I attended an informally styled, very informative workshop on Wed. Sept. 26 on “Expanding Your Pedagogical Toolkit”. The facilitator was GREAT, Asilia Franklin-Phipps, and I can’t wait to get to know her even more. The TLC Staff workshop team was GREAT also.
We were seated in groups of 4-5 at round tables in the Skylight room on the 9th floor with a totally open view straight up to yesterday’s blue sky and moving white clouds above us (beautiful setting) and I think this contributed to the open process we were engaged in.
We did a hands-on project together which consisted of us reading pedagogical class ideas/suggestions “expand our teaching toolkit” aloud to hopefully inspire us. It was primarliy a matching game, though, to match the ideas with categories such as “Introduce a Topic”, “Explore a Concept, Theory or Topic”, “Engagement”, “Check for Understanding” and even “Attendance”. We then connected/cross-referenced the categorized ideas with string.
As the saying goes, “a picture says a thousand words” so here are two photos:
1) above: photo of the table where I sat
2) above: photo of the table to my right
Wow — guess who the “linear thinkers” were…?! I think these photos not only describe the workshop but also the processes of learning how to teach, teaching and learning. Dare I use the word from our Sept. 25 class readings, “mangle” (but here with a small m) to describe the bottom photo and these collaborative processes…?
We received a wonderful worksheet handout pdf today via email from Asilia of the pedagogical ideas we read aloud and categorized, which I’m happy to share here. It’s a great document and could come in handy in case anyone hits a dry spell in their classes during the semester.
Thanks for writing about this workshop, Carolyn! I was somewhat interested in this one when I looked at the calendar of workshops, but it didn’t work out with my schedule.
1) The Skylight room sounds amazing, and I definitely need to check it out sometime.
2) I can’t really see the pictures too well, but it’s interesting to think about the processes of how to teach and learn. Personally, I feel that academic institutions are built around the faulty idea of “linear thinking,” and that contributes to some flawed models of education. Like anything in life, learning tends to be a messy process.
I agree that learning is often a messy process, but there’s nothing wrong with your table’s linear process either, Carolyn! It’s important to allow room for linear thinkers and introverts, who might not do well in chaotic environments with lots of people contributing ideas. As someone who needs a lot of alone time to mull over ideas and consider solutions, I’ve often felt trapped and frustrated in work environments that insist on frequent meetings and long group discussions.
Let’s hear it for linear thinkers, thank you, Dax! I know what you mean about the chaotic feeling in some group discussions, which I often enjoy, but which can also be frustrating for those of us who are more “linear” i.e., “structural thinkers” (a phrase I prefer.)
The funny thing about the group project at this workshop was that my shared table created the linear connections between categories, running the string in straight lines, while two other tables snaked the string around them curvi-linear. So, the workshop was also an interesting experience in “group mind” thought behavior. Mysteriously, somehow we sat at “like minded” tables together…a little spooky…!