Tag: UCSD

Silent on Twitter about my job search

professional development social media 5 Comments

I use Twitter. A lot. It’s my daily, hourly,…, continuous source of information, professional development, and support, and a place where I can give back to the communities that support me when I need it.

I advocate

I describe projects I’m working on

I post my itineraries when I travel

I share the everyday things that interest me

Each of these is also an invitation for people to reply and share their recommendations, ideas, positions,…

Twitter silenced
(Illustration by Peter Newbury. Duct tape via pixabay public domain)

My latest big adventure — starting in July, I’ll be the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at UBC Okanagan — was more challenging because I chose to suspend this “networked practice,” as Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart calls it. I didn’t share my job search with my Twitter community.

I didn’t describe how I integrated my teaching statement (which they didn’t ask for) into my CV (which they did).

I didn’t post my interview itinerary.

I didn’t share the interesting things I saw and learned along the way.

Not being able to ask for help and getting feedback was difficult. But what hurt the most was I felt I’d betrayed my community: I was having an amazing adventure, one I wanted to share and believed others could learn from, and I had to keep it a secret.

Why all the secrecy, anyway?

I didn’t share my job search with my community for personal reasons. I didn’t want to tell anyone in case I didn’t get it. Now that I have a fantastic position to go to, I’ll admit it’s not the first job I’ve pursued since joining UC San Diego 4 years ago. Those failed job applications are now water under the bridge (and I’m very grateful to my current Director who encouraged me to apply and learn from the experiences, regardless of the outcome.)

I didn’t share my searches with my community for professional reasons, too. “Why is he leaving? What’s wrong with his current job? Is it him or the people there? If he’s unhappy, can he still do his job?” I don’t need people asking those questions.

The moment of relief

After months of secrecy, there was an unforgettable moment of relief when I could finally reveal my news to my community:

The anxiety was washed away by the flood of replies – I’m so grateful to my communities.

Why now?

It turns out, some colleagues have gone through the same thing recently.

[I’ll add some examples here when I get their permission]

Perhaps this “suspending your networked practice” is a thing, a new thing we wouldn’t have imagined 10 years ago. It’s uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing. Just like every other part of the job search! That feeling that you’re betraying your community? It’s silly. Ignore it. You have enough on your mind already. And no one that matters to you in your community would want you to waste any energy on it. We’ll be there when you have news to share. And we’ll be there if you don’t have news to share.

What about you? Did you share your job search process or wait until you had news? How did you feel when you finally let your community know?

There and back again.

professional development UBC Okanagan No Comments

I’m thrilled to announce that in July, I’ll be starting a new job as Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning and Senior Advisor for Learning Initiatives in the Office of the Provost and Vice-Principal Academic at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan.

polarisdotcanadaFor me, this is a return to Canada, to British Columbia, and to the University of British Columbia community, though in Kelowna, rather than Vancouver where I went to graduate school, taught, and was part of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.

My 4 years at the Center for Teaching Development, now part of the Teaching + Learning Commons, at UC San Diego gave me the incredible chance to run a Center and then witness and contribute to the growth of a campus-wide teaching and learning network. For the opportunity to try, fail, get feedback, and try again (h/t Ken Bain) I thank my colleagues Beth Simon, Gabriele Wienhausen, Kim Barrett, Martha Stacklin, Steve Cassedy, the many faculty and staff I’ve worked with, and the hundreds of graduate students and postdocs who voluntarily participated in my teaching and learning course, The College Classroom. Their enthusiasm and dedication is inspiring.

I’m also incredibly grateful for the chance to learn with, and learn from, my colleagues in the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Network. I couldn’t help myself from observing how Bob Mathieu, Kitch Barnicle, Robin Greenler, and Jeff Engler lead a diverse group of colleagues, making sure voices are heard, making timely, informed decisions, and communicating those decisions in ways welcome collaboration and growth. These are all skills I will need in my new job.

I’m very much looking forward to conversations and projects with new (and old) colleagues Cynthia Mathieson, Simon Bates, Michelle Lamberson, Heather Hurren, Greg duManoir, Heather Berringer, and many, many others.

I feel this is the job I’ve been preparing for throughout my teaching and learning career. Perhaps I can finally get rid of the impostor syndrome that’s been hanging around ever since I left the math classroom nearly 20 years ago.

There and back again 🙂

[Update 2/18/2016] Fixed a typo: It’s the Centre, not Center, for Teaching and Learning. Finally, after 4 years at UC San Diego, my fingers and typing muscle memory have become Americanized. Center. Color. Counselor. Language, too: I’m going to have to re-train myself to talk about marking and marks instead of grading and grades,  about Terms instead of Quarters, and most importantly, about KD instead of mac-n-cheese.

Learn your students’ names. No, really.

teaching UCSD 4 Comments

I have a thing about learning my students’ names. And it’s not a good thing.

I think I have a fixed mindset when it comes to learning people’s names: I believe I can’t do it. So whenever someone introduces him- or herself, a piece of my brain shuts off for a couple of seconds and the name go in one ear and out the other. That’s really annoying when I can’t call them by name just 5 seconds later!

The first step is admitting I have a problem, right? These days, I deliberately “activate” my brain when I’m about to meet someone: Okay, here comes somebody new. Listen for their name. Listen…listen…listen…got it! “Nice to meet you, [insert name here]”

Of course, I ignore all this advice when it comes to students in my classes. I used to teach introductory astronomy with 200-300 students. I mean, c’mon, what am I supposed to do, learn all their names? Bah, forget about it.

A Critical Moment

Then something happened last summer. I was observing a class at UCSD taught by one of our Summer Graduate Teaching Scholars — Ph.D. students selected to teach a course in Summer Session  with support from the Center for Teaching Development. David was teaching an anthropology class about multiculturalism to about 50 students. His goal was to regularly spark discussion in class, getting students to share their own diverse cultural experiences. At first, David easily called on about half a dozen students by name, most of whom sat near the front of the room. “Uh-oh,” I thought to myself, “he knows the names of the enthusiastic students, potentially excluding the others from the ‘teacher’s pet’ club.” Someone else put up a hand and then David did something that still sticks in my memory: he looked right at the student, said, “Yes…uhhh…” and looked down at his classlist with student photos and names, found the right person, “…John*, what would like to add?” [*it wasn’t John, I don’t think. I wasn’t listening. See above.] David made it clear he wanted to learn their names and they saw the effort he was putting into it. Later in the same class, he called on someone at the back of the room, by name, who he remembered had written something about the event they were discussing.

Even though the room was narrow and dark, with the studnets on one end and David on the other, it felt like a community. They were all  learning together. People engaged all over the room, not just the front rows. Wow. I believe that David knowing his students’ names was a critical factor in that success.

Fall 2013 – My Turn

When it was my turn to teach again, a class for 40 grad students and postdocs about teaching and learning in higher ed, I vowed to learn their names. I made a print-out of their names and photos (pro tip: alphabetized by first name). When they were working in small groups, I took the time to deliberately look at each student and recall his or her name, consulting my cheat sheet only when necessary. Honestly, it didn’t take long before I was comfortable calling them by name. And it was great, especially since I was able to link their blog posts with their faces and could say, “Amy, you wrote about that on the blog. Could you share what you wrote with us?”

Winter 2014

I’m about to teach this same class again, this time with 64 students. As I spent a precious holiday afternoon sitting at my computer downloading and formatting students pictures into a class list, I wondered if it was really worth the effort. Wondered on Twitter, that is:

 

What a thrill to open Twitter a few hours later and see my timeline full of responses. Almost everyone agreed that it’s crucial but more difficult to accomplish, the larger the class:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some were clear that it’s not easy in really large classes:

 

  On the other hand, class size doesn’t bother @raulpacheco:

 

  @bfwriter noticed that @kellecruz says she learns the names of her engaged students:

To which Kelle elaborated

 

 

 

The last words, for now, go to @ProfNoodlearms for viewing name-learning as a consequence, not a catalyst, of learning

…and to @DRPicardHIS for using names to build these connections amongst the students, too:

 

Is it worth the effort?

In a word, yes. Learn as many names as you can. Even if you only learn half of them, it may seem to the students that you know them all. And that feeling of connection and community might be enough to get all of your students engaged and learning.

How do YOU do it?

Do you learn your students’ names? If you have a good method, would you leave a comment to share it with us? Thanks!

Update: January 24, 2014

Writing this post motivated me to learn my students’ names, all 60 of them. I made a PPT deck with 1 slide for each student’s name, program (“grad student, Biology”) and photo. I printed these slides as 9-up handouts and cut them, to get a stack of index cards I carry around and continually flip through. I worked hard at it and within a few days, I could name each student.

I mades cards, one for each student, giving their names, programs and pictures.
I mades cards, one for each student, giving their names, programs and pictures.

I’ve been teaching my class for 3 weeks now and knowing my students’ names and faces is working great in both directions, faces-to-names and names-to-faces:

  • when a student walks into the classroom, I can say, “Hi, Bob. How’s your week going?”
  • when a student asks a question or makes a comment, I can say, “Yes, Bob, you’ve got something to add?” and “Thanks, Bob, that’s really interesting.”
  • when they write blog posts (and they wrote some good ones), I read the author name, and picture the student in my head. Later, when I see that student in class, I can say, “Great post, Bob, I really like how you wrote…”
  • similarly, when I’m teaching and remember something relevant that I read in a blog post, I can look around the room and say, “Bob, you wrote about that. Would you tell us about it?”

On the first day, I’d see them coming up the hallway to class and could have said, “Hi Bob, great to meet you in person.” That felt a little creepy because we’d never met. Instead, I stuck out my hand, “Hi, I’m Peter” and then listened very deliberately to make sure the name they replied with matched what I was expecting. That gave me a way to check the pronounciation, too.

The students sit in 3’s and 4’s at tables in my classroom and I notice they often introduce themselves when they do group work. As Danielle writes in the comments, the students benefit from knowing each other’s names, too.

Update: February 21, 2014

“Oh sure, I learned their names,” I convinced myself. I stopped quizzing myself with my stack of index cards. And the next week, drew a blank on student after student! I guess it’s no surprise I’d forget the names of people I see only once per week in a group of 20 but it’s really frustrating to forget students’ names when you know you knew them.

So, I’m back to quizzing myself with the index cards. Before each class, I flip through the cards, slipping the ones I get wrong back into the deck. Seems to be working because this week, I didn’t make any mistakes.

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