"This must be where pies go when they die."

If you're planning a trip to Pender Island, may I suggest you begin by having breakfast at the Pender Island Bakery Cafe.

Recommended: splitting their huge cinnamon bun. It is sticky, soft, sweet, and delicious. It doesn't even need frosting to complete it.

Then, after you travel about, checking out the short hikes and beaches the island has to offer, hop on back to the bakery for a four berry rhubarb pie to take home. I'm considering going back to Pender just for the pie.

The pie goes great with good company and homemade whipped cream.

*Note: This may be your route by default since most dinning places on Pender Island are closed on Mondays and/or Tuesdays during the off season.

All In- Taking Advantage of Sunny Days in the Midst of Winter

This week my partner and I took a day trip to Pender Island on the one sunny day during the week. Pre-trip weather check + car co-op car + reading break + good company = (sunny expedition)(four berry rhubarb pie)(beaches)(mossy hike)(hilltop view)

Totally worth it.

(at some Pender Island beach)

Supportive Learning

I've been thinking a lot about what Old Diver said about the need to switch out both the "entertainer" version of teaching and the "banker" model of teaching for a model of teaching that inspires students to actively engage in the material. What can instructors do to make this happen? Many of my teachers practiced two of the key techniques that can engage students in the learning process: validating the student's contributions to class and providing a supportive classroom environment.

Validation

Students need to be reminded that they can and do positively contribute to the class. Some of the best discussions I've had have come out of student driven responses and questions. Why? Because people engage with things they are interested in. By positively acknowledging a student's good question and allowing that to lead a class discussion the instructor lets the student know that their line of critical questioning is valid. By acknowledging a student's response in a discussion also validates a student's critical thinking process. The teacher is not the be all and end all in the classroom. The students have something to say and (many times) it is valuable).

Supportive Class Environment

As an undergrad, I lived in perpetual fear of being called upon in class. What if I didn't have the right answer? Actually, I think the phrase was "what if I'm WRONG in front of everyone?" Yes, wrong would be in all-caps. It took a couple years of entering "real world"-like jobs, going on random adventures, and journeying through a semester of graduate school to figure out that being wrong isn't so bad. In fact, the best place to hear you're wrong is not after you receive the grade for your paper but while you're in a non-assessment environment.

The key here, is that the classroom environment, at least for me, needed to be pressure-free (or at least pressure reduced). I had to feel like I could say something, be wrong, and that it would be okay to be wrong as long as I learned how to be right. In fact, being wrong should be an acknowledged part of the learning process.

To students reading this, I hope you have a teacher that tells you something along the lines of this:

Dear students,

Your opinion in the classroom is valuable. In fact, you have a lot of interesting things to say. You know how you have experienced the texts, the subject matter, the lecture material. What you think can inspire the instructor to think differently about the material as well. What you have to say is important. You can make discussions happen, open the eyes of other students, open your own eyes, and turn a passive learning experience into an engaged learning environment. The classroom is a space for you to learn and develop without fear of judgement or assessment (outside of the graded assignment, and even then the formative comments should provide a sense of support and guidance).

Texting Our Way Through Higher Education

I am enthralled by sitting in on first year lecture courses, and not always because of the material. What I find truly fascinating is the number of students who try to hide their phones beneath their fold-down desks and text while the professor speaks.

Before I go any further, for you students out there who do this: just stop.

Now we can continue.

My first reaction to this observation was frustration. Okay, I'm still a little appalled by what appears to be a blatant sign of disrespect. But I think it's too easy to chalk this behavior up to an increasing disconnect to live interaction and our simultaneous need to be constantly connected, the slow erosion of respect in contemporary culture, or whatever other cultural malady my generation and younger generations are afflicted with.

I think this texting problem may, in part, be symptomatic of the evolving, or devolving, way education is viewed as passive entertainment.

Education as Entertainment

I'm guilty of this. I really enjoy the classes where the teacher does the academic equivalent of a song and dance to keep the students interested in the topic. Let the jokes fly, bring in the props. But is this now the standard expectation? If the material is dry and students aren't entertained, is it okay, like passive TV viewers, to try to change the channel by facebooking, texting, tweeting? Is it solely the responsibility of the professor to engage students in the material, or does some of the onus also rest on the students?

Isn't it our job as students to be thinking about the material as it is presented to us? Shouldn't we be furiously scribbling down both what the professor says and what we think about what they are saying?

Engaged Learning vs. Fast Food Learning

Pedagogical theorists talk about the "McDonaldization" of education. Increasingly, universities are focused on creating more capital (by enrolling more students) and promising that they will provide everything they need for satisfaction in future careers. Unfortunately, when you're mass producing education, the quality of education often turns out like the quality of a frozen fast food patty. Everything is shaped a certain way, tastes a certain way, and loads on the calories without real nutrients or satisfaction of a good meal. Students can leave large university lectures with loads of knowledge (if we're following the simile, knowledge = calories) without the ability to critique this knowledge (the essential nutrients and deeper satisfaction). Large lectures can leave little space for students to critically engage with the material, isolate students from the real application of the knowledge, and erode the possibility of a student/teacher relationship that involves students actively challenging the ideas the teacher sets forth. Of course people will start to wander if they are not actively engaged, and it certainly does not look easy to engage 150-300 students all at once. You can try to give people formative reasons to pay attention, make connections between the material and real life, ask students questions and expect them to answer, but the real connect occurs in those small group settings. The real connect occurs when students can talk to students about the material, when they can talk to the teacher about the material, when interaction, debate, and development are not only modeled by the teachers but engaged in by the students. When education is active, hopefully it engages. When students are engaged, hopefully they disengage with their cellphone.

Changes need to be made on all fronts of academics, from student engagement, teaching methods, to systemic policies that allow for overcrowded lectures. Remember the video of Ken Robinson on TEDtalks? His model of alternative education that promotes creativity is just one way we might reconstruct education. What are other ways of improving classroom dynamics and the quality of education? Any thoughts?

How Spending 20 Minutes Can Earn You Hours

I am one of those annual wishful thinkers, a staunch believer in New Year's resolutions and good intentions that start on January 1st and end somewhere around January 10th (okay, sometimes January 2nd). And every year some permutation of "exercise" languishes on the abandoned resolution list. What tends to happen is a dissolution in resolution usually stemming from this skewed notion that I don't have enough time.

No Time to Not Exercise

Okay, let's demystify this. A Master's student has enough time. In fact, in Gregory Semenza's book Graduate Study for the 21st Century, the one extra-curricular activity he recommends is exercise. (He only suggests one since everything else you do should revolve around research, reading, studying, publishing, presenting, and maybe sleeping). Other than keeping you healthy (a bout of the flu may keep you away from the library for more than 8 hours), exercise gives you a chance to clear your mind and decompress. While the work sixty hours a week mantra may not work for everyone (I actually find his rally cry for grad students to give it their all kind of inspiring and fitting for the "all-in" sentiment of this blog), the importance he places on maintaining one's health seems applicable to everyone.

Build Stamina

But perhaps most importantly, spending those minutes on the treadmill or running trails or playing dodgeball actually buys you time in the long run. How? It builds stamina and increases concentration. In Act Now BC's list of 25 ways to improve your stamina, the BC government initiative basically lists 25 incarnations of exercise.

In the last week, I feel like I can attest to the time-creating power of exercise. Granted, I only go for 20 minutes, but right now that's my speed. If I go to the gym at 6:30 a.m. and leave by 7:00 a.m., I not only start my day earlier, I also have more energy for the rest of the day. When I start to lose focus around 8:00 p.m., a quick jaunt to the gym perks me right up. After a brief, but productive break from the books, I feel ready to tackle the Modernists again (unless it's Joyce-- I need a much longer break to tackle Joyce).

Hone Your Focus

Focus is a skill that requires practice-- and yes, I need a lot of practice. That is why running is perfect. Running is a practice in focus. When running cross-country in high school, our coach told us a secret: running is 10% physical and 90% mental. Focus on your goal, focus on your breathing, focus on the next step, and 90% of the hard work of running is complete. When I stop running it's not usually my physical limitations that stop me, it's my mental track that stops me. I get bored and start focusing on discomforts the same way I do when I'm studying. By cultivating focus through running, you can cultivate focus in other areas. A brief stint at the gym centers my mind, warms-up my ability to focus, and gives me the energy to maintain that focus for a longer period of time.

Quantitative Results

Math is not my thing, but between waking up an hour earlier and being able to stay up 2 hours later (without straining to keep my eyelids open), minus 30 minutes for the gym, has already increased my waking and non-gym hours by 2 and a half hours. I'll have to get back to you on the time saved through sustained focus, but let me tell you, it has made a huge difference (huge being the technical, statistical term for such difference).

As the year stretches on, we'll see how this "exercise" thing goes. One day at a time, one practice in focus at a time.

What motivates you to run/swim/play? What benefits do you reap from this practice?

Thanks for reading.