Author: sheryda warrener

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Object Lesson: Making Process Visible with Mind Maps, by Sheryda Warrener

Can you read this and tell me what you think?

A question you’ve been asked many times over, either in the mad flurry at the end of class, during office hours, over email, sometimes even on your way to get lunch between workshops. What the aspiring writer wants from you is varied: validation, encouragement, acknowledgement, individual attention, line edits, or, quite simply, to be told what to do. An authentic, meaningful response is impossible under these conditions. And yet, here you are.

Here’s a process-oriented response to this question, borrowed from arts-based pedagogy, that aims to situate the work within a larger network of the writer’s questions, curiosities, influences, and resources.

Social Body Mind Map in Visual Arts 

From Dean Kenning:

    • Social Body Mind Mapping is a diagrammatic tool to enable critical reflection on one’s (previous, current or future) artwork with respect to unconscious process and social forces.” 
    • Through this creative thinking tool, art manifests a capacity to open up different ways in which we, as desiring individuals, connect to, and are caught up in, intricate social networks of influence and possibility.
    • Key to this capacity is a necessary shift away from the idea of a ‘self’ as a pre-established identity from where artworks spring (whether from a brain, innate talent, personality, cultural background, etc.)

Adapting for a Creative Writing Context

This approach works well with individuals as well as small groups. For this example, let’s imagine a small group of keen students during office hour.

Begin by inviting students to brainstorm:

Where does a piece of writing come from?
What makes it possible?

Together, generate lists under the following headings. You can offer a couple of examples from each category to get them started:

At this point, you can move to the mapping process. 

Ask students to draw a circle at the centre of a large piece of paper, and place the title of the piece of writing (or, if they’re inclined to draw or doodle, an image from the work). From the title, they begin to map the capacities, motivations, and influences that facilitated the work. Here’s an example from a map I made of a future poem:

Now I can see the connections between different elements / images I’ve been thinking about: memories of my mom’s garden, the catalogue of flower paintings from a show during the pandemic, the fresh flowers I buy at the market each week, quotes from other writers about flowers, and some formal considerations (off map).

What is illuminating is seeing everything all at once, and knowing now what influences I need to return to in order to make specific observations, perform more research, and otherwise attend more closely. Someone reading my map may be able to illuminate a connection I’m not seeing, or offer suggestions for further resources, such as paintings I might look at, or a pop culture reference I may not be aware of, in order to broaden the work.

REFLECTION

With the student’s map in front of you, you have access to context around the work, which allows you to make relevant observations, ask productive questions, and suggest informed craft moves. What will become immediately apparent, for example, is a total lack of capacity or motivation, other than “it’s an assignment for class,” so questions about what they would rather be writing, given the chance, may prove fruitful.

Working together with the map, what’s possible within the work will become apparent, as well as what parts of the process of making the writer might need to attend to, return to, engage with, or enhance. You can also ask students to share maps, so that they may respond to what they’re seeing and make suggestions to one another.

OBJECT LESSON

At its heart, this process-oriented approach invites students to see creativity as an integral and essential part of who they are and how they live in the world, and to view their work as part of a much broader ecosystem of creative forces.

In order to truly understand the potential impact of this mapping approach, I invite you to try it out for yourself, beginning with a past, present, or future piece of writing and seeing where the process of mapping takes you.

Sometimes the map becomes the art object…

Have fun!

Resources:

Learning to Teach Art and Design in the Secondary School, ed. Nicholas Addison and Lesley Burgess

Dean Kenning’s work: https://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/kenning/exhibition-1.php

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Office Hour: One-To-One Student Meetings

Tips for Holding Productive Office Hours

Office hours are an opportunity for you to get to know students and gain insight into their questions, concerns, writerly development, and wellbeing. Meeting one-on-one is incredibly rewarding; at times, it can be emotionally taxing. Here’s how to run a productive office hour without the drain on your creative resources.

Know why you’re there.

Your time spent in office hours can greatly improve a student’s connection to the course, build intrinsic motivation, and even strengthen a sense of community. Check in with the instructor regularly to ask them what they envision for office hours, how to reach out to students who might need extra support, and to make sure you’re well informed of upcoming assignments and course materials in case you have to field questions about content and assignments.

Create clear parameters around meetings.

There are any number of reasons why students want to talk with a TA during office hours. Sometimes the reasons are clear, and other times it’s hard to discern what the student might require. If you’re meeting by appointment, have students generate two – three questions in advance. Review any assignments or course materials that might be relevant to your discussion.

Once you have a sense of why they’re there, offer a quick overview of what they can expect from you. Work together to set clear goals and be firm about expectations.

If a student has a question about clarification on feedback, ask them to paraphrase their understanding of the comments they’ve received. Ask them to show specific examples in the work where they have achieved the standards expected of them.

Progress, not points.

Begin your one-on-one session by reminding the student that you’re able to clarify any comments or discuss the writing but not negotiate grades.

Office hours is an opportunity to teach! Focus on problem-solving strategies, not answers to a given problem. Make students do the work, including: looking something up in Canvas; troubleshooting; re-reading the rubric and self-assessing their own work; and even, in some cases, pairing students to help one another.

One of the most rewarding parts of this job is observing a student’s progress across the term. Reflecting specific instances of writerly development in the work is one way to get them excited about their learning. When students inevitably turn up to challenge grades, shift the focus back to the feedback, try to interpret it together, and give them three particular technical qualities to concentrate on for the next assignment.

Share resources.

One-on-one sessions are a great chance to learn a little bit about your learners outside of the course. Ask them questions about TV shows they’re watching, what they do when they’re not doing school work, what their creative process is, how they get to school – any neutral questions — in order to create a connection.

In addition, if you’ve come across any readings, podcasts, TV shows, movies, etc. you think they might like based on what they’ve shared with you, by all means make suggestions. Office hours can be so devoted to assessment, confusion, and frustration that sometimes a little light-hearted inspiration can be exactly what’s needed.

Take your time.

If a student shares a piece of writing with you and you’re finding it difficult to articulate anything useful in the moment, ask if it’s okay to take a couple of days to reflect on the work. Make an appointment to see one another in a week, when you can both return with fresh eyes.

If you don’t know the answer, it’s totally fine to say, “I don’t know.” You can either have them do some research, if applicable, or you can contact the instructor and get back to them at a later date.

Difficult Conversations

Students will express feelings of vulnerability, frustration, or in some cases, enough trust to share personal obstacles and challenges. For some, it’s a way to process or release stress. This requires hearty doses of compassion and understanding on your part, and it also requires a firm sense of boundaries and an understanding of what’s expected of you in those moments.

It is not your job to counsel or provide emotional support to students. If someone discloses personal information, or becomes upset, you can immediately put them in touch with resources on campus. Sit with them while they call Empower Me, or make an appointment with Counselling Services. Ask them if they have family support; have the student make a plan to check in with someone they trust. After the meeting, submit an Early Alert to ensure there is a record of this conversation (you can select low, medium or high level of concern) and be in touch with your instructor right away.

In the cases where one-on-one meetings have taken an emotional toll, please reach out to any one of us who are here to support you: your instructor, Amy Higgins, Nancy Lee, or me. We can help you process these encounters and create strategies for future student interactions.

Resources

There are resources available to you! If you would like to have materials on hand for students in crises, please be in touch with Amy or myself. Here are the links to the most pertinent information:

Crisis Support: https://students.ubc.ca/support

Early Alert: https://facultystaff.students.ubc.ca/systems-tools/early-alert

Counselling Services: https://students.ubc.ca/health/counselling-services

Empower Me

Last year, Roquela Fernandez created THIS RESOURCE for office hour strategies.

Health & Wellbeing Resources for Grad Students: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/current-students/health-wellbeing-safety

TA Teaching Support: https://ctlt.ubc.ca/resources/teaching/teaching-assistants/

(Art by Amy Silliman!)

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TQE, QQC, and Other Tricks That Ensure Students Arrive Prepared and Stay Engaged

A scenario: You have a beautiful lecture prepared, as well as a structured discussion, but the whole thing relies on the students having read and actually engaged with the readings for the week, and to have generated some writing. Your worst fears come true when you discover in the first 10 minutes that not only are the students unprepared, but are totally disengaged.

Here are some pre-emptive strikes to avoid any or all scenarios like the above.

TQE // QQC

Providing structure to readings gives students a sense of what’s expected of them. These two strategies effectively engage students in an activity as they’re reading, which is then expanded on in the classroom.

See how these instructors use this strategy to have more meaningful discussions:

Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method

5 Ways College Teachers Can Improve Their Instruction

Entrance / Exit Slips

Having students reflect when arriving to class and at the end of class places an emphasis on preparedness and learning. This technique makes this check-in visible!

And for active learning that doesn’t require talking, Ideo Blog’s guide for brainstorming:

If they don’t arrive prepared, do the readings in class! Prompt the mastery of materials, especially core concepts, with the Jigsaw Method!

 

 

 

 

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Enhance Student Engagement: Facilitating the Seminar

Here’s my approach to planning one session of a flipped/blended seminar course.

First, I find it useful to narrow down the scope of the class to one big idea for the week.  To do this, I use concept mapping as my process. Then, I begin to match learning activities to particular essential questions this big idea raises.

As the class begins to take shape, I use post-it notes to colour code the variations in the kinds of activities I’ve chosen: active, independent, small group vs. large, discussion, writing prompt, movement, sitting still, etc., so I have a visualization of the rhythm of the session.

CONTENT

Process: Concept Maps

  • Determine the big idea or main concept for the week, e.g. “dialogue” “scene vs. summary” “diction” “original detail”
  • Begin to generate questions around this concept
  • Gather materials and resources around those questions (often, this is pre-work the student has engaged in before class)
  • Begin to consider the learning activities that give students the opportunity to engage with the concept

FORM

Process: Post-it notes

  • Determining what learning activities are best for your subject/concept/genre depends on timing and comfort level
  • Learners focus for 15 – 20 minute intervals, so aim to move between active and passive / independent and group activities, and vary your approaches
  • Colour-code activities and map it out so you can see the learning experience (as in the second photo below, my colour-coded lecture for CRWR 201)

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

PROCESS: Experimentation!

Resources

Choosing Appropriate Strategies for Learning

Long But GOOD Resource Regarding Group Work

Active Learning Strategies

Bookmark CULT OF PEDAGOGY!

DISCUSSION STRATEGIES

TEMPLATES

VENN DIAGRAM

SEMINAR_TEMPLATE

I would be very happy to provide resources, discuss suitable learning activities, and speak generally about facilitation anytime!

Have fun,
Sheryda

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10-Minute Learning Activity: Good For Awareness of Word Choice

10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.

Baggage Switch

The instructions for this are simple: in a piece of pre-generated piece of writing, have students circle all the verbs (or nouns, or both!) and write them out on a separate scrap of paper. Then, ask them to pass their list to the person beside them. Students re-write the piece of writing replacing their verbs with those they received from their neighbour.

I adapted this exercise from Noah Eli Gordon. A quote from his essay:

“What I stress here is the deliberate avoidance of those verbs which would simply replicate the poem’s original statement. If your line reads, “I climbed up the mountain,” then replacing climbed with walked isn’t doing enough work. Try shuddered or sank or roped…”

A brief reflection, depending on the level of your group, could include what it feels like to work with someone else’s language, other ways of expanding their vocabulary,  or what figurative potential emerged through this exercise.

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10-minute Learning Activity: Good For Mid-term

10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.

Word Survey

Share via a presentation or create a handout of questions, and ask students to move around the room collecting answers to the following questions:

    1. A boring word
    2. A word that sounds good but has negative meaning
    3. Without looking, what would you guess the next word is in the dictionary after ABACUS?
    4. What is the stupidest flower?
    5. What’s one thing you believe in?
    6. What’s one trend you definitely did not avoid in high school?
    7. What’s the most disgusting thing you would put in your mouth for $50?
    8. What would you compare the size of your heart with?
    9. A word that sounds bad but has a positive meaning
    10. A word that’s embarrassing to say
    11. A word he or she has heard but does not know the meaning
    12. A word that’s not in the dictionary

It’s important to stress that they approach a different person for each question. Once they have gathered a selection of words, they can use them to create a poem, a story, a character, or some other piece of writing.

Please make sure you adapt this exercise to suit any accessibility needs of your group.

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10-Minute Learning Activity: Good for Beginning of Term

10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.

The Story of My Name

    • Ask students to pair up and take turns sharing the stories of their names
    • When taking the role of listener, the student’s job is to record as many details of the story they’re being told as possible.

For my Introduction to Poetry class, once we have these gathered materials, I ask students to create a collaborative list poem. Each line begins with the phrase:

My name is…

I prompt them to complete the line with the following information:

    • a detail from the story you’ve just been told
    • something you noticed on the way to class today
    • an object that is meaningful to you
    • overheard lyric or expression stuck in your head
    • another memorable detail about a name
    • something you made as a child that you liked

Here’s what a poem might look like once the exercise is through:

My name is passed down from my mother’s mother’s mother.
My name is the sound of a truck backing up.
My name is a hand-painted rock.
My name is don’t text me tell me straight to my face.
My name is not the one I was born with.
My name is a pink papier-mâché heron balancing on a spindly leg.

This is an endlessly-adaptable exercise with materials that could be drawn up into any kind of writing: a character sketch, a flash fiction, a monologue, etc.

It’s important to stress to students that they don’t overthink the prompts or the process, even when confusion arises. Once they are assured that what they’re doing is okay, they make really unexpected leaps.

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Lecture Prep: Experiential Learning

One way to think about your lecture or mini-craft talk is to think about it as a cycle you move your students through. One example of a complete and satisfying learning process includes four parts: Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualisation, and Active Experimentation. This is a tried and true educational theory, established by David Kolb in 1984.

When I am planning a lecture or learning activity, I determine what I want my learners to know and/or do by the end of our time together. In this example, I want my learners to understand the aesthetic and rhetorical power of repetition in a poem. This is a simplified version of an activity I do in my introductory class:

  1. Concrete Experience: Read a poem together that features repetition.
  2. Reflective Observation: Before judgement or assertion of opinion, students describe their reading experience of the poem, and then I’ll ask questions that focusses on shifting a pre-existing notion about repetition as a device.
  3. Abstract Conceptualization: Learners begin to pose their own theories about repetition and poems, including answers to the questions: How does repetition in a poem effect your reading? What happens when the repetitive elements are removed from the poem? Why would a poet choose repetition as a device?
  4. Active Experimentation: Learners write a poem using their own words, but borrowing the repetitive structure from the model poem.

I’m a big fan of this learning process, because it feels very satisfying for students to draw on what they already know, connect this to new knowledge, and apply that knowledge. It also gets students actively engaging with the messy work of learning. The more thoughtful and considered the questions I pose are, the more connections students are able to make.

One challenge I face is trying to tackle a subject that is too unwieldy. This learning process also reminds me to keep things simple and straightforward.

There are lots of resources in the lounge, and in my office (E458) if you’re interested. In the meantime, I recommend perusing these sites for great learning activities and prompts:

Prompts: https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

Discussion Pedagogies: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/speaking-listening-techniques/

Have fun and good luck!
Sheryda

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The Big (Working) List of Literary Resources To Inspire Teachers and Learners

LITERARY ESSAYS: CRAFT & IDENTITY

Like Most Americans, I Was Raised to Be A White Man

LYRIC ESSAYS

On Whiteness and The Racial Imaginary

Girl

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/25/the-poetic-consequences-of-k-pop/

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/trans-101-stephanie-burt/

 

RESOURCE AS PRESCRIPTION

What is the Right Poetry Collection for You?

CURATED LISTS & COLUMNS

New Poetry by Indigenous Women

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/10/23/toward-creating-a-trans-literary-canon/#more-130281

CURATED PROMPTS & LESSON PLANS

  • New York Times Lesson Plans:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/learning/100-plus-writing-prompts-to-explore-common-themes-in-literature-and-life.html

PODCASTS

……..

*BONUS! Literary Witches!

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/02/07/literary-witches/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Interpretation of Course Evaluation Results

Student Evaluations of Teaching from last semester’s courses are set to be released around the mid-term mark. Some of you will be receiving these evaluations for the first time, while others have received them and perhaps not known what to do with this feedback. In an effort to be proactive, I have asked instructors in the Minor Program to provide their own strategies and recommendations:

Sarah Leavitt

1. Before you start reading the evaluations, make a plan. How will you cope with negative feedback? Do you have a colleague or friend you could talk to about it? The prof for that course is a great person to reach out to for a reality check and support. Talk to yourself in advance about the importance of not taking feedback personally.

2. Read evaluations during the day, not before bed. Give yourself enough time to absorb and think about the evaluations.

3. Read them through a few times to be sure you take in all the information.

4. Sort the feedback into categories as you read it, like for example:

  • Non-specific positive feedback that makes me happy but is otherwise not that useful
  • Constructive positive feedback that helps me identify some strengths and skills that I have, and points out specific things I did a great job on
  • Negative feedback that seems mean or personal and can be set aside and not returned to
  • Negative feedback that is specific and constructive, and/or that confirms something I already know I need to improve 

If you find it stressful to read evaluations, you’re not alone! My guess would be that 99% of us feel the same way and the other 1% are putting on a brave face. Evaluations can include mean-spirited or unhelpful comments about your work. They can make you feel bad. However, evaluations can also be a good opportunity to see how students responded to your work. You can get some good positive feedback and ideas for further improvement.

Kevin Chong

I don’t look at my evals right after a class ends. Sometimes it will take months. Even then I look at them the way some might watch a horror movie–through their hands. While most of my evals have been nice, a few have been nasty and bruising. For me, an important part of my post-reaction is to think of the intention behind the feedback. Is it only an attempt to injure? If so, try to forget about it. But if comes from some kind of frustration, what do you have the power to alleviate? Work from there.

Taylor Brown Evans

I have found that students tend to be a lot more critical of their TAs than their Instructors. This is of course completely unfair, usually unfounded, and probably based on pretty wonky preconceptions of authority. As such, TA evaluations can sometimes end up being a venting space for students who want to complain about aspects of the course that are really not in the TAs’ control. Things such as the turn around of grades, amount of feedback, or how assignments are assessed, are really the responsibility of the Instructor.

Also (and especially in the intro-level classes), this is the first time many of the students are trying their hand at the excruciatingly vulnerable art of writing, and the first time many of them have ever had to confront critical analysis of their work. Students at this level often haven’t yet developed the tools to assess their own work impartially, and can sometimes have difficulty discerning technical critique from a personal criticism.

Because TAs are often the ones delivering this critique, they end up bearing the brunt of what is really just a sensitive backlash. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should ignore these evals — even the misguided ones carry vital clues on how to improve the course, and our communication — but I think it is important to try to remember the context of who the students are at this stage, what their frustrations may be, and to keep in mind that, unfortunately, these frustrations often land at the feet of TAs.

Sara Graefe

Processing evaluations is hard, even after years of teaching. I inevitably perseverate over a handful of negative comments without fully taking in the reams of positive ones. Make sure you’re feeling well-resourced (I wait until term is over, when I’m more rested and resilient). Talk through the comments, both negative AND positive, with a support person – a peer, faculty mentor or trusted friend or partner. Don’t beat up on yourself over negative feedback, but be honest: is this simply a mean-spirited comment that you can let go? Or does it contain a grain of truth that you can use to improve your teaching?

…

Resources

Instructor: If you do decide to read the evals right away, some comments can understandably elicit strong emotions. If you find yourself upset about a particular evaluation, I encourage you to reach out to the instructor of record for the course. They may be able to provide insight, or to alleviate any unnecessary stress these comments may cause.

The Internet:  These are primarily resources for instructors, but there are some useful strategies detailed

https://www.mcgill.ca/mercury/instructors/interpretation#Recommendations%20for%20Interpreting%20Written%20Comments

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/teaching-support/gathering-formative-feedback/interpreting-results/

TA Support: You’re most welcome to meet with John, Roquela or me.

 

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