Triumphs and failures – Day 1

Bonni: [00:00:00] On today’s episode 63 of Teaching in Higher ed I share about my triumphs and failures on day one of this semester.

Production Credit: [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:19] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:46] Hello this is Bonni Stachowiak. And I want to thank you for joining me today and especially I’d like to thank those of you who took the time to write in or send me a quick tweet saying that you enjoyed the episode where I shared about the terrors of TTD including sharing some of my nightmares had begun.

Bonni: [00:01:03] As the semester drew closer and you were able to share some of your nightmares with me it’s so fun to catch a little glimpse of how our brains work. Think about a new season coming and our brains start to try to process that as we sleep.

Bonni: [00:01:19] And I’d encourage you on the same tone to please share with me your triumphs and failures from your day one of teaching if you are about to or have recently launched a new course and are experiencing all those things and again just think the many past guests who have encouraged failure as a means for us to achieve the most potential we can as educators.

Bonni: [00:01:41] I am going to start off with a little bit of a content warning a lot of the podcasts I listen to I can’t listen to any more in the car with my two small children. I wanted to keep pretending that our son was just not listening to what was going on on the podcasts and that he was just more interested in the fire trucks passed or other types of vehicles that catch his fancy as they regularly do. But the other day I was listening to the Mac Power Users and they actually was quite. About a month ago maybe and they shared about an emergency.

Bonni: [00:02:16] They did a podcast about emergency preparedness and my son pipes up in the back seat because he must really like the word emergency and he said something about oh when it’s an emergency fire truck comes and the ambulance comes.

Bonni: [00:02:29] And I thought Oh kay i can’t listen to some of my other podcasts that I love so much because they have sometimes some curse words that show up and they always do these content warnings in the beginning to give you a heads up and then I gotta rattle have to wait and listen to this episode later.

Bonni: [00:02:45] So this content warning if you have children in the car it’s not that kind of content warning because I want you to be able to listen to this wherever you are but it is a content warning that I’m going to be shared by a couple of means that have shown up that kind of get stuck in our head.

Bonni: [00:03:01] And it starts with the idea for a long time you might have been said that you were a victim of being “rick rolled” or experiencing a “rick roll” and if you’re not familiar with what that is it’s a little trick where you send someone an email and they click on a link and all of a sudden this is what they hear.

Bonni: [00:03:31] That would be Rick Astley. The song: Never Gonna Give You Up – from. Oh gosh, I don’t even remember what year it came out. I should have looked that up before I started but it has been around a while… and… so that is what it means to be “Rick rolled.”

Bonni: [00:03:44] And now you’re going to have that song stuck in your head of your anything like me. Well, I need to tell you about another meme. But it goes back even longer ago than being “Rick rolled” and that was back in the early 90’s I used to work in the computer training business.

Bonni: [00:04:01] I’ve talked about that before on the show and I worked with a really wonderful group of young people that were just so funny and such delightful teachers. It was the franchising industry so we were responsible for training people who had just bought the businesses and helping them get up to speed and so forth.

Bonni: [00:04:19] And I loved working with these people because they were so gifted and I learned a lot about teaching back then. It’s fun to think about how that cultivated some of the skills that I put into place.

Bonni: [00:04:29] Even all these years later well they love to also just play jokes on each other and have a good time. The case may be and one of the memes that would occur. They weren’t called that back then but one of the things that was going around all over our department full of young sometimes mysterious people was that you would get your co-worker friend to click on a link and as soon as you did their entire computer screen would freeze and they couldn’t do anything with their mouse. Nothing with their keyboard they’d have to just completely shut the computer off and restarted again.

Bonni: [00:05:06] And this is what they would hear. You can only imagine it wasn’t like and you’d just be all sitting in your cubicles or in your offices and just all of a sudden hear that come in through somebodies speakers and know that they had been caught once again. Well let’s see.

Bonni: [00:05:35] That was back in the early 90s even all these years later. That song still comes into my mind that repetitive noxious irritating song comes into my mind. Any time that you do something incredibly stupid and DG and I’m going to be sharing about some incredibly stupid things I did in teaching. And I think that the latter ones I’ll talk about are less problematic to me than the first one. I’d like to share and I will say that I am not necessarily excited about sharing it.

Bonni: [00:06:03] Other than that you have encouraged me as a community to say that it is important for us to share these things and that a lot of value can come out of that both for me as a reflective practitioner and working to become better at what I do and and ultimately to become a better person.

Bonni: [00:06:19] And then also that perhaps others might be able to learn from my mistakes too. And the first failure I have entitled Trayvon trip and I’d like to begin by just sharing. That race has been on my mind quite a bit. I mean it just has been for a very long time but especially lately with regard to this podcast I’ve actually been trying to reach out to different experts in the field of cultural competence and race and ethnicity to have someone.

Bonni: [00:06:50] Although I’d actually like to do multiple episodes on the subject I don’t think we can even come close with just one episode so I’m trying to think more longer term and I’ve just ran into some challenges where people were either on sabbatical or or didn’t answer my emails and so on and so forth.

Bonni: [00:07:07] I’d like to just say it’s on my mind a lot. It’s a topic I’d like to do some episodes on and if you ever have any suggestions for me on who might be a good person to do that about something that I am welcoming and feedback and you could send me an email or or just go to teaching in higher red dot com slash feedback and suggest it that way so he has been on my mind and it’s especially then just more recently been on my mind.

Bonni: [00:07:31] I’ve mentioned that I now have finished reading the revised version of The Skillfull Teacher by Stephen Brookfield and he has been an inspiration to me to be more transparent to be more vulnerable and to share failures like the one that I’m about to share.

Bonni: [00:07:48] And he does that so beautifully in this book he has a chapter about race in the classroom and he shared about micro aggressions and I had not been familiar with that term before and that in much of his teaching as he sees it it’s less about him doing something completely overtly racist.

Bonni: [00:08:07] But just as bad doing things that are would be would be phrased micro aggressions and the example that he gives in the book would be a professor who called less often on people of color in their classrooms or a professor who teaches in a more discussion oriented style like he does.

Bonni: [00:08:28] And and who might open up the floor and a person of color speaks and then and then someone in the majority decides to speak and in a way that was not appropriate or not. Not just that Stephen feels like he wants to step in and do something about it and then that kind of be no micro aggression in and of itself as if he had to go in and rescue the person of color as an example. So this has just been and again I can’t even do it justice I’m awkward even trying to talk about his. His chapter because this just brilliantly written and articulated.

Bonni: [00:09:04] But I did just want to mention it as an inspiration for me to do more of this kind of risk taking and talking about mistakes that I’ve made in my teaching and also back when Peter Newberry was on the show. He was sharing at the end his recommendation was to have us particularly he was mentioning on Twitter although of course this advice applies beyond the community of Twitter was to be following people and engaging with people that are very different from us.

Bonni: [00:09:30] And one of the things I was convicted of myself after listening to that episode I actually always listened to the episodes after I recorded them so I can truly absorb as much as I can out of the guest and I’m not always able to do that if I’m if I’m in the middle of recording so I always listen to them.

Bonni: [00:09:46] And I was really convicted to change around some of the people I follow on Twitter and I’ve been following a number of people involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and you’ll see that hashtag shows up quite a bit on Twitter hashtag black lives matter. And I realized I needed to become even more educated than what might hit necessarily the mainstream press.

Bonni: [00:10:08] I wanted to tell you about all of that as a backdrop that race is something that comes into my mind quite a bit as I was getting ready to teach my classes this semester I noticed that a young man and one of my classes had a name that was very similar to the name Trayvon. And if you’re not familiar with who Treyvon is I’ll get to that in just a minute. But but it does have to do with an individual in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Bonni: [00:10:36] Very early in that movement and I in my head as I saw his name on the roster I kept telling myself Don’t call him Treyvon. Don’t call him Treyvon. Don’t say it don’t say it don’t do it don’t do it when you see him don’t do it because that’s not his name. His name has an extra syllable in there so I was very concerned about mispronouncing it and that that would be disrespectful to him as an individual and as well as it ended up happening.

Bonni: [00:11:03] There were so great when students get there early. There were a number of students that were there early in their signing that themselves in the back. I always have a sign in sheet in the back and I went back there and talked to a few of the students and asked them their names I’d like to to the extent that I can get a get a few students who have arrived early.

Bonni: [00:11:21] And I can start to grasp some names and match some faces beyond just student ID pictures and the young man introduced himself with his first name. It’s not Treyvon I’m specifically not saying his first name on purpose it just is so similar to that and I said Oh very nice to meet you.

Bonni: [00:11:39] And then here’s where it gets bad in my opinion. I stupidly asked him Do people ever accidentally call you Treyvon and he was very polite and said No. No one ever does and I say Oh gosh that’s surprising and he said well why would they. Who is that. And here’s where I proceeded to get it completely wrong in two ways. There are two ways I got it wrong. One way that I got it wrong is first of all and you can probably already see this but I missed it.

Bonni: [00:12:14] Not all African-Americans are aware of the Black Lives Matter movement any more than I was aware of the reasons why many people question us in our country’s celebrating Columbus Day. And I mean I just kicked by a song for my stupidity. It does come to mind.

Bonni: [00:12:31] I could picture the theme song playing. Yes. This is played in my head as I go. You’ve got that one completely wrong. And by the way if you’re not familiar who Treyvon Martin is. That’ll come clear in just a moment because the second piece of the story of how I got it completely wrong and was an idiot is that I proceeded to tell him that Treyvon Martin was killed and a young unarmed African-American who was killed by a police officer. He was not killed by a police officer.

Bonni: [00:13:09] He was the 17 year old African-American young man who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman in Florida. He was George Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer. And according to the stand your ground laws took on the role of protecting his community and not relying on until the law enforcement officials came to to handle things.

Bonni: [00:13:36] And so I got the story completely wrong mixed him up in my mind with Michael Brown. And it was just wrong on every level that I would assume that this young man would know some of the movement in this community. And second of all not only that I made it worse because now he still doesn’t know. Now I’ve told him the wrong information.

Bonni: [00:13:57] This was definitely I would consider to be a big failure. I don’t want to get too locked into that I can’t you know recover from this I still want to have race be on my mind a lot as I’m teaching. I still want to care deeply and want to be intentional about doing everything that I can to serve and help all of my students but especially my students who are students of color are going to in many cases have had barriers to their education that I can’t fathom. And so I want to always have them on my heart. I also want to have them on my mind.

Bonni: [00:14:34] And even if I make failures like the one that I made I hope that the success that can come out of it is nonetheless this young man knows that I came I had some conversation with him in an informal way and wanted to know his name and wanted to get to know him and I hope that’s what that shines through in the middle of my failure although I also want to call it a failure and name it so I can do better in the future.

Bonni: [00:14:59] And of course I would want to in order to name the failure I’d like to say I just wouldn’t bring up that that his name sounds like another person’s name it’s not really necessarily the first thing we want to talk about when we need someone I could have shifted the conversation into learning something more about him and his life. And then second if for some reason it does actually become relevant to bring up a story like that. I would like to share a factually accurate depiction of who this young man’s name sounds like. That’s my.

Bonni: [00:15:29] You are an idiot moment and I really did hear that song after as I was reflected on it later. And you know sometimes I can be hard on myself and I want to be hard on myself because I can do better than that. The other failures are not as serious as that one to me but they still are failures.

Bonni: [00:15:45] I had some forgetfulness where I did an exercise where I teach with sticky notes on the first day and I’ve shared about this in a blog post all linked to it in the show notes at teachinginhighered.com/63 if you’d like to read about that but it’s really hard to teach with sticky notes if you don’t have sticky notes it’s really there’s nothing else that you have in a classroom that could approximate sticky notes.

Bonni: [00:16:11] There’s really not. And I also neglected to bring dry erase board markers with me. Fortunately in that case those two things are pretty easy to remedy especially because I get everywhere early but it was just another reminder that I have a class planning software that I use that’s called Planbook.

Bonni: [00:16:28] And it wouldn’t really matter what you use to plan your courses but even after two geniuses come and teach in my 10th year full time this coming year and even after that long we’re still going to forget things and so having in whatever organizational will you use for your classes the materials that you’re going to need that day. In this case stickies having a that you regularly go and check what is that I need to bring with me as a helpful thing.

Bonni: [00:16:53] And then of course dry erase board markers what had happened as I had just not gotten them back into the bag and hadn’t hadn’t done the work of just making sure I have all of my materials. And it’s always good to have maybe it’s an Evernote or whatever tool you use to have a checklist of things what needs to be in my bag.

Bonni: [00:17:10] And then you can double check and then as things get you know you your dry erase board marker gets all dried up. Then you have somewhere where you can track that you need to replace any supplies and that type of thing.

Bonni: [00:17:21] So those are a couple of other failures that I had. I get to now transition over to Triumph’s although I’m sure you had failures too but those are the ones that I am going to acknowledge and share with you and also work on myself. As far as triumphs. One of the things that is a challenge.

Bonni: [00:17:38] And I was pleased with how it worked out is that I’m teaching in three sections of the same class I’ve mentioned that in a few past episodes and I’m happy to report that my triumphs. I was able to mostly keep pace between the three sections of the same class. Now sometimes I might emphasize something more in one class than the other. Everyone is a little bit different classes always have their own personality and sometimes I might share a little bit more about one thing than I do in one class versus the other.

Bonni: [00:18:06] But I felt like I mostly was able to keep pace with that and I didn’t have to ask oh did I already tell you this story or anything like that which I’ve had to do in the past so that that part worked out really well.

Bonni: [00:18:17] And the other thing is I was able to keep all my stuff together and I have blogged about this recently. I’ll post a link to that in the show notes too that I do tend to leave a power cord behind the little cord that connects my Mac to the projector in the classroom etc. and I purchased a Grid It system and it fits right inside of my laptop bag along with my laptop.

Bonni: [00:18:42] What happens is when I start teaching the class I just pull out the entire it’s approximately a half by 11 that’s not exactly what it is but it’s approximately that size. Pull out the whole entire grid it set it on the table remove the power cord hook the power cord up all that and then before I leave all those little grids need to be filled.

Bonni: [00:19:02] So I need to make sure that it helps remind me visually to get those cords back in the place where they need to be and then put that back into the bag. There was an individual who had commented on the blog that didn’t really work for him very well and he has another brand of bags that he recommended that worked better for him.

Bonni: [00:19:21] But gosh for my brain how it works. It was great because the first day is always crazy every time you know you’re done Gene. There’s a big line of students who want to ask you a question and what have you. So those are some of my worst times to be forgetful about those cords.

Bonni: [00:19:37] And there is something about that grit thing that just worked so well to make sure everything’s back in here packed up in the bag. I can visually tell if something’s missing or if everything is packed and ready to go. That worked really well for me.

Bonni: [00:19:50] The other thing I thought was a triumph and I’ve just been refining over a number of years is that rather than on day one tell them in the future what our class is going to be like.

Bonni: [00:20:02] Tell them in the future what my teaching style is going to be like is to actually have them experience what the classroom is going to be like have them experience what my teaching is going to be like.

Bonni: [00:20:10] On day one I think that’s really helpful rather than just talking about some hypothetical theoretical experience they’ll have down the road they can actually live it out in that day and start to have a feel for it and I can only hope get excited about the class.

Bonni: [00:20:25] And I got to be witness to many of them sharing that they were really excited about the class it was really fun to see the lights in their eyes and the excitement there when young women came up to me and said that she knew she was brand new to college and how nice they seemed and how much she was looking forward to getting to know me this semester.

Bonni: [00:20:42] And those kinds of things are just so just warmed my heart and make me have such a sense of meaning insignificant for what. What I do and I and it also helps me earn a little bit of I am yes I do consider to be a nice person but I’m a tough professor. I never have.

Bonni: [00:21:03] Sometimes students will post on this on this informal Facebook post they’ll say Who’s the easiest professor because they’re a senior and they want to get out of there and be done with it whenever. No one is ever going to accuse me of being an easy professor in any of my classes. I am known for being challenging at the University and also in the class I’m known for. You’re going to come in. You were not going to sit on our laptop and go on Facebook we’re not going to we’re not going to sit back and not need to engage.

Bonni: [00:21:31] But I’m glad for these first few days of classes where they can get to know me a little bit. That it comes from a place of caring and I talked about that a little bit. On day one that we’re going to need to work in here your brain is going to need to be engaged because I want to you to be retrieving information.

Bonni: [00:21:48] It’s almost like it’s not a perfect analogy but the exercise those brains so we can recall the information recall recall recall and get used to retrieval and some of those principles of how the brain works and how that contributes to our learning.

Bonni: [00:22:01] You’re going to need to work when you’re here but at the same time it’s coming from a place of caring. I care so much I want to to learn and I want you to get everything that you need to get out of this class is an introductory class it’s foundational for so much more of what they’ll be doing in their college experience so that that was a nice thing for me and I consider that to be a triumph.

Bonni: [00:22:24] And the last one I wanted to mention here is less of a triumph on that first day and more of a triumph regarding just how I’m approaching teaching more and more. I was in the afternoon after having taught the first day of those three sections of the same class. I was getting ready for day two which will be tomorrow and you can imagine some towns where I would have the all. I’ve taught the class more than 20 times.

Bonni: [00:22:50] But I’m constantly refining constantly refining and one of the things that had happened since my last refinement is that our learning management system moodle they had changed the version and had upgraded so the screenshots I have on the PowerPoint don’t match anymore and the way that I was actually in there how they could see their calendar of all the different dates for assignments and things like that.

Bonni: [00:23:14] And can even add their own items to the calendar. I had shown them that in past classes but of course now the interface looks different and that’s going to be confusing. This is what it used to look like it doesn’t look like one anymore.

Bonni: [00:23:27] And oh by the way you pick somewhere else and as I was updating it I was starting to use I have used a program called snag it to do screenshots snag it by the way is available on the Mac and on Windows. It has been around forever and is the best screenshot program I’ve ever seen. And I am so I’m going. OK go get the screenshot from the learning management system. Plug it into the PowerPoint go get it go and then all a sudden I thought.

Bonni: [00:23:54] Wait a minute. You are. Trying to teach something in a classroom that they’re not going to be doing right then they’re going to be watching you for some hypothetical future when they’re actually looking at it on their own computer screen and the other challenges. There’s so many variables. Are students going to be using a paper planner which some of them still do.

Bonni: [00:24:17] Are students going to be using a planner on their phone on their computer or both. I mean the number of variables just all of a sudden just hit me in my head. And then the fact that it’s it’s so much more effective if they can actually watch me do it at their own pace than on their own time.

Bonni: [00:24:35] And actually perhaps even have it up on their own computer if they were watching me do it and I was able to just decide this is not something that belongs in a classroom. This is something that belongs as a just in time demonstration for when they’re ready to consider looking at their calendar and getting that kind of thing set up the calendar by the way which many of the learning management systems have this feature where you could actually subscribe to a calendar from the learning management system.

Bonni: [00:25:05] So it shows up in your own calendar can see due dates and exams and things like that. So that’s what I was looking to show them how to do. So my triumph here is continually working on just in time learning or just in time demonstrations whenever possible. I’d have two recommendations for you one is back to SnagIt which I just mentioned it’s not only for screenshots but it also can do these quick little videos of something on your screen capture your voice capture whatever it is you’re clicking on and then it’s just so easy to be able to save it to a whole bunch of different places including Google Drive Dropbox and that’s just to name a few Snagit’s a great option.

Bonni: [00:25:43] Another great option on the Mac is called tapes. I like tapes quite a bit because it’s so quick and easy you just record and it automatically puts that video in your clipboard. The link to get to it and so you can easily add that to a message or add it to an item in your learning management system.

Bonni: [00:26:03] The biggest thing I have about tapes that makes me hesitate recommending it is it has a limit of 60 minutes per month that you can store on their servers servers and this is never mentioned at least the last time I checked anywhere and it’s listing on the App Store and that barrier gets in the way a little bit I think I find out about how I found out about it too late in the process when I was already using it as a part of a grading workflow. That’s my only trick on that one but I still think it does have some great potential I just wish they’d get that piece of it figured out.

Bonni: [00:26:34] This is the point in the show when I do recommendations and my recommendation to you as I said up front is to share your own failures and triumphs. I would love to hear those. I know other people would too if it’s something you want to blog about. If it’s something you’d like to share in the comments section of this episode at teachinginhighered.com/63.

Bonni: [00:26:56] Something you want to tweet about. I would love to hear it and it’s something that I really have gotten a lot of benefit over. I wanted to mention that my friend and former guest here on the podcast Doug McKee does this often on his teachbetter.co blog and I love hearing about his classes what worked what didn’t and how he’s evaluating his own success so thank you Doug.

Bonni: [00:27:19] In addition to Stephen Brookfield and the other people I mentioned up front for inspiring me to be vulnerable to just say hey I made some mistakes yesterday and I’m going to get better. I am going to get better and I think we all can get better if we start to share more of these things and encourage each other and sharpen each other’s teach as well. So thank you so much for listening and being a part of a community. And again I hope that I will be hearing from you on your teaching successes and failures.

Bonni: [00:27:50] This has been Teaching in Higher Ed. Episode 63. As always if you have comments on today’s episode please go to teachinginhighered.com/63 and share those with me if you have any recommendations for future guests or topics you can do that is teachinginhighered.com/feedback.

Bonni: [00:28:10] And if you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update you can get one email every week. With all the links in the show notes and an article included about teaching or productivity thank you so much for listening. And I’ll look forward to seeing you next time. Take care and those of you who are just about to start a term or start a semester. Best wishes and come on and share your successes and failures with us.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.