Whitney Clay: Welcome to the West Valley College TEACH Center podcast.
Michelle Francis: TEACH stands for training educators advocating change.
Whitney Clay: I'm Whitney Clay, Instructional designer.
Michelle Francis And I'm Michelle Francis, Professional Development Coordinator and Instructor in Child Studies.
Whitney Clay: At the TEACH Center, we support faculty as they cultivate excellence in teaching and learning and welcome their students with engaging pedagogies.
Michelle Francis: In this podcast, we discuss hot topics in teaching and learning. We interview educators about what they are doing in their fields, and we talk to learners about what inspires them.
Whitney Clay: Welcome to the third in our series of four episodes with our guest, motivation and performance researcher Dr. Omid Fotuhi. In this episode, as we explore the relational aspect of learning, you will learn how teachers can be effective in their practice by keeping in mind three core questions that all students have.
Whitney Clay: So I kind of want to turn our conversation now from a student perspective to the instructor. And I've got another quote and another question for you. Central to any college class is the relationship between the student and the teacher. And I wanted to present a quote from Parker Palmer in his book, The Courage to Teach, he says that effective teachers courageously draw from their authentic selves in their practice and that good teaching does not look the same from one instructor to the next. And so here's the quote. He says, “We teach who we are. The impact from any good teacher is ultimately from selfhood and not from course content.” So my follow up question is this. I've been thinking about how teachers, just like students, because we're all people, we're all human, they need to feel a sense of safety and belonging in order to thrive. And changing your practice can be kind of scary. So what do you see as either catalysts or barriers for teachers to bring their authentic selves to their teaching and to teach who they are?
Omid Fotuhi: And again, great question. As I was mentioning, I think there's a bit of a conundrum with respect to the role of the faculty. As I reflect on the nature of learning, I really do think that learning is a social experience, more so than a content mastery experience. But unfortunately, we've created systems in which the latter is incentivized and recognized as opposed to the former. If you think of the origins of learning, we watch our parents navigate the world. We absorb the information that they have to share, and we apply those in our own lives. But we've gotten to the point where standardization and performance are so high priority in the way that we conduct our work, that we have essentially sucked out much room for that deep relational aspect of learning. Because it's almost like a cafeteria model now where students are expected to be shepherded through, capture the content and move on. Yet at the same time, there's still this expectation that we place on teachers to create and foster those relationships. Because the science shows that when students feel a sense of belonging and a sense of connection with their teachers, they perform better. So that's kind of the conundrum we're in. The question is, where does the responsibility actually lie? On the teacher? Which is often where we place the responsibility for students to feel like they belong? Who's the first to be blamed? Often the teacher or the advisor. But if you do a really deep exploration of what mechanisms are responsible for the diminished opportunities for relationship, then you really realize it is more at the system level. And so if you're trying to significantly change how it is that students interact with their teachers and the nature of that relationship, you could argue that there is a pretty strong need for a systemic change to the way that we engage and think about learning. Now, that being said, what can an individual teacher do within the capacities that they have? And fortunately, there actually is a fair bit. One is to just realize and recognize that students in large proportion are often well-intended, motivated and enthusiastic learners, and they want to achieve and they want to be able to maximize on their experiences. Where they struggle is, again, they're sort of engulfed in the same systems that we are as teachers, which is to say that there's a fair bit of disjointed demands on their time and attention. But keeping the awareness of the students intention close to heart is first thing. The second thing is also appreciating, recognizing that students are constantly navigating three core questions as they engage with the course content, with their feedback, and with their relationships. And these three core questions that loom large in their minds, pretty much every single time they have an interaction are, Do I belong? Can I do it? And does it matter? Now, as students come into these interactions with these questions top of mind, they tend to be looking for evidence that they don't belong, that they can't do it, and that it doesn't matter. So we were sort of wired to be more receptive to negative, negative responses. And so where that's useful for a teacher is in knowing that if these are the questions that are top of mind for students, then maybe there's a way in which we can facilitate and construct our learning experiences that helps to dispel or at least answer these questions for our students in the positive and the affirmative. Which is to say that if you're trying to foster a context of belonging, what you can do is you can normalize the common uncertainties and challenges that our students have as they transition to college. If you're trying to convey that students are able, that they can do it, you can also convey that what matters more than grades is the learning and the engagement and the interaction. So explicitly saying that what I care about is that you wrestle and you sit with the ideas. And when it comes to the relevance, maybe reminding them or allowing them to connect the dots in terms of why they chose to take this class, how it relates to their broader goals and their purpose and values. These are things that we can address as teachers that help to quell the questions that often, if left unanswered, will lead a student to disengage. So there are some tools from psychology that can be employed for the individual teachers. So in terms of what you can do as you, yourself navigate these same challenges of Do I belong? Can I do it? Does it matter? I think I have less to offer there because in turn, I think the administrators who are overseeing our work can benefit to hear and learn about this work as well. And so if part of the audience is administrators, then I would share the same advice with you.
Whitney Clay: Next, join us for episode four as our conversation with Dr. Fotuhi continues and we shift our focus to learning and connecting through technology.