Building Belonging (#2 in a monthly series)

Helping Hands, a sculpture by Louis Bourgeois (image by lalobamfw, Flickr Creative Commons)

Long term change requires looking honestly at our lives and realizing that it’s nice to be needed,

but not at the expense of our health, our happiness and our sanity.

~ Ellen Sue Stern   (author, speaker and relationship coach)

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life of what we give.

~ Winston Churchill

What the heart gives away is never gone. It is kept in the hearts of others.

~ Robin st John

To effectively work in the distance-learning realm, your students need to feel close to their classmates and professors, despite the miles between us. Establishing a bond, a common ground, a supportive arena for thought and expression may mean the difference between a successful, compassionate classroom and a lost, detached one.

~ Gina Greco, writing 5/21/09 in the Chronicle of Higher Education (‘Commentary’), about online classes

Executive Summary:  In 1995 I spent days prowling Hawaii schools to “snapshot” behavior management and culture, then help identify tools for positive change.  In one visit, the principal invited me to a visit a 2nd-grade classroom; the teacher had given her students a simple tool to identify conflict and then had taught them, successfully, to defer resolution.  I found it odd that other teachers knew nothing of this, a strategy which would have made their jobs much easier.  Just before school ended, a 7th-grade teacher ran up to me and told a story of being pushed to the ground by an 8th grader days before.  She had reported the incident but continued to see the student on campus and wondered what had been done to discipline him.   Shall I send this? she asked, handing me a letter for the principal.  I read it, and asked:  Could you just visit the office and ask him?  Her answer startled me:  I never thought of that.  The teachers at this school were isolated and felt individually unimportant.  As a leader, whether you facilitate learning in a classroom or supervise other teachers, your behavior choices point vigorously to what you value.  An individual’s strong feeling of belonging and connection to others in the group provide motive and support for best performance.  This message explores some ways to intentionally develop these connections—crucial to our communication of content.    Links were active when this message was published August 28, 2012; please advise coach.faculty@gmail.com if you find otherwise.  Contributions of ideas to share are always welcome.

CREATING a feeling of belonging in students isn’t magic, but it involves an array of strategies in a repertoire you can develop over time.  Here are some techniques that help students find connections to you and to one another.  In so doing, they foster a sense of being cared for, of belonging to a supportive group.  They thereby promote student success and retention.  You’re probably doing many of them already:  for new ones, patience pays: try one thing at a time.

CONNECTIONS BEGIN with your earliest contacts.  Before classes start, some instructors send welcoming mail introducing themselves and noting key skills the class will call upon, concepts the class will develop, benefits the class will confer.  Such messages, sent to the whole enrollment, can invite students to reflect on their reasons for taking the class, reflection which then becomes a key building block in self-motivation.  Marc Gilbert (HPU’s NEH Endowed Chair of World History) describes his discoveries in Po’okela, and notes the benefits of early trust-building:  http://www.hpu.edu/TLC/ImagesFiles/Jan-Feb09.pdf (No. 41, Jan-Feb 2009)

AT THE DOOR   Greeting students with a smile and friendly voice at the doorway in earliest classes—or from time to time during a term if you do not do it very day—welcomes and says I’m glad you’re here.  Many of them harbor deep self-doubt; create warmth by finding opportunities to say I believe in you (directly or indirectly).

TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT CHALLENGES AHEAD   It’s possible, for instance, to say the course content will be challenging, and some of you will find this harder and spend more time than others.  A few will struggle very hard but still be successful.  I’m here to help, and I expect and believe you will also encourage and support each other.  In some pre-professional courses, students may believe it’s your job to deliver most of the content, but you can point out (1) that you’ll rely heavily on their willingness and interest in preparing on their own, (2) that you can’t give them all the content, and (3) that the greatest gain from class activities (including lectures) will come when they do high quality preparation.  Finally (4) employers will most value independent learners.  (Invite an employer to say so!) You may have to teach some of them what good prep means, and it may help to do so in the context of an exchange about what good preparation or good student investment means in terms of specific behavior.  For some detail about how to do so, see  Expectations  http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=222 or talk to your teaching center personnel about  your specific course; you’ll leave with a plan.   An article in Inside Higher Ed (10.23.09) discusses employer views of professionalism—or absence of it—in graduates: Are Today’s Grads Unprofessional?  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/23/professionalism   

USE STUDENT NAMES   As often as possible, begin using student names and encourage students to use one another’s names.  Some instructors create and carry table tents with pre-printed names; others use name tags in early classes, or use seating charts and make it a point to call on students by name.    Find a wonderful article and 27 creative ways for you and students to learn names:  http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/names.htm  (Joan Middendorf, Indiana University) and even more at http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/Teaching_Concerns/Misc_Tips/Learn_Names.htm (Michael Palmer, University of Virginia).

OFFICE HOURS   Instead of waiting for students to come with problems, invite or require them to come to chat and gain insight about them.  (Some make this visit an assignment.)  Changing this culture makes it easier for them to ask for help.

CONNECT STUDENTS TO ONE ANOTHER   Activities that bring students together and use names and encourage cooperation—first on simple tasks--build community in classes.   I teach this by example in workshops, and on request (coach.faculty@gmail.com) I can send the PowerPoint file or this will remind you:  http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/interactive/tpshare.html  [These and similar strategies have the added benefit of being powerful and simple assessments of learning that don’t involve grading.] If you are not an experienced user of groups to work in class, be aware that effective group work, especially groups of 4 or more, calls upon skill sets many students learn and develop in college and will not possess when they first enroll.  Use pairs and small groups first.

BE PREPARED FOR LATECOMERS   Students often enter classes late, for reasons they can not control.  It’s helpful to keep handouts (or prompts to web-based resources) and to confer immediately with students who have missed significant instruction.  Don’t buy the implication that you are responsible for recreating their learning experiences, but do what you reasonably can and always ask them:  I know this is difficult for you.  Talk with me about your ideas for fixing this problem, and tell me how you think I can help you.

PROMOTE GOAL-SETTING and REALISTIC SELF-ASSESSMENT The use of rubrics prompts realistic self-assessment and personal goal-setting, and can motivate major performance changes. To consider ways to assist students in developing self-understanding, suggestions are at http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=320  For rubrics, begin at: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/feb00/vol57/num05/Using_Rubrics_to_Promote_Thinking_and_Learning.aspx , a very accessible article that will get you started.

EXPECT THAT STUDENTS WILL SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER A simple way to do this is to use class base groups, core social groups you facilitate purposely to provide cross-support.  Facilitate a culture in which members of a class rely on one another instead of on you for information necessary to the class.  For counsel about forming groups, see http://www.co-operation.org/?page_id=65. There's more about activities at http://www.hydroville.org/system/files/team_strategies.pdf

ASK EARLY AND OFTEN FOR FEEDBACK Perhaps more than any other behavior, simple self-assessment of teaching (such as Start-Stop-Continue) communicates your caring about the student experience.  This strategy also helps students understand they and their peers have different but complementary strengths in their methods of learning.  Getting started is easy, and the results deeply satisfying:  Assessment of Teaching http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=192   Don’t wait until the end of a term to do this.  Start early, and be certain to act constructively on the feedback when circumstances make this appropriate. Within-term feedback, in my opinion, is the single most important strategy an teacher can use to prompt self-growth, student trust, and productive changes in practice.

ENCOURAGE QUESTIONS and MODEL POSITIVITY IN CONFLICT   You will be seen as direct, but accessible and positive when you use appropriate language.  Avoid all language that might be interpreted, even when you didn’t intend so, as public demeaning or shaming.   When possible, set boundaries in private.  When student behavior sets off anger, frustration or shock, you may feel like striking out, but avoid reactive behavior.  But do tell the student, as privately as possible:  I’m excited by your passion and intensity about this, but expressing it in public hurts me and harms my relationship with other students, who look to me for leadership.  We need to continue this conversation in private.  Then invite a decision:  When and where would this work best for you?  Even when a question could have been answered by consulting your syllabus, restrain negative comments.  Doing so will pay off in long term trust.

USE TECHNOLOGY   like clickers, or Twitter, or text messages, or email . . . . to prompt student contribution or reflection.  Make sure to do this only if the technology (e.g. text capability) is available to everyone.  Then, for example:  There are two  major points made in the assigned reading for clas tomorrow.   Before class, text (or tweet) me your unique summary of one of them.  I’ll share some of the messages in class.  Text (at 160 characters max) and tweet (at 140 characters max) force brevity and processing.  The point:  get students contributing (and acknowledged for doing so) any way you can.

BUILD WORKING TEAMS AND COMMUNITY Use a search engine (team-building activities) to find a treasure trove of activities to browse, among which, of course, some will appeal to you more or fit better than others inside your class plans.  Writing (in classes and ungraded) can be used to build community, and the how to do this (focused on first-year writing classes) can be seen at http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol10/macomber.pdf.  I recommend:  take 45 seconds to read first the Introduction and Conclusion; then read the 7-page body.

Next Up

Next Up in September:  Motivation; and October:  Understanding, Preventing and Managing Student Incivility

A Great Set of Teaching-Tips Resources and Websites:
http://www.hpu.edu/CAIT/CAITResources.html

Stay Connected     You can bookmark the link, or subscribe to this blog feed; you can request a notice of each post by writing me at coach.faculty@gmail.com.  Or, if you are a faculty developer, you can ask for the post content in document form and use parts of it to create your own newsletter, or post the link on your own website.

Beyond the Blog     My greatest satisfaction as a faculty developer came from helping others do their jobs better or more easily.   I retired in 2012 from Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu and now live in Shelburne, Vermont alongside Lake Champlain (near Burlington) in the northeast.  I travel widely in east and west, and am available both to correspond and to visit schools, community colleges and universities for private consultation or workshops.   

Write me at coach.faculty@gmail.com

Michael W. Dabney

University Faculty Developer & Coach

CONSULTATION  -  INSTRUCTOR COACHING - TRAINING

702 Wake Robin Drive   Shelburne VT 05482

Professional & Organizational Development Network--Member since 2004

575 Cooke Street  A-1800    Honolulu, Hawaii  96813

808-781-3294 or 802-685-0088

coach.faculty@gmail.com

Blog for College Teachers (this monthly post):  http://teaching-snippets.blogspot.com

Links were tested and active at the time of the blog's publication.

If you encounter difficulty with any link, or wish to receive a monthly reminder when new posts are made, please advise Mike Dabney

at coach.faculty@gmail.com

Refresh:  Strategies for Starting a New Teaching Term

  (Monarch butterflies, emergence from chrysalis]

First Impressions matter. The first two days of class – even the first 15 minutes of the quarter – will make or break it. The first class is your opportunity for culture-building. It’s crucial that you get students talking– that you not just hand out a syllabus and send students off to do their homework, already numbed to the prospect of another quarter of the teacher talking at them.

~ Luke Reinsma, Seattle Pacific University

If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you

can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at

every meeting with another person.

~ Fred Rogers (Presbyterian minister and PBS television personality for decades, d 2003)

As early summer fades: new teachers move to anxiety, and veterans discover ways to enliven and refresh their practice.  We all wonder what the new crop of students will be like, and how well- or under-prepared they will be.  After forty years in one kind of classroom or another, and about a decade of experience as a director of faculty development, I am retired and in the midst of a long move from Honolulu to Shelburne, Vermont.  Here I offer a few specific strategies for teachers new and not-so-new.   Michael W. Dabney Retired, Director of the Teaching and Learning Center, Hawaii Pacific University 702 Wake Robin Drive •  Shelburne, VT  05482 coach.faculty@gmail.com      808-781-3294

1  Seek Student Feedback Regularly Explain to students that feedback helps you.  Ask for it; and use it to reinvigorate your practice and deepen trust.  In the essay “Evaluation Anticipation,” in the January 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education, John Lemuel notes the challenge of sorting useful from simply ego-bruising feedback: ("Evaluation Anticipation" is here:  http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~ta/files/teaching%20articles/2006_Evaluation%20Anticipation.pdf   A teaser: I've started introducing the topic of student evaluations early in the semester, mainly to point out the folly of saving up grievances to unload anonymously after grades are in. I can't deal with problems I don't know about, and finding out about them sometime next semester won't help the students currently afflicted. So I tell students, try talking to me, and see if we can't resolve the problem. If I help some learn how to be a self-advocate in the process, that's a plus. But I know I won't appeal to every student, so I ask them to write only comments they could sign their names to, and some actually do. I point out that anonymous denunciations have all of the courage and none of the effectiveness of a drive-by shooting. Some of the denunciations I keep for my own amusement in a folder labeled "Student Hall of Shame." The rest get pitched. I am as free to ignore them as they are to write them.)  The article linked above highlights the many advantages of asking students for within-term feedback on teaching. Here is more on the logic of inside-term feedback and a variety of ways to get that feedback:

http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=192

2   Try a new strategy to build trust, add warmth and safety One joy of academic life is the fresh start offered by semester, quarter or term organization. Even after 45 years, I still have “butterflies” before a new class or workshop, but I thrive in the opportunity and excitement of trying new things, seeing new responses, making improvements. As you polish plans for the first days of class, consider some possibilities:

• proactive welcoming contact  . . .   Make contact before classes begin.  See an article 

about Marc Gilbert’s work at Hawaii Pacific University:   http://www.hpu.edu/TLC/ImagesFiles/Jan-Feb09.pdf   

• community-building activities . . . Incorporate activities that help you learn student names and help students learn each other’s names. A wonderful resource for name-learning strategies is an article by Joan Middendorf: Learning Student Names (Indiana University) . That article at http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part%201/part1%20materials/Middendorf.pdf and begins thus:   In his 1993 book, What Matters in College, Alexander Austin reviewed the literature on college teaching, finding two things that made the biggest difference in getting students involved in the undergraduate experience: greater faculty-student interaction and greater student-student interaction. Though learning student names may seem a trivial matter in the entire university enterprise, it is a powerful means to foster both of these interactions.

• process your syllabus . . . Have students read (and in groups, derive questions or concerns from) selected parts of your syllabus; then answer the questions. By using groups you preserve anonymity. By compelling students to process parts of the syllabus in class, you assure it will be reviewed even if not read in its entirety.

• make a strong start . . . Introduce rich, engaging content immediately (but provide with care the means for students who enroll later—a near certainty at many institutions—to catch up)

• help students identify and build on their learning strengths . . . This link

http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=320  on learning styles/preferences includes some easy-to-use quick online assessments which provide students with immediate feedback on strengths and preferences, prompt goal-setting. You could demonstrate online in class, ask students to triangulate three different assessments as an early assignment (I owe this suggestion to John Collins at the University of British Columbia), then discuss the results in class groups.

3   Make expectations clear . . . In discussion-style exchange, ask students what they expect of you. All faculty include course expectations in a syllabus. A few go further, to engage students in discussion of the syllabus, and still fewer ask what students expect of faculty. Rarely, a faculty member engages students in co-development of expectations. Mano Singham, head of faculty development at Carnegie-Mellon University, did an experiment in which he ditched his “rule-infested” syllabus and asked his students to build a syllabus with him. At http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=222  see a discussion about making expectations explicit; this  also explores the possibility of talking openly with students about (a) what is reasonable for you to expect of them, e.g. in preparation; (b) what they expect of each other in class or online (this forestalls a lot of potentially uncivil behavior) and (c) what they expect of you. You’ll learn many  very interesting things! Drill deeper from non-specific terms, like “well-prepared,” to what students believe those words mean in behavior.  Singham’s description of how he built a syllabus with students is described in an article linked  http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=302 

4   Embed Student Skill Development in Teaching  We often assume that students already know the skills they need to thrive in your classroom. The harsh reality: often they do not know the behavior meaning of such common words as participation, preparation or listening.   They often are unclear about the fundamentals of civility in such behaviors as punctuality, the use of communication tools, and discourse with teachers and peers. What, for example, are the boundaries of acceptable response when A makes a point B finds offensive? Such skills are critical keystones of success in today’s collaborative workplaces. You can create simple activities to help forge these understandings; and you can focus on the how-to of specific skills, such as reading a textbook or listening for and understanding another’s point of view. A T-chart at the link below, an example of what you can build in class,  identifies what “active listening” sounds and looks like in behavior terms. It takes less than five minutes to construct with student input and can focus on any skill you need to develop. (See an example in this article:  http://www.hydroville.org/system/files/team_strategies.pdf   The instructor should be able to develop such a chart but it is most powerful if the students develop it themselves in class, with the instructor and students modeling some of the skills. Focus on one skill at a time.   Ground rules and expectations for class dialogue and controversy can be taught like T-charts. 

Managing conflict, between instructor and student or between students in discussion, is another crucial skill. At Managing Conflict: 10 Video Vignettes the University of Minnesota Center for Teaching and Learning Services offers ten film-clip scenes, with analysis, of common conflict situations ranging from grade disputes to helplessness. These are used by UM primarily for graduate student training, but apply to any college classroom:   http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/conflict/index.html

5  Teaching Online?   Consider reviewing online best practices and then select small ways to modify your own practice:  Find What does an Excellent Online Teacher Look Like?  at http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1185

6 Teaching for the First Time?   These tips may help:  http://www.hpucait.com/kb/?p=205  

Introduction and Welcome

Bookmark this link to revisit for new posts:
http://teaching-snippets.blogspot.com


Thanks for visiting.   I spent my most rewarding employment years helping a diverse, clever, and spirited faculty and staff at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu.  Writing for them monthly was a source of immense joy, for it opened conversations between us that stimulated professional growth of the community and was one of my most important sources of learning.  


I retired in early 2012 and as this is published, I am beginning a cross-country journey to a new residence in Shelburne, VT.


In part this blog revisits and refreshes some of my previous writing, and I am doing it in a form that makes it accessible to my earlier readers at HPU, as well as to other faculty developers who may wish to use parts of it to engage their own faculty.  The blog address can be passed on to anyone, and I can make it available in a document form so that you can use parts of it or all of it to create your own newsletter.


Future posts:


August:  developing supportive relationships with students and between students


September:  motivation


October: preventing and managing student incivility.


Please write me with ideas for new topics, or to ask for a document attachment for any specific blog post:  coach.faculty@gmail.com.


Michael W. Dabney
702 Wake Robin Drive
Shelburne, VT  05482


808-781-3294