Spring Reflection Essay

My first year of teaching has caused me to rely on a wider array of skills than I thought I would need. Teaching mentored inquiries required me to draw from writing training, technology training, conflict resolution training, and communication training received during spring and fall training sessions, and in workshops throughout the year.
The training that I found the most useful throughout the year was the writing training from the fall training sessions put on by the Writing Center. Dan Deweese taught one session that was especially useful. In this session he talked first about a philosophy of free writing. I had done free writes in other classes, and understood the value of keeping your pen in motion. It is not possible to become a good writer if you do not write often. When considering how to insert free writes into my lesson plans, I was unsure of the best way to facilitate them. Part of the trick according to Dan is to convince the students not to take them too seriously. If a writer is stuck, then they should be encouraged to write about how annoyed they are with being stuck, rather than staring at a blank piece of paper. This method is especially handy when the free write topic is about course material that students are not are not fond of. I used Dan’s mellow approach in mentor sessions and they worked like a charm. If you remove the pressure from such an exercise, than students feel much more free to express their thoughts. This approach also has the added benefit of making post-free write discussions go much more smoothly.
Dan also introduced the fall trainees to the Writing Center Website. I find this site to be better constructed and more useful than any other website for Portland State departments. At least once during every term of mentoring I made it a point to show my students this website, focusing on how to schedule an appointment and the guided tour in the site. The guided tour takes students through every step of the writing process from getting an idea to polish a final draft. At each stage of the ten-step process, students and teachers are directed towards a series of exercises designed to get to the next level. I used the peer review steps more often than any other.
The technology training that mentors receive is rudimentary at best, but I made a lot of use of what I did learn. At the most basic level, the tutorial on how to use classroom technology like projectors was helpful. However, the mentor rooms have a different technology set up than the room we received the training in, so I had to teach myself how to run the projectors in the mentor room. Furthermore, the training did not cover how to hook up a laptop (PC or Mac) to the projector set up. I had to make a special trip to AV services to figure this out myself. Even after the explanation I had trouble figuring out how to hook up sound to the classroom speakers. Thankfully, the technology room attendants (MRAMs) were very helpful in this process. I would have also like to have been told in training that the MRAMs are also the source of colored white board markers.
The largest whole in the technology training was the creation of e Portfolios. Alan Hall showed us some examples of ePortfolios and some online resources for making them, but his explanation was confusing because he kept mixing up his conversation about them with a discussion of a change from Blackboard to some other online class platform. This left me without the skills to either build an e Portfolio or manage an online course. I ended up figuring out how to build a make shift e Portfolio, but I am still a bit lost when it comes to Blackboard. Since I am teaching a summer online Sophomore Inquiry, the lack of Blackboard skills is especially problematic.
Another very useful part of the mentor training was a number of the conflict resolution workshops. In the first workshop, which was during the spring training, we practiced listening to each other without responding for three minutes. I have been a waiter for many years now and did not expect having a problem listening. Instead, I had a real problem not interrupting my partner. I found myself wanting to state their conclusions before they said them, which can be very helpful while you are waiting tables, but not so helpful when trying to understand someone’s point of view. I realized during this training that I got so caught up with trying to immediately solve the speaker’s problem that I was unwilling to wait until I understood it. The first time around, I interrupted my partner three times in just three minutes. The leader of this session introduced an alternate method to interruption as a way of communication. She stressed that it is very important to hear someone out fully, and then paraphrase what you understood from the explanation. It may make you sound like a therapist, but it is very useful to say, “here is what I understand from what you are telling me…”
When working with mentors, I found this listening technique very handy. One of the key points of conflict that mentors have to deal with is when students have a problem with the teacher for one reason or another. Often students feel to intimidated to confront professors about a problem, so they will come to mentors with their grievances. Several times I found myself hearing out students about their problems, be they to heavy of a workload or just confusion about an assignment. Some times I was able to suggest a course of action, like taking time to schedule out homework, but many times there was nothing I could change about the problem. Every time hearing out the students and helping them clarify their thoughts left them more able to deal with the situation. Students felt their opinions were respected and that was almost always enough to calm them down and figure out a way to solve their problem.
Finally, the training taught me to better communicate with a room full of people. I took a speech class when I was working on my associate’s degree at Portland Community College, but it was not until I became a mentor that I became somewhat comfortable commanding the attention of a room full of people. The catalyst for this change was a bunch of silly games. Icebreakers have been more useful for me than anything in opening the lines of communication to students and becoming comfortable enough with them to lead a classroom. Name games, mystery icebreakers and a number of other games that push everyone out side of their comfort zones not only break up the tedium of the classroom but they really create a community in the classroom. In this community I feel more comfortable and so do the students. Without the numerous examples of icebreakers during training sessions, I never would have realized how helpful silly games can be, and keeping with my goal to be a serious academic professor, would never have chosen to do them.
Training throughout the year has taught me that teaching is not just a practice of pedagogy, it is a continual process of learning, sharing, and teaching. No education should be boiled down to a list of things to learn, as if students are merely checking off boxes to earn a stamp of approval at the end of four years. Learning should be animated by the impulse to find new information and innovative ways to share it with other people. As a teacher I am continually learning new ways to improve the classroom environment, hear students out, and teach better routes of communication through writing and technology. Because I am constantly striving to improve my teaching craft, it is not the end of the world when I fail to reach students all of the time. I know sooner or later I will.

Spring term reflection 2

This term I had a much better faculty partner than in the previous term. I also really enjoyed the subject; Archeology. It was very different teaching a class oriented towards quantitative data analysis, rather than just a humanities research paper. Many of the mentor sessions were spent as Archeology labs, rather than the normal community-building sessions. To make sure the sessions would remain cohesive, however, I had the students give speeches to each other during the mentor sessions. On the first day, each student give a three minute speech about themselves, than in week eight they gave a speech about their major. I discovered two things about my students that I did not expect. First, speeches are much less traumatic if the students have almost no prior warning. All the students gave great speeches on the first day with very little preparation. In the eighth week however, the students found the speeches a bit painful and many did not even show up to give them. Apparently the combination of nervousness and no significant grade weight to the speeches equals a luke warm attitude. Second, students like to talk about themselves much more than I expected they would, but were much less interested in defended their interests to fellow students.

Spring development reflection 1

The most interesting opportunity I had this term as a mentor was to sit in on the Grad Mentor training class. I went to the training class twice, but the first time was the most revealing. During my visit, Chuck White spoke about the origins of the UNST program. Essentially, the program is the result of funding changes on the state level due to Measure 5, and the fallout from funding reapportionment following it. PSU, like the other state universities had the opportunity to create a multi-disciplinary program in order to earn back some state funding. Also, the program was eligible for millions in grants to get the program off the ground. This story is not one that she be kept largely secret the way the program does now. I had been a mentor for almost a year before I heard about this, which is frustrating as a history major. The program has a heritage and it is important that the students understand that heritage. I think it would greatly increase the buy-in factor for students who largely do not see the point of taking UNST classes. UNST is not just a good alternative to normal general education classes. Also, the story of funding could be an important lesson for students about the implications of ballot measures in Oregon. Ballot measures effect the state government more than the state legislature. So, seeing the effects of ballot measures could make them take direct democracy more seriously, because it can have a huge impact on their lives.

Winter development reflection 2

A couple of weeks ago I went to a lecture by visiting professor Eiichiro Azuma. He had a host of interesting things to say about the way that the Japanese saw a group of American soldiers of Japanese descent as a model for the rebuilding of their own countries military. More interesting from a mentor perspective was the way he talked about the divisions within the history field. Similar to the way that the humanities itself is subdivided, the history field has split itself up along geographic lines. That is problematic for him because he studies both Japan and the United States by focusing on the experience of all people of Japanese descent. These divisions also change as you go overseas. These distinctions often mean that historians focus on only parts of his work and miss the bigger picture that history can offer. Azuma's experience is similar to the problems that often face UNST faculty in the attempt to put together a cross-disciplinary course. Some professors are willing to ignore the fences between different fields of scholarship, while others are afraid to get out of their comfort zone. Like Professor Azuma, I do not want to be restricted by the arbitrary loyalty to an idea of what history should look like. When approaching material, the only restrictions should only come from the subject itself.

Winter development reflection

During Winter term, I had the opportunity to sit on the mentor transition team. It was the first time that I have ever participated in an self-organized, self-directed group of this sort. We had only a vague mission and had to determine for ourselves the best way to make Dana's transition as smooth as possible. The challenging part was how to balance all of the ideas and concerns that the group had. Some people believed that mentors should be required to recreate their resumes, while others argued that an assignment was not realistic. We also had to balance our mission with the fact that we had no authority to make it happen. We did, however, manage to put together a meeting with Dana and the mentors.

Thoughts about spring term

As usual teaching has been a challenge this term. Thankfully, I was not nearly as nervous this term during the mentor sessions as I was last term. Thanks to a completely disorganized professor, I was constantly forced to reiterate what we were supposed to be doing in class. This left me little space to explore the readings for the class, and was instead left with the task of reinterpreting the professors rambling incoherent lectures. For instance, during the first three weeks of class, the professor attempted to teach the students the definition of what folklore really was. To do this, he did not so much build up a mental framework for identifying folklore so much as he did try to tear down the classes ideas about what folklore was. Needless to say, by the end of the three weeks, the students only knew what folklore was because I gave them a few second lectures during mentor sessions. I know that my job is to help the students interpret the class material, but I would prefer to make a new network of connections to the material rather than teach it again.

Faced with the challenge of an incoherent class structure, I was really forced to really heavily on lesson planning skills I learned in the training and during my first term of mentoring. In order to cover the writing workshops that I had planned, I was forced to really map out each mentor session. This was especially challenging because the professor commandeered the time of three of my mentor sessions to do other class work and the group presentations.

I also used the conflict resolution training that we received during the spring training last year quite a bit. During the training, it was surprising how hard it was to really stop and listen to what the other person had to say with out jumping directly to certain conclusions. My first impulse when listening to a person’s problems before the training was to immediately offer a solution, even though I might not have really understood the solution. The immediate offer of the wrong solution can tell the concerned party that you are not really interested in understanding that persons concerns. During the training we learned to confirm the problems being raised to make sure you really understand what is going on. Saying “what I am hearing is that you have concerns in this area, am I correct?” may make you sound a bit like a therapists, but it as invaluable tool in solving conflicts between students, or between my self and students. This method is also incredibly helpful for understanding student perceptions of class material. Planning and listening are definitely the skills that I use the most in class.

Overall, I would say that the skills that my students needed the most help with was how to balance creativity and with hard and fast definitions from texts. The students tended to do well with free form discussions of certain topics, but when called upon to make critical distinctions about topics in the discussion, they were often at a loss to make distinctions. I think a series of workshops designed to hone their critical eye will help them better strike this balance.