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Community college students are more likely to come from underserved populations and are inclined to feelings of self-doubt in academic settings. When learning online, our students need to know they have an instructor who cares and is there to support them, and that they are part of a vibrant learning community. Effective online teachers mindfully cultivate their presence at the course level and one-on-one with students. These interactions foster a relationship based on trust, which is the foundation of a learning community.
Reflections: Notes from the journey
Reflections: Notes from the journey
Where I was.
Where I was.
I was using more emoji’s to signify tone so that students’ anxiety can be reduced.
After looking at feedback from students in their reflections how inability to judge tone in an online class impacted their motivation for the material and to incorporate the grading feedback.
After trying out emoji's in Fall 2019, I discovered that students really began reading my announcements and being more open to coming to office hours since they thought via the emoji's I was a friendly person who would provide a safe space.
Where I am.
Where I am.
Currently, I am incorporating the equity updated syllabus, so I am hopeful that students will be more engaged with the syllabus and see themselves in the syllabus. After reading in the Equity Class, I was struck by how negative my syllabi were, so I created a much more welcoming and engaging document my students are now actually enjoy reading.
I have been revising my rubric to be more focused on Mindful Rubric Language. I feel like rubrics should be more focused on helping students see opportunity for revision and improvement rather than judgement. Hence, I am reframing all my rubrics toward language of improvement and tips rather than judgmental language. I am excited to to complete this revision for the Fall.
Where I'm headed.
Where I'm headed.
I am working on my Professional Equity by polling my students to find out what they need, contacting resources on campus for ideas how to support these students, and sharing these best practices with collegues.
This year I have been working with my DSPS, ISP, and Staff Development teams on campus to create more equitable practices for online learning to support students of diverse backgrounds.
When Covid-19 hit this year, faculty scrambled to go online and clung to Zoom and synchronous teaching as a life raft to get through. The unintended consequence of this was leaving DSPS, ISP, and low-income students in accessibility trap since these zoom classes often were not captioned, interpreted, recorded, or made available at times that everyone could participlate at due to Bandwidth and schedule differences.
Examples
Examples
Teaching Philosophy_Aleonard.pdfTeaching Philosophy Statement
Teaching Philosophy Statement
During the Equity class, I developed a Teaching Philosophy that I have added to my all my syllabi and classes, so students can better understand where I am coming from and how I will support them in my classes.
Syllabus Roadmap
Syllabus Roadmap
Next, I worked to develop an Equity based syllabus that updated the language to be more welcoming and removed the penalties for late work and minuses in grading. After attending an anti-racist grading workshop, I concluded that minus grades were a barrier to student success and had adverse impacts to students transferring, so since it was not required just a convention in our department, I got rid of them.
Professional Development Video
Professional Development Video
As I work on deepening my commitment to professional equity, I was inspired to find out who made up my online class, so I could develop more equitible methods of instruction. I discovered that typically my class was 80% internation students, so I worked with the International Student(ISP) Office for my College to design a more equitible space for ISP students.
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