Week 2: Connect our students with activities

I am a social worker. I should be good at this. Connecting students and others with activities!  And, I like to do this. In fact, this is one of my favorite things.  Connecting students and others with activities and other people and seeing them like the activities, flourish, grow, and do things and make connections I would have never thought of.

I have to give my father, Dr. Dan C. Holliman, lots of credit for inspiring me and showing me how to do this. He was a Professor and Field Biologist at Birmingham-Southern College and in Alabama. One of the things he loved was taking students and interested people on field trips. Real field trips-actually out in fields-to Dauphin Island and Mentone, Alabama, to the Black Belt of Central Alabama named for the rich and dark color of the soil, to Lake Guntersville to see Bald Eagles, to Wheeler Wildlife refuge, and even to the Galapagos Islands. My mother didn’t have the enthusiasm for these field trips that others did, but that is part of the story—the drama, the narrative and the way it plays out when you are “Connecting students (and others) with activities.”

This semester I am happy to see “Connect our students with activities” as one of the “Seven things we can all do for retention.” Because to connect students with activities you need support. You don’t do this by yourself. You need support and affirmation from your colleagues, department heads, Deans and people throughout the university.  When you connect students with activities you may use your instructional time to do this or you may ask students to do things out of class which means they take their time, and this could be time away from other classes.

Communication and planning are key.  It is important to give the students time to plan, and maybe giving them an assignment or extra credit incentive that doesn’t compromise the rigor of your course. And, in my experience I almost always give my faculty, staff and administrative colleagues information about what I am connecting the students with, when it is, where it is, and how it ties to the course outcomes and goals. The activities need to be supported by the university and educationally solid. Sometimes colleagues think it is a great idea and they are willing to help and be a part of what you are doing and other times you just inform your colleagues and administrators about it and at least they know about it. You can always ask for feedback from them, but if what you love is not what they love, there is no reason to change your plans for connecting students with activities.  Go for it! Keep connecting students with activities.  And, then listen to their feedback and learn afterwards.

And, about these activities, this has been a busy week. Valdosta State University had The Happening today and several of my colleagues and students attended. We even had an MSW program tent.  I didn’t attend. I am preparing for a Grant writing & Program Development workshop that I am doing on Saturday, and another thing I’ve learned with all these activities-you can’t do everything. There are a lot of wonderful and educational things out there to do. Like the Reader’s Theater next week and the webinars offered by Criminal Justice—I have MSW students participating, and I am so happy to see them take initiative in engagement and leadership.  They are our future! They will do the things we only dream of doing.

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As I wrote last week, for the next seven weeks I am taking a topic from the VSU Fall convocation and writing about it on my blog. This week my topic is “Get to know students.”  Most teachers at any level would agree how important it is to get to know students, but this week I’ve been keeping this in the front of my  mind (rather than the back of my mind or on the side of my mind or under my mind or above my mind).

For me I always have a lot on my mind the first week of class–having my syllabi & rubrics complete, knowing where my classrooms are, preparing course materials, being responsive to registration and other student concerns, getting the feel for my new schedule. In addition, many of the organizations and committees I am a part of start up this first week of class–the AAUW, the College of Education & Human Services Executive Committee, and the Scholarship & Honors Committee.

Many of my social media friends share in the excitement of the first week of school, and it helps to cast this as excitement rather than anxiety.  My mantra #10 is “I will not let fear, doubt, negativity and dread distract, deter or stop me. I’ve prepared and practiced and I believe in what I do. Fear, negativity, doubt and dread will not stop me.”

But, back to the topic.  Remembering to “Get to know students” has kept me mindful when I’ve passed people at VSU who look a little lost. I’ve given directions a few times this week, and as I was busily doing my beginning of the year stuff-I thought about the story of the Good Samaritan, and those important people who were just too busy to stop. Sometimes that is me–being too busy to stop. Being too busy to get to know the students.

In “Getting to know the students” in class last night we discussed the syllabus and course requirements, and I also answered questions.  At the beginning of the class our new Interim Department Head who is also the  Associate Dean came in to meet the students (to get to know the students). In the class the students did have enough time to decide on their work groups and topics.  These are  accomplishments. I did have another activity and pre-tests that  I wanted to do last night,  but we can do these next week or in future weeks.  There is time.

So my lesson for this week–there are always tasks to do, teaching and learning are filled with preparation, and we have to spend a lot of time in the weeds–making sure things are done correctly and objectives are covered.  And, this is important, critical-but over the years I’ve learned to do these things faster, and to reduce my time spent with negativity, doubt, dread and fear.  These do take up a lot of time when I engage in them individually or in collectives.  I am learning to laugh at the many mistakes I make when I am down in the weeds trying to get things done, and look for and make time for and cherish these educational relationships.

Diane C. Holliman PhD, LCSW, MPH

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August  & Anxiety

Today began our first day of meetings before classes start. These are meetings for Valdosta State University faculty and staff. I have meetings every day this week. Today was the convocation, tomorrow is the College of Education & Human Services (COEHS) from 9:30 am to 3 pm, Wednesday & Thursday are Courageous Conversations (all day-both days and at the Rainwater Conference center) and Friday is our Department retreat—not at the beach, but at the home of our new Interim department head, but he may live at the beach-I don’t know yet.

But, what do I really need to be doing? Preparing for classes (syllabi, rubrics, lectures, materials, guest speakers), revising and writing book chapters for the book I am second author on, and finishing an administrative evaluation that was due months ago.

But, I have committed myself to doing weekly blog posts on teaching related stuff, and today at the convocation one of the topics was student retention. Retention sounds like an administrative thing rather than a part of sound teaching, but I got a list of “Seven things we can all do for retention” and I thought this would be a good framework for my blog for the next 7-8 weeks.   Each week I will discuss how I am applying one of these seven (1) Get to know students, (2) Connect our students with activities (3) Connect our students to resources (4) Understand the challenge of the first grades (5) Encourage experiential opportunities (6) Assemble the team (7) You are Valdosta State to our students.

I do teach graduate students-MSW students and that is different than undergraduates, and in looking at these seven at first it seems that they mainly apply to undergraduates-beginning students, and with these seven, #4 was the one to get my attention. “Understand the challenge of the first grades.”  To me grading is one of the most challenging parts of teaching-students want to do well-they want to make “A’s” and with grading we communicate numerically and with words what students are doing well, and what they need to improve on.

As I have taught I have realized that this communication about student performance doesn’t end when we return the assignments—it is ongoing, and as Professors we have our performance too. Performance in teaching and communicating with students. (Remember last week when I discussed how many assignments to give? Well, I still haven’t figured that one out).

Communicating—for me communicating about student grades and performance when they are not excellent can cause great anxiety.   I just have to work my way through the anxiety-knowing I am not perfect. I embrace and learn from my failures, but as a tenured Professor I have lots of experience with failure and anxiety.  I’ve learned they aren’t going to kill me-they haven’t yet . . .

But, that brings me to “Courageous conversations.” And, this is not to minimize this two-day event comparing conversations about grading and evaluation with conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, politics, religion, national origin, health status, learning, age, education and much more.  I think we need this—I could say, “Oh, we don’t need two days of Courageous Conversations.” Or “I’ve had this before.” But, this me—this 54- year old me at this time, has not had these sessions with this group of people—my College of Education & Human Services colleagues. I am excited about COEHS becoming a more cohesive unit. We are just starting to come together.

I hope I am able to finish everything before next week.

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Here we go again! Getting ready for a new semester.  I think most teachers/professors/instructors feel a bit (or a lot) anxious as the new academic year is beginning. This will be my 20th year of teaching full-time in a Social Work program.  I taught in a BSW program at Mississippi State University in Fall 1998 before moving to Valdosta and Valdosta State University.

Teaching has been one of the most rewarding and challenging things I’ve ever done, and it still intrigues me in so many ways. Teaching still feels brand new to me.  There is always so much to learn and since I have been teaching–teaching online, teaching hybrid web and teaching face to face (as we call it here at VSU) how to present this information and utilize technology in a way to best fit what we are teaching, the skills we want to impart and the needs of the students has been daunting. Daunting, but fun!

There are so many moving parts to teaching–how to present the material, what to present, not presenting too much or too little, the Professor/student professional relationship, making sure your courses align with the curriculum, working with your colleagues to meet the goals of the department, managing the administrative parts of teaching (Attendance verification, meetings, addressing things that happen that are out of the norm, getting grades in on time), classroom management and . . .more.

And, then there are the students I teach–busy, hard working, conscientious, intelligent, critical thinkers,  and unique.  They want to succeed.  They want to make a difference in this crazy and troubled and beautiful world. And, most are still in a place in their careers where failure is not welcome, not acceptable.

Right now one thing I am thinking about is how many assessments or assignment to give in the courses I teach. I need to assess student knowledge, skills, values and cognitive and affective processes. Not only is this a Council on Social Work Education requirement, but we want our students to be prepared–prepared for Masters level social work. As my colleague Michael Sanger says, “Social work isn’t rocket science, it is harder.”

After reading “How much should we assign? Estimating out of class workload” a blog from the Center of Teaching Excellence at Rice University http://cte.rice.edu/blogarchive/2016/07/11/workload  —  I found that this is even more complicated that I thought it was.

I even posted this link on my facebook page and a former student wrote, “Can I just say that I would take my grad school “work” load any day over the work load I had as a therapist. It seems like it’s a lot, but it definitely prepares us for what’s to come.”

Well, for now I’ll stop. I do plan to post weekly–at the beginning of each week. Next week I hope to be a little further along with the course preparation for Fall 2018.

Diane Holliman PhD, LCSW, MPH

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Valdosta State University, Faculty Development, Internationalization Committee & International Programs & Social Work Department & College of Education & Human Services

http://www.valdosta.edu

Diane Carol Holliman PhD, LCSW PhD   &  Halim Faisal LCSW

This idea for this workshop was conceived in a small group discussion on “Climate change and the (lack of) future/intergenerational ethics in social work” that was part of the Global Partnership for Transformative Social Work Gathering in Salisbury, England, June 15-18, 2017. At this dialogically oriented gathering, seven social workers and educators from Australia, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the United States began a conversation on their concerns about climate change and their struggles to be heard and to respond to this global crisis. After a day of focused discussion on this topic, the seven shared their conversation and a performance that emerged from the exchange with the entire gathering. The others at the gathering were invited to join the conversation. Questions posed to the other small discussion groups by the Climate Change Group were: (1) What is the most important change you can make in your own life to help? (2) How can you reorganize professional social work to support the efforts? (3) How will you extend your “pool of concern to include climate change? As social workers interested in social justice, how can you make room on your already crowded plate for climate change? (4) What hinders you professionally and personally from taking part in this movement?  (5) What do you need in your professional and personal life to maintain critical hope and optimism for advocacy?

For this 2018 workshop we are proposing to briefly share our experiences and insights from the gathering and small group on climate change. We will then present the Questions 1-5 from the June 2017 gathering through performance, and open our conversations and performances to others to expand our circle and strengthen the movement for sustainability

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