaldevelopment, if you want to like
, use fancy terms, right, whereI'm constantly giving students
(04:14):
problems that are just beyondwhat we've talked about in class
, just beyond what they'vepreviously seen, and putting
them in this sort of space wherethey have to get used to being
uncomfortable and not knowing,and then seeing what resources
they have, both withinthemselves, like what do I know?
And then what did my peers know?
(04:35):
Like how can I solve thisproblem?
It highlights their brilliance,right.
It highlights that they can dothings that are beyond what
they've seen before.
And then I do ask them a lot ofquestions about themselves.
I do really try to value theirprogression and their learning
by doing things likereassessments and giving them
(04:55):
options when I think thingsdon't need to be an exam.
To how would you like to showme you understood limits in a
calculus class?
I don't think that that needsto be an exam.
Here are four options for howyou could show me that you
understand this.
And then, if you think ofsomething better, feel free,
pitch it to me, I'm happy tohave you create something that
(05:18):
you feel like is something thatshowcases what you understand.
AL (05:21):
That was beautiful.
Zone of proximal development.
Oh, I haven't heard that in solong.
And a lot of the qualityresearch around pedagogy comes
from our K-12 brothers andsisters, so we learned a lot
about that there.
And also there's a lot ofreally good research around
productive struggle in thesciences, especially math.
So I would love to learn, ifyou wouldn't mind, could you
(05:44):
give us an example of thatproductive struggle.
If you have with a particularmath problem or concept or topic
?
Just to kind of unpack that alittle bit more.
Kelly (05:55):
Trying to think what were we doing in class today.
So in class today I've justtaught Calc 2.
Today I would not say it was agreat example.
We started with simple problemsand then we just kept adding
more and more complexity to them, so it wasn't like it was more
of what Peter Liljedahl, there'sthis whole building thinking
classrooms.
You mentioned K-12.
I feel like I have learned somuch more from K-12 than I have
(06:19):
ever learned from the higher edfolks in terms of teaching,
because they actually have timeto do all this PD and that's
part of what they're reallyassessed on, I think, as
teachers, and evaluated on.
There's so many brilliant ideasfrom them, but one of those
ideas which is now gaining a lotof traction in higher ed is the
(06:39):
Building Thinking Classroomsmovement of Peter Liljedahl.
The way I think he frames thisis as thin slicing.
So you have students and thisis what's happens in my
classroom.
I have whiteboards all aroundthe room and students are
randomly assigned to a group andthey go to those whiteboards,
and I have Google slides thatjust have math problems.
(07:00):
Essentially, usually it'llstart with math problems they've
seen before and then they'llslightly transition to things
that are beyond what we've seen,but still right at the cusp,
where I know that they can addsomething to it and they can get
there, and so he calls thatthin slicing.
A lot of us might call itscaffolding, but I mean that's
(07:20):
all students being in that zoneof like just putting them right
in the like.
You don't know this, but youhave to actually think and pull
out all the information that'sin your brain.
And when they're at thewhiteboards it's really lovely
because they can look over andsee another group start and get
an idea that maybe, oh, I shoulddo that, or see that some other
(07:41):
group has a different answerand then try to compare and
contrast and do some of thosemetacognitive strategies that
you just can't accomplish with alecture right.
Like you can't show studentsall the possibilities and have
them make mistakes and trythings in a lecture quite as as
beautifully as you can in thislike thinking classrooms
approach.
AL (08:04):
Oh, Kelly, that sounds like a lot of hooey.
You're not preparing ourstudents.
They're going to fail.
There's no rigor in what you'redoing.
You're oh, I'm so disappointedin you.
You're not preparing them.
So that was my worst sarcasticvoice ever, but I think you get
the idea.
How do you respond to that?
Kelly (08:22):
So this is one thing when I run professional development
and webinars for math faculty, Ithink we tend to make
dichotomies of things that arenot really dichotomies.
Right, like the lecture versusactive learning and anyone you
talk to who's an active learningadvocate, Right, someone who's
(08:43):
doing similar board work?
This, you know, some peoplecall it 360 whiteboards, some
people call it like non-vertical, like whatever non-permanent
vertical spaces.
Is the thinking classroomslanguage for it has using a
flipped classroom, they havevideos that they want their
students to watch.
Almost everyone I've heardpresent on this.
(09:06):
They're doing play posit and sothey're requiring their
students to watch those videosand providing points for
watching those videos outside ofclass.
So those faculty are stilllecturers at heart.
Right, they're still wantingtheir students to see an expert
speak about the actual math.
And then when you talk to alecturer right, I have a lecture
(09:27):
down the hall, a good friendand a colleague of mine and I
listen to him talk to studentsand he'll tell students you need
to go home and practice this.
You need to do like justproblem after problem until this
, because, and that facultymember is also an active learner
like, they're telling theirstudent you need to engage in
active learning and they'll evenbe like explain it to someone,
(09:48):
like any friend, a dog.
Just find someone to explainthe math to and you'll
understand it better.
The way I teach is I'm doingboth.
I don't lecture as much assomebody who might be lecture
based.
I provide a lot of that outsideof class.
But also I find that if you letstudents play with the ideas
before you lecture, you don'tneed to explain every possible
(10:10):
situation.
And when you're comfortableknowing that your students are
going to be successful withquestions that don't look
exactly like the ones you'vedone, you don't need to do every
single iteration.
Because I think when I firststarted teaching, I really
believed I have to show themevery possible thing that might
happen, like my lecture has tocover everything that could go
wrong.
And now I'm like I don't needto show them everything.
(10:32):
I need to give them the tooland then the tools to understand
what to do when things fallapart.
I think there's that falsedichotomy there of like, oh, if
you're having them work on stuff, you're not, but I don't grade
my students on that classwork.
Their only grades in my classare based on understanding, so
their grades are solely based.
I mean, I'd say 70 to 80% arequizzes and exams, things that
(10:57):
they have to do in front of mewith you know, maybe no notes,
things like no formula sheet,none of that.
I've heard from colleagues whoteach the higher level classes,
who teach physics, that mystudents, even my C students,
are doing really well in thoseclasses.
So I think I'm doing somethingright.
I'm doing something right evenif it sounds fluffy.
AL (11:19):
No, you are.
And I want to touch on grading.
Then, right, the way, the wayyou assess because and look, I,
in the same way, I don't have astudent deficit mindset.
I don't have one for faculty,because it's how they were
trained, right, this is how theylearned in graduate school and
they then pass on a lot ofthose, I'll call them antiquated
(11:42):
practices, but they don't,because that's all they know,
and so, and grading has been anissue.
I did a little study at acollege that I coach, I worked
with the researcher, and it wasreally fascinating.
We did a survey of how facultyin pre-calculus grade.
Long story short, after allthese questions of how they
(12:04):
weigh and how they don't, dothey drop a test or not, we saw
that it's basically a lotteryfor students.
So if I'm lucky enough to takepre-cal with Kelly, I will
probably have an 80%.
But if I'm not lucky enough tohave Kelly and I have this other
instructor who weighs thingsdifferently, who's more about
(12:24):
points than the learning he orshe may not know that, but
that's really what happens,you're going to have like a 40%.
I mean, the data wasfascinating.
And so tell us a little bitmore about how you assess
learning.
Kelly (12:41):
Yeah, so I'm really influenced by Josh Eyler, Jesse
Stommel, Robert Talbert, DavidClark, all these kind of big
names that thankfully I ran intoearly on Twitter when Twitter
was still Twitter.
I've had a lot of opportunitiesto read the book Grading for
Equity with different readinggroups, like different groups of
faculty.
(13:02):
So I read it with a group ofjust statistics faculty as part
of the electronic conference onteaching statistics.
I read it with faculty here atMesa and there's just so many
pieces and points that JoeFeldman makes that really
resonate and that one of them isgrading on understanding
instead of compliance.
And to me, if rigor, whateverthat means, matters to you as an
(13:27):
instructor, your grades reallyneed to reflect student
understanding and not compliance.
So like I have still like alittle bit of a visceral
reaction when those reallyamazing faculty were telling me
how they require their studentsto watch those play posit videos
and they're giving points forthose play posit videos that
count towards their grade,because I'm sitting there going,
but like that's just, did theywatch the lecture?
(13:51):
Like yes, but they should beintrinsically motivated to watch
that lecture because they wantto come to class and know what's
going on and be able to engagewith what we're doing in class
for me, not every student isgoing to find me the best
teacher for them, right?
Like?
And maybe video is not the bestmethod for them, like, maybe
(14:11):
they know that they'd muchrather they're me, they'd much
rather just read some text andbe able to scan.
And it's a lot harder to scan avideo, right?
A video is a set amount of time, even at two times speed, that
I have to sit through, whereas,like, I can scan a PDF, try a
problem, see my understandingand move on.
There's no real universaldesign for learning, right, in
(14:33):
the way that these other facultyare doing that.
And the same thing for homework, right?
Not every student needs thesame number of practice problems
.
Not every student needs thesame type of homework, right?
Sort of realizing that a longtime ago, especially because
there was a big movement in likeK-12 to not assign homework
grades, and I think that was oneof those moments where I was
(14:56):
like I never liked homework as astudent.
I never needed to do all of it.
All it did was lower my gradebecause I refused to do it.
And we all, like all of us asfaculty members, I'm sure I've
had the situation where you havea student who turns in all the
homework and still fails thetest, and yet the student turns
in like none of the homework andaces the test, and so you know
there's no correlation betweenthe homework and the test scores
(15:19):
, like the understanding score.
Whether the test is a goodmeasure is another question, and
so I think that was the firstthing that resonated with me of
that book was I need to get ridof all the things that are
grading, compliance, grading,students just doing things and
focus on do they understand?
Another huge piece, and this,all of this he does with nice
(15:40):
little examples in grading forequity of like two different
instructors, sort of what youtalked about, the Kelly versus
the not Kelly, like the lotteryof going into a class of like
what, what matters is that theylearn the thing.
It doesn't matter when theylearn it.
And so when you go yeah, that'strue, I don't care if they know
(16:01):
week four how to use the chainrule, to take a derivative if
they figure it out by week six,I'm still, I'm still happy,
right, like they still shownthat they've met that standard.
And so then you realize, okay,there's this whole world of
standards-based grading thatvalues this learning progression
and where students end up, asopposed to where they are at
(16:21):
that moment and maybe how theywere feeling on that particular
day that they took a quiz.
That idea of just like, oh Idon't think I care about.
I mean, obviously I need it bya certain time because math
builds on itself, right, so Imight have to have some cutoff
for when they have to learn it,but maybe it doesn't have to be
so rigid was a really big ideathat resonated with me.
(16:44):
And then I've been lucky enoughto go to the Grading for Growth
conference that they do onlineevery summer a couple of times,
and having a bunch of folkswho've experimented with this
and can kind of tell you if youwant to go into the ungrading or
alternative grading world,there's no right way to do it
and you can take little bits andpieces that work for you.
(17:07):
So for me, from standards-basedgrading, you come up with all
your standards that you wantstudents to be able to do and
then you decide okay, what is mymetric?
Like some folks are, like, Ineed them to pass a standard
twice.
I need them to show me not justonce that they can do something
, but twice, or is it just once?
(17:28):
Finding those standards was afun activity.
I was actually lucky enough tobe in a like a community of
practice, a faculty inquirygroup with other faculty where
we came up with our whole listof topics from calculus.
We came up with the things thatwe actually were our standards
by ranking everything as E isthey They just need to know its
(17:50):
existence.
This is all based on MariaAnderson's work.
It's an ESIL ESOL framework.
I'll get you all these cutereferences.
E is like existence.
I just need them to know thisexists.
I don't need to ever assess it,but I should probably mention
in a lecture.
They might need to see it.
S is they need to be able to doit.
They can do it with support.
So this might be on a homeworkor a group quiz or a project,
(18:10):
something where they can go outand get some support.
They could use AI if they want.
You can use their peers a tutorI'm fine with that.
I just want to know that theycan do it with support.
I is independent, so somethingI want to know that you can do
independently.
So this is going to end up on aquiz in my class or an exam,
and then L is lifetime.
I need you to have this skillfor the rest of your life.
(18:31):
Like this, you gotta know thesethings and those need to be
like on all of the things, right, and then probably a final exam
.
But we ranked as a group, weranked all of these ideas in our
calculus class, using thatframework, and then had a
discussion when there was adisagreement, when we weren't
all aligned, as like, oh, thisshould be just existence.
(18:52):
And then that person who waskind of off would maybe sell us
on why, like Gina Abbiate was inmy, in this group, and she had
rated uh, the epsilon deltaproofs this precise definition
of a limit, uh, which I thinkacross the board we had all done
, existence.
She put supported, and we werelike, justify, justify this.
(19:13):
And so she, you know, she waslike, let me explain what I
think this is really important,it's their first formal
definition.
And so she's explaining it andwe're like, okay, we're not
convinced.
But you know, maybe I'll move alittle bit that direction next
time, I don't know.
But all those things that wesaid were I ended up as our
standards, and then we decidedthose are going to be our quiz
questions, we're going to quizthose every week and then we'll
(19:36):
reassess them the following week, and those reassessments are
not going to be the same.
I'm going to make my students doa slightly harder problem.
I'm going to maybe change it upa little bit so that they're
not just looking at my key,memorizing and regurgitating a
procedure, but they have toreally show their understanding
in that second attempt.
And then, since I teachsupported calculus, I actually
(19:58):
give my students a number ofattempts because for me I have
students coming in with reallyvaried skills and so I can't
assume that you know, after twoweeks they're going to get
something down.
It might take them a little bitmore time going back and
reviewing material, but that'sjust the only thing I do.
Standards-based are my quizzes.
So it's an interesting ideathat I'm still doing these
(20:18):
weighted grades, because I'mkind of it's uncomfortable to
move away from something you'veused for so many years.
But I'm just doing one littlepocket of it as the
standards-based where I'm doingthese reassessments and letting
students show their growth inthat one section.
AL (20:34):
Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful.
And the unfortunate part abouthigher ed is it can be such a
lonely profession.
And you had the space to dothis activity with your
colleagues and create thisstandards based grading oh my
gosh, I wish that can happeneverywhere.
So I have a question for you,because when Twitter went to
(20:58):
this hellscape, a lot ofeducators moved over.
It was funny because you wouldthink, isn't this a platform for
jobs?
And no, not really.
It's become much more than that.
There's a lot of educators thatmoved over to LinkedIn,
actually.
And it was funny because I sawone of your posts going to a
particular college to do somekind of engagement with math
(21:20):
faculty and I wrote as a comment.
I said I don't know if youremember.
I said, oh, were you able toleave unharmed?
Right?
And the reason I say that isbecause I've been put in as a
coach and as a facilitator inspaces with math faculty.
And boy, they can be so effingbrutal.
(21:43):
And here's the thing, right.
So you have this group offaculty like you, right, that
are willing to try things.
Right, they understand that ourinstitutions are not only
places of learning for students,but they're places of learning
for us like you're trying somestuff right and then you're not
ready yet to like overhaul.
(22:04):
Your waiting, that's fine, butyou're doing things.
Little bits and pieces here andthere, right how, and I don't
know if there's a right answerto this.
I have an idea of how to do it.
I've done it over the years,but I'm wondering your
perspective.
What do you do when it's alwaysthe same people that go to the
(22:24):
PD who are willing to change,but you still have a significant
percentage or even if it's onlyone faculty member that's one
faculty member too many thatjust don't want any of it.
They're still going to do whatthey're going to do.
And is there a way to helpthose faculty, to kind of bring
(22:47):
them on board?
Do you have any experience ofsomething that might've worked?
Kelly (22:51):
I will say as a facilitator, when I work with a
campus where I know there'sgoing to be faculty who are not
in the camp, right like the LukeWood and Frank Harris used to
have this four quadrant thing,you have your allies, you have
your choir, the people who knowwhat to do and are doing it, or
your choir are willing to do itbut don't know what to do.
They're your allies.
And then, like there wasresistors, like what do you do
(23:12):
with that group of facultythat's just resisted?
They don't know what to do andthey also aren't really willing
to change.
And I think the only thing youcan do is as a facilitator.
Hopefully you're in a spacewhere the department has brought
in everyone, right, like youactually get them to show up and
I think for me part of that isdoing PD within spaces that
(23:35):
they're already there, right,like making that a regular part
of your department meetings, ofyour school meetings.
Too often it's not, and ourschool meetings and our
department meetings,- are justcompletely informational.
Get people who are not going toever sign up to show up to a
(23:56):
here's how to teach right, orhere's an idea for teaching, and
then I think, once you getthese people in the room, a lot
of it is just putting them inthe shoes of a student.
So for me, I tend to have abunch of really fun math
problems, whether it's the openmiddle questions that Robert
Kaplinsky has on his site, or acard sort or something that's
more of like a puzzle meets amath problem, or just a really
(24:18):
interesting math problem thatyou lead off with, you'll find
the resistors kind of open up,because we all fell in love with
math, we all love math, right,or whatever the heck we might be
talking about.
And so when you give them thatpuzzle that, they just naturally
kind of become a student andsee, oh well, this could be fun.
And then, if you can tie it tothe curriculum of like okay,
(24:42):
here's how I use this in mycalculus class, here's how this
is like a really good lead off,and if you keep it something
tiny too, like a lot of the Idid a whole blog post on like
warmup routines and I think ifyou can do something that you're
going to be like this is onlygoing to take 10 minutes of your
class time A lot of facultywill kind of buy in on this idea
of all I have to do is fiveminutes and I thought it was fun
(25:05):
.
Like, if you have them,participate, you sell them on.
It's not like overhaul, likeit's not doing the whole
thinking classrooms, you don'thave to give up all the control
and let your students go to theboards, right?
I think those things help a lot.
And then letting faculty reallyhave space in those places to
voice concerns, because I thinktoo often as people who run PD,
(25:28):
we go in and we're just likehere's the right way to do
things and we don't reallyacknowledge that this is the way
I do things and it works in myclass in these, these
constraints, and it might notwork in your class.
Like, if you have reasons youthink it's not going to work,
let's chat about them, because Ican't problem solve things that
you don't get to vocalize.
Right, you're just going tointernalize oh yeah, this
(25:50):
doesn't work for me and you'rejust sit back and not have a
conversation.
So giving folks that space wherethey're not taking the whole
room down, so giving them a wayto share, maybe in a smaller
group setting, maybe in anasynchronous or not asynchronous
, but like a separatenote-taking space, is a really
nice way to be able to hopefullybring them in, but I think you
(26:12):
need to treat those faculty asexperts, right?
You're doing something amazing.
Let's pull out what you'redoing and have that conversation
.
I mean, there are some that arejust it's never going to move.
We know that.
I mean the tenure is a problem.
AL (26:26):
Yeah, and that's the reality , right, that we have to realize
that some won't change and somecampuses, what where they're
doing, they're taking drasticmeasures to work with counselors
to make sure that especiallyour most disproportionately
impacted students don't go tothose sections.
I mean, I'm telling you that'sactually happening.
And here's the other thing again.
It's higher ed.
(26:48):
It's not really set up for usto be learners as educators.
So, I work with campuses wherethey actually don't have
department meetings anymore, sothey've lost that space.
In some ways.
I understand it, because itused to be just these meetings
that you're talking about.
That could have been an email,right, but now there's zero
settings and all they rely onare these once in a year, the
(27:10):
beginning of the school year,they're often called flex days
and every campus has differentright.
Some campuses have one day offlex.
You get your PD for one hourout of the year and you better,
like, go do something with it,right.
And then you have campuses thathave an entire week dedicated
to that right.
That's the difficult part, andI think if we can somehow embed
(27:34):
in our practice I don't know,this may end up being
contractual, but can we build acommunity of practice where we
meet almost at least biweekly,where we just discuss our craft,
what we're doing, what works,what doesn't, and we're not
pointing fingers.
One of the things that I loveway, way, many, many moons ago,
when I was doing my doctoralwork, I wanted to know what
(27:58):
other countries were doing, andI became very interested in
Japan, because faculty there dosomething you might've heard of
it called lesson study, and theyactually take the time to
observe each other teach.
Kelly (28:13):
A non-evaluative observation, like that's the key
right, undefined this is notpart of the evaluation process,
it is just let's go like seewhat the other people are doing.
AL (28:33):
I think that's such a beautiful way kind of to frame
it.
But in the United States areyou crazy?
We can't even get ourdepartment meeting to talk about
teaching and learning, letalone observe one, although I
got to tell you I am workingwith a campus and that is what
they're doing.
Their math department puttogether a formal they call it
learn from your peer program,and we came up with this whole
(28:54):
schedule of opting in facultywho want to observe other
faculty, and so, but that's rare.
Kelly (29:01):
Yeah, well, it's something that does exist in the
US in K-12, right, I think theycall it like pineapple charts
or something.
There's some weird name for it.
AL (29:10):
You know, at first they used to call them data teams because
I have a background in K-12,right, and I used to, years ago,
I used to visit this data teamsand I go, oh my gosh, come on,
come on, people, because allthey would do is look at data
all day long and never, never,actually do anything with it.
Right, and they are PLTsprofessional learning teams
(29:31):
that's what they call them ink-12 and they try to do what I
tell you.
But, again, sometimes withoutthe right facilitation, without
the right process, it ends upbeing kind of complaining
sessions.
Kelly (29:46):
But, it is rare and it's something we wanted to get off
the ground here as, like ourMOST team, because we do a
asynchronous coaching optionthat we call three ideas and the
idea are capitalized forinstructional design, and what
happens in that situation is wethree of the MOST coaches get
put into a development shell ofa faculty and we just give them
(30:10):
three ideas.
We each give them an idea forhow they might change their
course that we think would helpstudents and that's it, and they
can take them, they can leavethem.
It's like a non-evaluative like.
We just provide you somefeedback.
Here's what I would do.
I might reorganize the modulesthis way, or I'd consider using
the transparent assignmenttemplate or whatever we want to
(30:31):
suggest, and then that's it.
And we really wanted to dosomething like that with, like,
the actual on-campus classes,like invite coaches in and ask
them, because even as part ofthat three ideas, you can put
what you want feedback on.
If there's something inparticular like I'm really
interested in, like is my courseaccessible?
Can I get accessibilityfeedback?
But I can imagine doing thesame thing in my class, like hey
(30:53):
, today I'm doing this boardwork.
I'd love for someone to come inwho's not me and look and say,
like are there students who arenot engaged?
Like is there something I coulddo better?
Could you give me some feedbackon what you're seeing, because
I'm only one set of eyes and askfor that sort of information?
It would be really, reallyhelpful, but we just never got
(31:15):
that off the ground thissemester.
This is probably our lastsemester with that team, because
we're completely block grantfunded and we're out of funds,
and so we'll see what happens inthe future, but I do still
think that some version of thatis like the right way to open up
the conversation about teaching.
AL (31:37):
I think so.
I really wish we can structurethat somehow.
And the fact that you had a,you had a grant right, that it's
not embedded in our practice isis a problem, right?
It's a challenge.
I want to ask you about how canwe be pragmatic about closing
the loop on PD.
So I mentioned earlier someplaces, it's a one-time shot.
(32:00):
Here's a brown bag lunch PD.
Try this out.
Or your three ideas.
My pet peeve has always beenwell, how do we close the loop?
How do we know that theyactually did something?
Can we do a simple reflectionform?
It's not evaluative, we justwant to know your reflection on
how it went.
Like three questions, right,what did you try from your three
(32:23):
ideas?
How do you think it went, whatevidence do you have of how it
went, and what would you do next?
So and it's not about oh well,you should have done it this way
or gosh, darn it, you shouldhave done it that way.
It's just a learning right.
Closing the loop, because wereally don't know if people are
doing the things that theylearned in PD.
Do you have any suggestions onhow we might be able to close
(32:46):
that loop?
It's another challenge inhigher ed.
Kelly (32:49):
Well, and I like that.
You didn't, I mean you call ita loop but, like you actually
said as one of the tasks, likewhat would you do next?
Like so that you are making ititerative, right, you are making
this a reflective teachingprocess about how are you going
to continue this or how wouldyou refine it.
Like maybe it doesn't work,like what, what are you going to
do next?
I mean for that, three ideas.
We do actually have a closedthe loop where they can to get
(33:12):
their flex credit for it, theyhave to submit that, basically
reflection, like hey, what didyou change type of a deal.
And most of our workshopofferings here, I would say
probably not in workshops,that's a little bit harder to
close the loop on because thoseare so one off.
You're just hoping thatsomebody gets a good idea, right
, like, if anything, you maybeare asking them in your
(33:36):
evaluation survey, like what'ssomething you're going to try
based on this?
Why do you think it's going tomake an impact?
What support might you need tomake that a reality?
So, just a quick little what'sgoing to be changing?
Was this the right level foryou too, but for most of cohorts
, after each, at the end of eachmodule of learning, they have
(33:57):
to post something that showswhere they were originally right
, like so, here's this week inour humanized course.
Right now, we're doing ahumanized course and this week
is all about student to studentinteraction online, and so one
of their options is to improve acurrent discussion board, and
so faculty have to post what theoriginal discussion board was,
(34:18):
what idea they were inspired bywithin the content of the week,
and then what their updateddiscussion board looks like now
that they have used, likeinfused, that idea.
So that might be providingoptions for replies, right,
instead of just saying reply totwo students, it's you know,
when you reply here's, here'swhat I'm looking for.
(34:38):
I'd like you to know, provideanother example of what they're
talking about, or I'd like youto contrast that with what you
said, or whether that's justmaking their discussion board
more authentic in general,having students tie something
back to their real life.
So those to me, and they'relike, not only are we closing
the loop, but, these facultymembers are getting something
(34:59):
that they can immediately putinto their course, there's no,
they're not doing busy work,right, they're kind of right
away having something that theycan change in their course, and
so that's something that's partof those bigger cohorts that we
run.
I think it is hard, though, howdo we do that in something
that's more one-off right,that's more of a workshop, right
(35:20):
?
We're running a communitypractice right now, and every
week it's sort of like we'rejust sharing ideas.
And you've got me thinking nowabout like, okay, how do I have
us close the loop on what welearned in the previous week?
Like, did you take anythingaway?
What were the changes you made?
Because it's happening, we'rejust not capturing it
(35:44):
necessarily.
Like our first meeting, a bunchof folks were inspired like, oh,
I love the idea of a card sort.
Oh, I love this idea of one ofour faculty shared plickers,
which are the yeah.
And so another faculty memberwas like, oh my gosh, I love the
idea of a plicker, because,again, he's more of an old
school lecturer.
But this example that sheprovided is like it takes you
like three minutes to do aplicker activity and now you
(36:05):
have an idea of where yourstudents are in terms of an
understanding on something andthen you can launch into your
lecture.
And so for him, it was ano-brainer and he was super
excited about it.
And the very next meeting waslike can I actually share about
plickers and the things he hadmade between the two weeks
between our meetings.
So it's really hard withone-off things, but I think with
(36:26):
the other pieces we can closethe loop on what we're doing.
AL (36:30):
I want to ask you about issue in STEM of equity gaps.
They tend to be a bit morestark in STEM when you look at
the data across the country.
Depending on the year, I workanywhere 60 to 70% with faculty.
That's my jam.
I developed this inquiry andaction process.
(36:52):
The Community College ResearchCenter recently featured it just
a brief Q&A and this is abouttaking a group of faculty to,
they come up with a homegrownpractice and I call it a
treatment.
We're going to try thistreatment.
We're going to be scientistsand we're going to do these
things and we're going to comeback and actually look at
(37:12):
student work and make theconnection between some sample
student work and what we said wewere going to teach.
And we asked the question, thestrengths that we see in the
student work, what do you thinkour instruction led to that?
In addition, if we see somecontinuing needs in the student
work, what can we do withsubsequent instruction?
(37:34):
Right, and in this work, whatI'm finding when we elevate our
practice, when we continuallyimprove, it doesn't happen all
the time, but in this so-calledall students approach, when we
try to elevate our pedagogy, Ihave worked with faculty that
closed equity gaps and I'mwondering if you have
(37:55):
experienced that.
I don't know it can vary byyear and section, but have you
experienced that by bringingyour pedagogy, your assessment,
to this level that you havesignificantly reduced or closed
gaps from your experience?
Kelly (38:08):
So I haven't looked at my data in a bit, but I would say
I would hazard to guess that Ihave reduced but not closed,
right.
I still think that those equitygaps persist and some of those
it's more institutional, rightor, like, just structural.
These poor students areovercoming other life hurdles
and it doesn't matter what I doin my class if a student is
(38:31):
unable to make it to class forwhatever reason that might
happen.
But I will say I think lettingstudents, valuing students
thought process and showing themthat they belong in the field,
like, or that they matter, theirideas matter in the field, is a
huge key to reducing thoseequity gaps, especially in STEM.
(38:51):
Because I think too often whenwe do that, what Dan Meyer said
where his first two phases rightto bring that back of focusing
on my ideas or focusing onmath's ideas my ideas and math's
ideas are pretty white centric,right, I mean, it's pretty
Eurocentric in general and sowhich isn't necessarily a bad
thing but it's about connectingstudents' ideas to like okay,
(39:19):
your ideas are beautiful, wejust need to add all this
communication that is reallyit's just learning a whole new
language math and so why does itmatter that we do these things,
like let me explain why thiscommunication matters, why what
you wrote could be ambiguous andwhy we would need to clean it
up.
But, all of your thinking isbrilliant, right, like having
that moment to sit there with astudent and be able to say, hey,
you're doing great things.
(39:40):
To do that, cheerleading that,yes, and of like this is some
good work and we could improveit, right, um, I think really
helps students see themselves inthe material in ways that I
can't do.
When every single math thing isnamed after some European dude,
or like I'm a white womanstanding at the front of the
room, I can't, I can't make astudent feel like they belong in
(40:02):
any way other than lettingtheir voice be heard, making
sure that they realize that thethings that they're saying are
really smart, right, likethey're doing great math.
I think that's the key is likenot only letting students see
their own brilliance, see thatthey belong in the subject in
that way, but also believingthat students can belong,
(40:24):
because I think too many of our,too many faculty, have a
deficit mindset in STEM of likewho can, who can be prepared,
who, and it's like I mean if youcome in with that mindset, of
course they're going to struggle, like you, you have to believe
that your students are capableof doing this, at least until
they've proven to you, like 10times, that they're not right.
Make them prove to you that theycan, as opposed to making them
(40:46):
prove that they can't, which Ithink is where the mindset that
most faculty come from is thislike well, and then they only
end up teaching to thosestudents who are well-prepared,
and that's not many of ourstudents in this day and age.
Not with the COVID learninggaps, not with AB 1705 and AB
705.
We have students who aremissing some of these skills
(41:07):
that we're used to them having,and we just need to believe that
they can overcome that andlearn those skills as they also
learn the course material.
And let them make the mistakesso that we can actually discuss
and have those moments to say ohwait, here's why we can't do
that thing you just didalgebraically.
AL (41:25):
Yeah, no, and you're right, Equity gaps are stubborn.
I have to sometimes remind someof my colleagues who work at
the university level, they're mytheorist buddies who get mad.
Actually they're like " got toclose and be like hey look, we
can work on what we have controlover.
(41:46):
We're going to elevate, we'regoing to improve our pedagogy,
we're going to rethink, butthese gaps are stubborn.
For what you mentioned, right,it's funny.
Just the other day I was lookingat the three-year completion
rate for one college versusanother.
So this particular college hassomething like a 9%, right.
(42:06):
And, by the way, we can say, ohwell, you know, part time,
they're mostly part time well,the six years, not that much
better.
And then another college waslike 35%.
Here's the thing, theinstitution that had a really
low, it's in a super, supereconomically depressed zip code,
right.
And the other college was in avery, very high income area,
(42:31):
right.
So I don't want to make excuseswhen we have, you know, a 10%
and just blame it all on oh well, it's the zip code.
But there is the reality thatthere are things we cannot
control that happen to thesepoor, disproportionately
impacted students.
It makes our mission at theseinstitutions that are in these
(42:53):
kinds of zip codes, that muchmore critical, mission critical,
if you will.
And, by the way, when you're ina very, very high income area
and the highest is 35, that'sstill not the best right.
So in fact, I'd love for someresearch to come out there.
Maybe the RP group will do it.
I'll ask them is I'd love to seewhere you have higher
(43:16):
completion rates in those veryeconomically depressed areas,
'cause if we can find those, wehave so much to learn from those
campuses and what they're doing.
So the point of me saying thisis yes, equity gaps are stubborn
, and two context is important.
We can't just look at the dataand think that, oh, the faculty,
they're must be so much better.
(43:36):
By the way, I know these twocampuses and no, they're not.
As we wind down here, Kelly, doyou have any other parting
thoughts about your journey,your continuous journey, that
you would like to share?
Kelly (43:53):
I would say one thing that came out the other day.
I was part of a panel at anaccessibility week session and
one of the questions is asked,how did you end up learning as
much as you've learned aboutaccessibility and I think you
can replace that with grading oractive learning or what you
know insert topic and the otherfolks were like, oh, I went to a
(44:16):
lot of workshops, so I went toa lot of webinars and for me,
yes, I've done that, but I thinkmost of the learning that I've
had that has been the mostimpactful is finding those
voices that are into the thingthat I'm curious about and
following them on some sort ofsocial media, whether it's
LinkedIn, whether it's, you know, even, Instagram or Facebook or
(44:39):
you know, Blue Sky, whatever itis finding wherever you are
already have that trickle in allthe time is really, it makes
you constantly think, it makesyou a more reflective person and
it gives you those little ideasthat maybe in that moment
you're not ready to to do right.
I think back to I think one ofthe biggest impacts of like my
(45:00):
teaching was I was at a workshopand seeing a bunch of really
great stats activities from RoxyPeck and I raised my hand.
I was one of those stubbornpain in the ass faculty members,
um, that I hate now as afacilitator.
No, I don't hate me, but I waslike how am I supposed to do
this with the three unit statsclass?
I can't even cover thecurriculum.
(45:21):
Our curriculum is a mile long.
I cannot cover stats curriculumand do these, these activities
are fabulous.
I'm not gonna.
They're great, but I can't doit.
And in that moment, um, mosteveryone else in that room had a
four unit stats class, so theyall just sort of went.
Well, I don't know how you doit in three.
I have four.
(45:42):
Um, and at the break, my friendAmbika, who taught at College of
the Canyons, where this was,came over and she's like you got
to flip your classroom.
She's like the only way you'reable to do this stuff is if you
flip your classroom.
You got to put your lecturesonline.
You've got so you can actuallymake time for this.
I didn't do anything in thatmoment, but the next semester I
(46:03):
was like I think I'm going totry this.
I have this pile of activitiesfor stats and I can't use them.
I'm going to try to flip myclass, not only putting yourself
in a space where you're goingto get ideas constantly, but
also surrounding yourself withpeople who are going to make you
question and, who will tell youthe harsh truth of you know,
(46:23):
you're going to have to do workif you want to do these
activities.
You need to flip your classroombecause I think when you
surround yourself by people whojust tell you you're doing great
, you don't see any reason toimprove.
Right, do everything the same,as you find those folks right
who maybe you can both push eachother to be better, and then
just realize this is allreflective work, right, it's all
(46:45):
iterative.
It's all thinking about, okay,that went well, could it have
gone better?
Did it go well for everystudent?
Being really intentional as youlook around your class and
seeing, especially if it's not,thinking about that
disproportionate impact, who'snot actively engaging in this
(47:06):
class and how could I fix that?
Because I think too often wefocus on the students who are
actively engaging, right, theones that are smiling and
nodding or giving us their inputor chatting and we don't pay
attention to who's not talkingand sort of why and really
figuring out ways to interrogatethat.
AL (47:23):
So outside of education, unfortunately, there's so many
stereotypes.
You hear it all the time forK-12.
Oh well, they get to work fromeight to three and have their
summers off.
And they have no idea that whenyou are a good teacher and you
care, you're putting in 70, 80hours a week.
(47:43):
And the same thing in higher ed.
Oh well, they just teach twosemesters.
They can have the summer off,no winter session, whatever.
But when you take great care,like you, to continually improve
your craft, to take thisteaching and learning as a
profession, I see it really nodifferent as a doctor.
(48:03):
But in society we elevate, wethink doctors right, well, I
mean right, it's important, theytry to keep us healthy, right,
although in my opinion they giveus too many drugs, which
there's other ways, like can wejust eat better sometimes?
Anyway, I'm not gonna, I'm notgonna go there.
Point is, I think teachers,faculty, that profession, that
teaching profession, is sodifficult.
(48:25):
It is so difficult and peopleoutside of education don't
really understand that, but yetrewarding.
I said in the beginning that Iwas a fan and I'm even a bigger
fan now that we've unpacked whatyou do.
Kelly, thank you so much forparticipating in the Student
Success Podcast.
Kelly (48:43):
Thank you for having me Al.
AL (48:45):
Thank you for listening to the Student Success Podcast.
You can subscribe to the showand newsletter on the Continuous
Learning Institute link belowand, of course, on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube orwherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you.
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