What can we learn from...pre-school teachers?!

review of Hybrid Pedagogy's "LEARNING FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: HIGHER ED AND THE PROCESS OF BECOMINg"

This article, remarkably, touches on a lot of concepts that I've been thinking about as a teacher lately.  These include issues like how to encourage a growth mindset, learning as risk taking (and how to encourage it), and how to bring aspects of affect into the classroom (i.e. how to care about students as whole learners, not just a set of skills- for of course skill growth and how one feels about oneself as a learner are deeply connected!).    While the authors compare the way a pre-k teacher might give a gentle hug to a student, they list "other ways to 'hold'" students by talking to students about their own concerns, goals and intentions, and "In these ways we hope to separate our care for them as persons from assignment grades or other elements of class."   Lovely. 

Another section that struck me was in their section about respecting students as human equals, with the idea that setting ourselves up as holders of knowledge doesn't make room for knowing and learning to be a two way street, and takes away students' ability to influence a course:

 It is almost as if we make a deal with students: we will give you information if you leave your self, who you are and what you otherwise care about, at the door (and we promise we’ll do the same). Learning will be better, we imply, if it’s not mixed up with actually being people.

Yikes.  And yet....as much as I base my thinking about education on non-"banking" principles, I've come to run a very transfer-based course.   My students need so much guidance around writing that I did not feel comfortable letting them "flounder" - pursuing the same old strategies that have led to failure in the past.  At the same time, although my course doesn't leave a lot of room for students to choose their own topics, I'm trying hard to more explicitly create room for their responses and experiences in their writing.  In the end, how the hell else can students have an opinion or form an argument if it's not based on some part of their own life experience?

[To deal with this problem,] teachers can minimize traditional forms of information transfer (lecture or videos). In their stead, we can create environments where students care about practicing, feel supported in practicing, and are challenged to practice both disciplinary and soft skills.

This to me is the real challenge.   In my online courses, I have had experiences where I care about practicing.  It is always where one of two things is happening: 1) a topic I feel passionately about or 2) knowledge that moves me forward in my profession (or both!).  This week I'm excited to learn video software, read new articles, and work on a research paper on supporting neurodiversity in a writing classroom because I feel thankful to be learning these things!  Anything that feels un-relevant immediately sparks up boredom, annoyance and resistance .  In this way, I think being a student myself, and reflecting on that experience, has been the best guide for me as a teacher.  Without empathy for their experience as learners, how can we design learning that makes sense to them!?

The link between AD/HD and executive function

A new post from the Beyond BookSmart blog about AD/HD and EF issues - A great explanation of how these issues are connected!

The Relationship Between Executive Function and ADHD in Children

UDL Redesign Part II: how "disabled" students can teach us to do better design!

Practice Positive Educational Thinking Poster

Barbara Graham Cooper wrote a wonderful dissertation about AD/HD students and college writing classrooms.   If you're interested in how our brains function (and dysfunction!), how AD/HD and other learning differences impact writing, and some history around AD/HD diagnosis and compositions studies, it's worth a read.

Here are some takeaways from Cooper's paper, "At the Brighter Margins: Teaching Writing to the College student with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder".

In this paper she does some great work: interviews current and former college students with AD/HD, digs into definitions of and research on AD/HD, and shares personal anecdotes, quotes and concepts that come right from the students.   Here are some of what I gleaned:

• There is a real lack of research into the issues of college students struggling with LD and AD/HD in particular.   
• A lot of college composition research looks into students who have been underserved or underprepared through social injustice, but there is less work around neurodiversity.
• AD/HD is great to study, because it is sort of a perfect storm of executive function issues.  (Executive Function or EF guides our ability to plan, manage time, act strategically and monitor or moderate emotions.). Students with AD/HD display a lot of the issues that I see in my students: smart students struggling to organize work, synthesize ideas, plan time, or generally turn their good ideas & understanding of a topic into a finished product.  OFten AD/HD students also have a specific learning disorder as well!
• It is not helpful to tell these students to "try harder"...trying is not the issue.
• What is helpful is structure & scaffolding.   Modeling well-done assignments, helping break down, plan & chunk out work, and providing templates and models are really helpful.  (See p. 176 in her article for more elaboration!)
• AD/HD students often are successful when they have found a system that works for them.
• They can "hyperfocus" when they are interested in a topic.

This paper helped me realize that when I talk about UDL, I mean that I specifically want to design for students with EF and LD issues (and also ELL).   Following the UDL concept of "predictable variability," it seems like designing a course with AD/HD students in mind would all students with EF issues (which is to say, more or less all of us :P ).  

This paper also really helped me understand AD/HD students (and my friends!). It doesn't just mean that they are easily distracted or hyper (common stereotypes), but rather that planning and pulling together their thoughts can be a challenge for them...and they have to work twice as hard as a more "middle of the road" person to get the same work done.  So while I might in the past have rolled my eyes at self-descriptors like AD/HD, now it makes me feel real respect for friends (and students) who feel so challenged by some of these tasks...but have managed to get advanced degrees, open their own businesses, etc.  And bringing fun, creativity and energy to the planet as they do it!   

UDL Re-Design Part I: The research begins, and How reading about AD/HD students can revolutionize the college writing classroom

Hi!  So this is Part I of my summer series about re-designing my Critical Reading & Writing course as a blended courses designed around universal design principles.   I am also researching a paper for my UDL course this summer on more or less the same topic.   I was worried at first that I wouldn't be able to find enough sources specifically about UDL & college composition, but I'm feeling optimistic now.   I"m realizing that I can use sources about UDL itself, UDL vs. the medical model, papers from the Landmark Institute (college specifically focused on learners with LD), papers on neurodiversity and online learning, and, best of all, there ARE some papers about college composition, LD & UDL!

I'm also trying to model the process for my students, so I'm trying to be conscious about annotating, note taking, and organizing my paper.   I'll see what kinds of tools I end up using, and perhaps sharing some of them here!

In terms of the papers I've found on UDL & college writing: some are fairly basic, merely describing UDL and laying out a few strategies.  However, I think I hit the goldmine when I discovered this doctoral thesis from 2008 (I'm looking for more recent stuff because of developments in thinking about executive function as well as technology!).   I have so much to say about this paper - not the least of which is that it is elegantly and engagingly written - something I realize I"ve been missing as I'm reading academic papers!   So grateful to Barbara Graham Cooper for this work she did - so far I can't find out anything else about her, which is a shame!

I"m going to try to lay out some big takeaways from this paper (clocking in at 300 pages, which I devoured!), but if you teach writing and are curious about her well-thought-out suggestions for supporting neurodiverse writers - dont' be intimidated!  Follow the link, download the file, and skip right to p. 176.   Cooper's "At the brighter Margin: teaching writing to the college student with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder."  (Just open the link on this page to download the file).

Redesigning Critical Reading & Writing: blending, gamifying, universally designing....

Hi kids, I'm back!

I had a pretty intense injury this spring where I broke 3 fingers (dispersed among both hands), and so I'm still hunting and pecking instead of touch typing.  Please excuse typos!

I'm also diving in to applying what I learned, which means re-designing my writing/reading course to a) function as a blended course (giving working students more options to participate & scaffolding online work)
b) attempting to use this format to incorporate universal design principles - I want to try to figure out how to make my course accessible & friendly to my ridiculously wide range of students.  All Brains Welcome!  (more on this later).
c) attempt to gamify to increase options for student choice in the intensity and content of their work, and to reward affective, non-grades-based achievements (badges, here I come!).
d) attempt to incorporate fun technologies into my assignments to give all different kinds of students ways to express themselves.  (see b).

I'll be researching and writing about this process all summer...interested to see where it takes me and what kinds of roadblocks I run into .... watch as I model a growth mindset!

Do you know of anyone who has run a cool, tech-focused, engaging, or universally-designed writing class?  Especially for college students?  Let me know in the comments!