Teaching in Spring 2021

Credit for this page goes to the facilitators and idea generators: Erika Allen, Jennifer Anderson, Kylee Britzmann, Teresa Carmack, Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Holly Daughtery, Laura Earles, Tirazheh Eslami, Sarah Graham, Connie Hallen, Marcy Halpin, Julie Magelky, Lloyd Mataka, Amy Minervini, Chris Norden, Nancy Lee Painter, Leanne Parker, Suzanne Rousseau, Karen Schmidt, Tate Smith, Provost Lori Stinson

 Spring Instructional Plan from the Provost's Office

In spring we celebrate, and work towards meeting the LC mission

"Lewis-Clark State College prepares students to become successful leaders, engaged citizens, and lifelong learners." - LC's Mission

"No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow." - proverb

Even at a time when we have to socially distance and attend events by Zoom, there are still many meaningful opportunities to meet our mission. Indeed, these annual events are the heart and culture of our campus; they give us focus and the chance to partner across disciplines and departments, help each other, and celebrate our community. 

Everyone on campus has a role to play in making these events successful: organizers, volunteers, supporters, attendees. Faculty are key in helping students attend, modelling attendance, and guiding students to make meaning of the events. 

Whether you have been including campus events in your syllabus for years, or you are new to the practice, your ideas are highly valued. For some background and a place to start, here is Connecting Campus Programming to our Classes, a workshop facilitated by Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Sarah Graham, and Amy Minervini. Here are a few useful links from the workshop:

• Connecting Outcomes to Campus Programming. Please add your own!
• Assignment and Learning Ideas to Connect Campus Programming to our Classes. Please add your own!
• Students can earn Skills for their co-curricular transcript, and work toward their Leadership Credential 

The Spring Event Schedule

Many of these events are also listed in the brochure from the Diversity Commission.

MLK Day Virtual event	January 18, 6 pm
City of Hope and the 1968 Poor People's Campaign - Smithsonian exhibit at the Center for Arts and History	January - February
Student Fee Hearing	March 3rd or 4th
Women's History Month focus on women's roles and responses during times of emergencies. virtual Women's Leadership Conference	March 1-5
Stegner Lecture	March 12
Native American Awareness Week	March 15-19
ASLCSC Open Debates and Forum	March 23 - 25
Humanifest	Week of April 16
Earth Day - with Nancy Johnston (part of the Leadership Credential)	April 22

Helping students succeed  in Spring (CALM: compassion, attention and laughing more)

• Regularly ask students how they are doing and direct students as needed: 
  • Student wellness: the domains of wellbeing with an emphasis on the emotional
  • Resources from Student Counseling (and student counseling, itself): local, regional and national helplines, information, office
  • Warrior Food Pantry. You can also follow them on Facebook for updates, featured food, and links to other distribution sites.
  • Foundation Retention Scholarship
  • Harmful myths when coming out: for our students when "it's not all glitter and rainbows."

• Start every class with a question for discussion while you are getting the class set-up, maybe silly, maybe serious (thanks Suzanne!). Students in class and online can reply. For example:

• Would you rather be a wizard or a superhero, and why?
• Tell us about your pet(s).
• What is your favorite song on your pandemic playlist?
• Post a riddle, joke (clean!) or a favorite quote.
• Best food you've cooked recently.
• One word/emoji to explain how you are doing.
• Tips for staying caught up.

• Help foster community by encouraging students to attend the multitude of campus events in spring.

• Encourage engagement whether students are in class or on zoom, or both:
  • use an online polling tool or kahoot to check in with learning every 10 minutes of so.
  • use padlet or google jamboard for brainstorming
  • incorporate Classroom Assessment Techniques like muddiest points, or application cards. Students on zoom can submit theirs in chat, google doc or padlet/jamboard. 
  • partner a student in the classroom with one on zoom so the in-class student can connect and help the student on zoom.
  • focus on writing and problem solving in class.
  • modify your favorite engagement strategies to fit your modality, you do not have to let go of effective teaching but you probably will need to modify how you teach if you are using a mixed modality. And maybe just focus on one thing to change so you don't make yourself crazy.
  • invert your class so that lectures are online and prior to classtime.

Handling your workload

• provide credit for a student willing to TA for your class and help students that connect by zoom. This may also dovetail or connect to the  Leadership Credential . 
• consider ways to lower cognitive overload like moving face to face classes online 
• be clear about your expectations, and how your students can meet them
• use simplified grading scales (like 0, 0.5, 1 instead of 0-100%)
• pick one thing to change in your class to improve engagement, not many things
• transcribe your recordings using a free app like speechnote

Other hints and ideas

• In addition to Flims on Demand from the LC Library, you can use your ValNet library card to stream Kanopy, which "showcases more than 30,000 of the world’s best films, including award-winning documentaries, rare and hard-to-find titles, film festival favorites, indie and classic films, and world cinema with collections from A24, Kino Lorber, Music Box Films, Samuel Goldwyn, The Orchard, The Great Courses, PBS and thousands of independent filmmakers."