A Collaborative Model: Building Skills, Community, and Student Awareness
by Ned Bachus and Max Eirich
Every semester faculty can be heard sharing their concern and disappointment over a myriad of student behaviors which are not only self destructive but which also hinder the development of a productive classroom environment. In meetings, while waiting in the duplicating center, by the mailboxes, over lunch or coffee, in office doorways, faculty can be observed expressing worry over their students and fretting over best way to handle absences, lateness, missed assignments, inattentiveness, lack of participation and involvement, shod work—all of which stem from dents' very different understandings what education is and requires.
Yet according to some, faculty are engaging less and less in such conversations, not because these troublesome student behaviors are less frequent, but because a certain resignation has set in. The fact is that most Community College of Philadelphia classes are a mix students who know what is expected (they come to every class and are on time, complete their assignments, participate in class, etc.) and students who either do know the accepted practices or aren't ready to follow them for some reason the latter group often in the majority the face of this, faculty have developed various responses. Some try to work the problem students on a one to-one basis, often with referral to counseling. Another response is to present the class with a highly structured course administered through a set of detailed and scrupulously enforced sanctions; students who don't conform are left to fail or withdraw. Another response views the students as adults who are ultimately responsible for their own education; in this approach the instructor carries out the semester plan as well as possible, letting the chips fall where they may.
An Alternative Response.
Over the past five or six years some faculty have been developing a response different from the above, and that response is the subject of this article. When CAP was still Project II and under the direction of Susan Carey, we and a number of other CAP instructors and counselors met (with Susan's participation and encouragement and with the support of Sam Hirsch, Dean of ESS) over the course of several years and began experimenting with different approaches to teaching CAP students. We have incorporated some of the ideas generated by this group. In addition to this source, we have drawn from the theory and practices of Bartholomae and Petrosky ( I ). Other aspects of what we do have their origins in the research of Tinto (2), McGrath and Van Buskirk (3), and Cohen, et al (4). Moreover, we have benefited from the efforts of the faculty in other successful programs here and from our collaborative work with Gary Mullin and Vince Castronuovo with whom we have team taught for several semesters at the college level.
Research has shown that success in college depends heavily on the quality of the formal and informal social contacts between the student and those s/he encounters in the college environment, and in commuter colleges the most important contacts are with faculty and staff (5). When these relationships are warm, supportive, encouraging, and informative, students tend to handle the academic tasks and responsibilities better because they feel connected to the institution and gain a sense of hope for the future. The relationship between a student and his/ her peers is also very important; success and retention in college depends heavily upon the student's being able to become part of a network of positive and committed friends and associates. These relationships between a student and others in college often enable him/her to make a commitment to the institution and to his/ her education at that institution. The student who feels isolated, unnoticed, threatened, or misunderstood in the college environment is more likely either to withdraw voluntarily or engage in behavior which will lead to academic failure and dismisssal from the institution.
Social Connectedness the Key.
These research findings are particularly relevant to the non traditional, underprepared students in CAP whose understanding of their education is probably less clear and whose commitment to it less stable than that of regular students, since these nontraditional students must deal not only with adjusting to college but also with academic challenges which others have conquered. Moreover, although most college students need a certain level of social connectedness to succeed, CAP students need this even more. Because the more traditional student is better prepared academically, s/he has the option to transfer to another college if s/he does not connect, whereas the CAP student has no such alternative.
What CAP students need, according to this view, are supportive formal and informal contacts with college personnel and with fellow students. They need to feel a sense of belonging in an environment (which must be found in the classroom because commuter students have very little time to find it elsewhere) which encourages a realistic examination of both themselves as students and of the steps necessary to reach their goals. They need to know what the college can offer them and what they can realistically expect from it. They need opportunities to discuss and interpret their past educational experiences in a productive way. They need to hear from others like themselves who have gone before them and succeeded. They need to gain hope, confidence, and self-mastery enough to think they can succeed with the support, encouragement, and instruction available to them through the college.
Confronting Issues in the Classroom.
. Our view holds that for them to develop this new understanding of themselves, they must be in a classroom environment where these issues are confronted and analyzed. These conversations can be conducted in any number of ways, but we try to do it in a way which teaches and begins to challenge the students to adopt the ways of thinking, talking, reading, writing, and listening which will contribute to furthering their education at the collegiate level. Classes conducted in this manner can help the students to change the attitudes, behaviors, and relationships which proved ineffective in the past. So ; the fundamental task of the faculty is to create the kind of environment which helps 1 the students to develop successful attitudes and habits while exploring together the nature of their education through talking, listening, reading, and writing about what it takes to be successful. We think it is very important that students learn to k to and listen to each other effectively they deal with these issues. The influence of classmates and the classroom climate are crucial if these students are to eke their experience at Community College of Philadelphia pay off.
In the past, faculty conversations have tended to place the teaching of skills in opposition to the process of enculturation and transformation of the student. Our few is that there need not be a conflict between the two objectives. Neither do we de emphasize to the students the necessity to acquire the requisite skills within the fourteen week semester to pass to he next level. However, since the indications are that unless the classroom environment offers the kind of support and cohesion talked about above, the chances of these students remaining in college long enough to acquire these skills are greatly diminished. Consequently, our idea is not to pursue the acquisition of skills solely as an end in itself, but rather to view the development of skills and abilities as both a means and an end in a reciprocal relationship. In developing skills in the areas of reading, writing, speaking, and thinking, a close eye is kept on the formation of the kind of community which we believe makes possible ultimately the actual learning of these skills. So, in conjunction with many other activities and practices to be described below, we try to make the learning of skills the very activity which helps to put in place a particular network of relationships among students and staff. We believe students need to be part of such a network in order to make a commitment both to the institution and to their educations, as well as to make the changes which education is supposed to produce.
A Modified Approach.
To bring about the classroom environment described above, we have modified the usual approach to teaching the middle level developmental linked courses. One of the major changes is that we share the responsibilities for all the activities in a reading and writing link. Neither one of us is designated the "reading" teacher or the "writing" teacher. Neither does "his own thing." The syllabus, readings, writing assignments, examinations, goals, and work schedule for the entire semester are developed jointly. This is done prior to the beginning of the semester, but adjustments are made as needed throughout the term. (We typically split a pair of such B level links, which allows us to use this preparation for two sets of students or half of our semester workload.) While we conduct the opening session and a handful of special classes together, we do not normally sit in on each other's classes. We generally work in two week cycles wherein one teacher guides the students through writing assignment A, for example, (introduces it, conducts writing groups on it, discusses revisions, and teaches grammar along the way) while the other teacher spends that period of time guiding the class through readings and discussions which will serve as the basis for writing assignment B. During the next cycle, the teacher who had been working with the class on writing assignment A begins to work with the students on readings and discussions which will form the basis for writing assignment C while the teacher who had been guiding students through the readings for writing assignment B begins to lead them through the completion of that writing assignment. By staying intimately involved with all that the students are reading, both of us are in a position to collaborate in creating the writing assignments. This allows for major writing assignments and examinations to be read and graded by both teachers.
We divide the work in this way to both signal the intimate relationship between reading, writing, and speaking and to be in a position to give the students consistent feedback on all of their work from two sources rather than just one. Working as a team in this way also helps us to get to know the students better and to notice whether a student's behavior is consistent from class to class. Perhaps most importantly, we share links in this way because we feel that our ability to influence the classroom environment is enhanced when students encounter two instructors who are enforcing the same norms to shape the environment; also, it gives the students an additional staff member with whom to relate.
An Integrated Team
. To strengthen faculty influence further and to provide more staff contacts, in the fall semester we have invited the counselor to attend/lead one class session a week; this should integrate the counselor more fully into the team and offer the students a more intimate and intense relationship with the counselor. We realize that this level of counselor involvement would be impossible for every section in CAP; we are using the fall semester to learn more about how to expand the relationship between counselors and students. The hope is that some of what is done this semester can point toward more practical ways to involve counselors more intensely in the semester's work. (Because it would be detrimental to the counselor/student relationship, counselors are not involved in any evaluation or grading.)
Similarly, we hope to involve the learning lab person more fully by making the work done in the lab integral to the course. One way we hope to do this is to have one of us spend the hour in the lab working with some of the students on the same material being used by the lab specialist. The series of lab sessions will be devoted to discussions of related supplemental readings rather than to working with the students around their writing. The students will turn in their written responses :o questions about the readings, and these will be reviewed by us and count toward the semester's grade just as any other assignment. We hope that these attempts to integrate the counselor and learning lab specialist into the team in these formal ways will make the very important informal contacts with these staff members more likely.
Learning by Example.
. We think that students need to begin to feel confident and hopeful as students; they need to be able to aspire to higher education and to know that it is possible for them to succeed if they work and learn to become students. To help generate that feeling we talk about how to succeed, and we read about people who come from similar backgrounds and have succeeded. This semester we have invited some of our former CAP students who are succeeding in college to talk with our students and to serve as examples. Similarly, we have set up a panel of former Community College of Philadelphia students (through Robin Cunningham in the Alumni Office) to speak with our students about success beyond Community College of Philadelphia and college. These testimonials we hope will be more substantive and specific than the vague, rosy career pep rallies all high school students have experienced where they are told that anyone can do anything if s/he simply makes an act of the will to do it.
Our instructional program begins with an introductory exercise in which students write and talk about some successful experience they have had; this we hope begins the process of building confidence in the students. We use the CAP Student Handbook and the CAP Faculty Handbook as materials to be read and discussed at the opening of the semester as a way of helping the students to locate themselves realistically on their educational career trajectory. We urge them to begin to think seriously about what the college has to offer them and what they can realistically expect to attain if they apply themselves and take advantage of all that CAP and the college have to offer. This enables them to get to know each other and to share not only their past experiences but to compare their interpretations of these experiences with those of their classmates. These conversations should reveal the many things the students have in common, including their hopes, aspirations, difficulties, and life situations.
We try to build on these initial conversations by encouraging all the students to participate in class discussions. We assign discussion questions with virtually every reading assignment; the written responses to which must be handed in before the discussion begins. This not only motivates students to do the reading, but having answered the questions beforehand puts every student in the position to have something to say. We try to maintain participation by conducting many writing groups in which students find opportunities to speak in relation to student texts. We generally schedule one or more presentations dealing with assigned readings in which each student as a member of a panel gets to speak before the class.
Ongoing Monitoring
. We meet every week to discuss materials, assignments, and the progress of the students. Our goal is to have the counselor and learning lab specialist join us for at least some of these. Students who appear to be having a problem of one sort or another are identified; in the days following the meeting, one of us will talk informally with these students to see what is going on. This ongoing monitoring lets the students know that we notice them and are concerned about how they are doing. We hold formal mid term conferences during which we discuss the student's perception of his/her progress, mid term grades, overall progress, immediate goals for the semester, and long range goals. These conversations serve trigger career and academic counseling, curriculum advising (we generally advise our own students), and further informal contacts between students and faculty. At this time we discuss with some students the appropriateness of registering for one of the college level links we :each with Gary Mullin (Sociology 101 ) and Vince Castronuovo (Psychology 115).
Readings for the semester include a novel, excerpts from a college reader, excerpts from Stud Terkel's Working, case studies, short stories, and several articles dealing with employment trends and salary prospects. During the second half of e semester students read, discuss, and rite about an extended and varied series f texts dealing with career choice and satisfaction. They also must prepare a presentation on careers as part of a panel. addition, we are having our students complete a career interest inventory as a way to spur thinking and conversation bout their career choice. The counselor ill conduct one class session to help students interpret their results, and we ill have assignments based on this as a ay of following up on their career interests. The students can make appointments to speak individually with the counselor about these results if they wish.
Double Benefits.
. Everything we have written so far deals with what we hope will benefits of our approach to the stunts. We, too, benefit greatly from work together in this way. It is difficult at first to give up the idea of "doing your own thing," but we derive greater satisfaction from working together to provide something richer than either of us could have produced independently. Our experience has been, and this is even more true the college level links we share with Vince Castronuovo and Gary Mullin, that classroom environment is much more productive and enjoyable as a result of the influence on the class of a cohesive faculty team. Along this same line, we see more of our students outside of the classroom than we do when we teach individual sections. These contacts are not all task-oriented; many are informal visits or conversations about what is going on in class n the lives of our students. This type mentoring seems to follow from the way the course is structured and conducted. Very importantly, working in such close collaboration on material that is not familiar this is especially true when working with the social scientists keeps us active as students and learners. Finally, working together in this way has kept our enthusiasm alive because we learn from each semester's experience and maintain a level of hopefulness.
We do not know if we can claim greater success than others, but we think we can claim greater success than we would achieve individually. We do not know if this approach would be satisfying to everyone, but we know that it is the most satisfying approach we have tried. We do not know if this is the best way to teach, but we have found it a very good way to carry out the dual task of teaching skills and helping students to become part of the academic culture .
NOTES
- 1. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts
- (Portsmouth,N.H, Boynton/CookPublishers, 1986).
- 2. V. Tinto. Leaving College (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987).
- 3. Dennis McGrath and Bill Van Buskirk, "Cultures of Support for At Risk Students"
- (Community College of Philadelphia Journal of Developmental Education, 1996, Volume 1, Number 1).
- 4. David K. Cohen, Eleanor Farrar, and Arthur G. Powell. The Shopping Mall High
School. (Boston, HoughtonMifflinCompany, 1985)
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