Sunday, January 27, 2013

Performance in the Classroom, Learning Communities Style

Last semester, I was lucky enough to observe the final project of Bonnie G. and Lindsay C.'s Speech 151/Spanish 252 Twofer learning community, "Exprésate--With Feeling."

The male student group

The female student group

The project, a performance collage called the Bilingual Reader's Theatre, required that students--four female students in one group and four male students in another--explore elements of Hispanic culture and create text based performances around their findings.

The Reader's Theatre project required that the students perform 25% of each performance collage in Spanish. The students had been practicing integrating more and more Spanish into speeches all semester long. One practice session came mid-semester when students performed for a group of three year olds from MCC's own Children's Learning Center: fun and educational!

For this final project, the groups decided to use the gender split of the class to their advantage, so the female student group explored issues of domestic violence, and the male student group explored issues of machismo. The groups named their sources, which included writers as varied as Oscar Hijuelos and John Leguizamo, during the presentation. They used props, choreographed pantomime, and translations that overlapped with original recitations of Spanish. The idea--whether it was the negativity of stereotypes or the empowerment of women--was always clear, regardless of the audience's fluency in the language (specifically this audience member, whose six years of French about seventeen years ago didn't quite prepare her for this...).

Illustrating machismo in Spanish culture

Pantomiming poetry lyrics

Illustrating domestic violence in Spanish Culture

What was the most obvious, though, was the success of the Speech and Spanish learning community. The students were able to get up in front of a dozen friends and strangers (some wielding cameras) and perform snippets of the prose, drama, and poetry they had researched and vetted to express (¡exprésate!) the ideas they'd been learning for sixteen weeks. Were they nervous? Absolutely. But they were also terrific.

Now that we've seen two ways our MCC instructors have used performance in their classrooms, how would you use skits or other types of performance in your classroom? Would you ask students to do a relatively quick illustration of a single concept, like with S.V.'s Sociology of Deviance skits? Or would you have them illustrate a semester's worth of content, as Bonnie and Lindsay did? Either way, this kind of interactive group activity can be a terrific classroom tool!

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Spring Faculty Development Day Re-cap

Our apologies for such a belated re-cap of the Spring Faculty Development Day--after January 10th  and the following mini-conference on the 11th, we all got a little swept away in the start of the new semester. We're sure you all got swept away, too, but we hope you're floating on nicely now and have had a chance to catch your breath.

From our perspective, January 10th went along quite well! From the morning "Outside the Classroom" sessions...

Peter Ponzio talks Charles Dickens

John Peters talks family history

Dawn Valdes-Wagner talks Arab Emirates

Jim Gould talks family obstacles

Kate Midday talks princesses (or not...)

David White talks teaching abroad

...and the "Inside the Classroom Sessions" that were all mapped back to our four Excellence in Teaching tenants (Subject Matter, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Professionalism)...

iClickers in the Classroom

MOOCs: Friend or Foe?
ConnectMath

Smart Board Technology and Practice

The new Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas
 
Assessment

Teaching Outside the Lines

The Socratic Method
...to the College Update and Colleague Connectivity "Beyond the Classroom" sessions:

Dr. Vicky Smith

Dr. Tony Miksa

We also had five terrific sessions for anyone who could stay past dinner, although I didn't get any pictures because I was leading a session on "Reaching the Modern Student" for a terrific audience of part time and full time faculty members. We also had re-run Smart Board, ConnectMath, and LMS/Canvas sessions, and an Adjunct 101 session for our brand new adjunct faculty members.

The Adjunct 101, led by Robin Deak and Christina Swanson, is consistently popular and consistently useful. If you're an adjunct faculty member and interested in learning more about our Adjunct Orientation (which will be Monday evenings this Spring!), then contact Robin for more information.

Our Friday mini-conference--the first of its kind--drew just a handful of faculty members, but the sessions went very well and we'll continue to offer this the Friday after workshop days so that interested faculty can get in a bit of development before the semester begins.

Check back here later in the week for more posts on using skits and performance to reinforce concepts, and our classrooms outside of campus!

To see the What's New in Faculty Development presentation that we didn't have time for on January 10, please click here!

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

It's Almost Time!

Thursday, January 10 is Spring Faculty Development Day, and we hope you're ready to get down and developed!

Check out the program below, and don't forget to fill out your evaluation when the e-mail comes on Friday; we'd love to hear your thoughts on the day!





Monday, January 07, 2013

Out of the Box…In the Box: Small Plays in the Classroom

Contributed by S.V., Instructor of Sociology
Scene 1: A concerned Chris converses with Erica on phone wondering why his friend Dennis is avoiding him.
Scene 2: Erica confronts Dennis who has taken on cheerleading.
Scene 3: Dennis reveals to Chris his new role as a cheerleader emphasizing its hypermasculine characteristics such as cheerleading being a tough sport and his ability to hang out with the best-looking girls in school.


"Men Who Cheer"
This is a play on "Men Who Cheer" from the Sociology of Deviance class this fall. October 31st was the opening night. Students drew on five readings from the textbook. They documented three to five key actions/dialogues for each scene that explains the process of development/management of deviant identity.  They demonstrated what puts people in the trajectory of deviance and how they rationalize and manage their deviant status, which they must live with. The students were responsible for the script, role assignment, direction, props, and anything else they decided to include.

Students Act Out: the stigma of homeless youth

S.V., introducing the skits

During the discussion after the plays, the class said that they had thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. They were able to understand and retain the material in the reading for their plays compared to other assignments including presentations and class discussions. They were able to put themselves in the shoes of the deviants. The only concern expressed was offending their peers in class who may be living with a particular deviance. Other plays included topics of bisexualilty and anorexia, stigma management strategies of homeless kids, and techniques of neutralization used by car thieves.
Overall this “out of the box” assignment was a very fruitful exercise. Students were also satisfied with the time for preparation which included one entire class period (80 minutes) over a few days. On a personal level, it was a very exciting experience to watch the work of some of the sociologists come to life in my classroom.

How could you use skits to demonstrate key concepts and ideas in your own classroom?

The Sociology of Deviance class, Fall 2012
Visit us again next week for another story about MCC instructors using skits/performance in the classroom!

Thursday, January 03, 2013

2013 New Year's Resolution #1: Apply For A Grant!

Contributed by Marcella Reca Zipp, Director of Resource Development

Grants are a great way to obtain external funding for your department, try out a new curriculum or activity, travel abroad, write a book, help students receive scholarships to pursue higher education, add an impressive accolade to your CV, and so much more--the list goes on and on for potential grant opportunities as faculty members to improve education and student success at MCC!

Grant writer Don Peek of Education World poses some questions to ask yourself when deciding if a grant would be helpful:
  • What challenges are your students facing?
  • What do they need help learning in your school?
  • What behaviors are they exhibiting that might get in the way of achievement?
Obtaining a grant at MCC should be done through the Office of Resource Development (ORD). We will help you find an appropriate funder, draft your proposal, develop a budget, complete the application, and more. We are your gateway to external funding and support!

ORD has posted a thorough list of external funding opportunities that may be of interest to MCC administrators, faculty, and staff. The list is located at myMCC>Advancement & Planning>Grant Seeking>Documents>Grants and Other Funding Opportunities.

Some words of advice from the Dean of Education at The Citadel:
“Most institutions have fallen on hard times. Instead of worrying about your needs, search for a grant agency that supports needs that are similar to yours and then carefully craft a proposal that assures the evaluators that, if given the opportunity, you will out-perform your competition on meeting the organization's goals. Should your proposal be rejected, realize that in grant writing, rejection is an essential step to success. Just take a deep breath and rewrite your proposal, making it irresistible to the next evaluators.”

If you are interested in pursuing one of these opportunities, please discuss your idea with your supervisor or dean, and then contact Marcella (x7515) or Caroline (x7538) in ORD.