Well, hello everyone and welcome to episode 10 of season three of the Poggle podcast. My name is Wayne Pearson and with me today is Siobhan Julian. Hello Siobhan. Hello Wayne. What's in store for our listeners today? So as we are wrapping up this series, we're, this whole series, we've really been focused on facilitation of Poggle, trying to talk about different strategies and techniques that will help our listeners improve their practice.
And we're veering a little bit away from that today, but not too much. We thought we'd cap this off by talking about how you can get involved in the Poggle project, because Poggle is not just this random group of people. Wayne and I didn't just randomly decide to film these episodes and put them on the air. There's an actual organization behind this.
And I think everyone that's here today will say that because they've been involved in the Poggle project, their Poggle practice has improved, like the facilitation of it. They learn things. We learn things from our Poggle colleagues and that makes us better teachers. That makes us more confident when we're facilitating these activities. So we wanted to share with our lovely listeners some ways that they can get involved with the Poggle project if they are looking to do so.
So with us today are Joyce Easter and Tim Herzog to talk about ways to get involved with the Poggle project. Joyce has been on the podcast before. She is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Virginia Wesleyan University in Virginia Beach. And Tim is a professor of chemistry at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Welcome both of you today to the Poggle podcast. Thank you. Thanks. We are so happy to have you here.
So again, we're talking today about ways to get involved with the project. And the first thing we want to go over is just what are some of these opportunities? What are some of these inroads? So Wayne, what are some of these opportunities that our listeners can get involved in the project? Okay. Well, we're going to dig into the specifics, but I've always seen it as the participation is a two-way street with the project.
There are offerings that the project provides to practitioners and that's certainly a way to be engaged. These could be E-Series or workshops, NCAP, podcasts, if I can say that. But there are also opportunities for folks to work for the project. So there are working groups, there's activity writing, there are a variety of ways that you can help the project go forward. And we'll talk a lot about the specific items.
Yep. So the specific item really is sort of what level you're interested in getting involved at, whether it's just learning more or if you're interested in actively helping the project out. Once we know that, then it's like, okay, how did we get involved? Because again, we're not just random people who were summoned here. There is something that drew us here. So I'll start with Tim. What prompted you to get involved with the Pogo Project?
The summer before I started my full-time teaching job, I was at a regional meeting and there was a workshop there that I didn't know what it meant. It said the word Pogo in it, but it talked about active learning and the description. And I said, oh, I'm going to go try that. And so I started, I met Andres Stramanis, who led that meeting. And immediately afterwards, we went out to lunch and I said, all right, how can I do this in my class, because that's the way I want my classes to be.
And from there, I went to a couple of summer workshops. I was lucky enough to be on the first facilitator training workshop and became a workshop facilitator and started going to Pogo National Meeting. And it really just built a community of my professional and personal colleagues and friends through working with Pogo. And it's really been super important to me. I love that. Thank you. And Joyce, so what caused you to want to be involved in this?
So for me, it's kind of a long meandering journey. When I decided to become an educator, I made a commitment to be part of the solution and not part of the problems that exist in the education system. So early in my career, I attended several workshops and conferences that focused on evidence-based strategies to improve student learning. So I was exposed to Pogo before it was actually Pogo when it was guided in green learning. And so I attended some workshops where I learned about it.
I started using it in some of my classes in place of a few lectures. And then I started attending the Pogo workshops a few years later when it became Pogo. And one of those workshops was a workshop that was for advanced writing. It wasn't called that at the time, but as things evolved. But at that workshop, I collaborated with five other biochemists and we all wrote activities. So we paired up and we left with three activities that we had written through that collaboration.
And they were the first three classes for the fall semester. So I was able to get really engaged in that. And then I wrote activities for the rest of the semester for my class because it worked so well in my class. So that was my first real experience with productive networking and working with a team of colleagues across the country. And then I periodically searched out other opportunities to hone my skills and become better and expand my network.
And a few years later, I decided to participate in the Pogo national meeting. And that's where I got really involved. And then a few months after that, I went to my facilitator training workshop as well. I guess what I realized was that I could improve my own classroom facilitation through some of those activities. But I could also have an impact beyond my students in my department, which again was kind of my goal going into being an educator.
So at my first PNM, I was part of a working group that developed the national conference that we now have. And I've been involved in that sense. So since 2015, when that first was an idea in our heads to now serving as the chair. So I would say that that has been the biggest impact in terms of my involvement in the project. I love that. So we are actually one of the things we'll be talking about today is that national conference, but we're not going to start there.
We're going to start with a little more low key low entry point ways to get involved in the project. And the first one, we have a Facebook page. So there's a Facebook page for Pogo practitioners. And Tim, what sorts of conversation happens there? And what are the benefits to being a member of that group? Yeah, so the Facebook page actually grew out of one of our working groups in the project.
And you know, there's a very wide array of conversations that happen in the from really personal stuff like, hey, I had a really bad day in my classroom today. And everybody says, I get it, me too. I know what that's like, you know, and just the community where you can just say, how you're feeling and how's it going. People talk about their challenges with implementing Pogo in their classroom and they get lots of great ideas. I've posed questions to the group like, this is what I'm trying to do.
What do you got? And people would come up and give you ideas. And it's a place that we talk about events that are coming up. It's a place where we share all kinds of things. I think, you know, like a lot of online communities, it was a really important thing during the pandemic where people were able to connect with like-minded people and talk about, okay, I teach Pogo, how can I teach Pogo now? What does that look like now?
And so I think it's there kind of as a place where we all face challenges together. It's a place where people kind of, you know, get interested in the project and they join the project and Marcy says, welcome this new member. And we all say welcome, nice to meet you and try to get people in, right? So it's just one of these places, you know, it's like a lot of Facebook groups, but it's probably the least snarky Facebook group that I've been involved in, right?
It's a really positive, it's a positive place. So if there are folks out there who kind of want to learn what the Pogo community is like, I think it's a great, easy, like you said, low entry way to get in. Yeah, definitely. I think everyone here can speak to that. We are not, we're not terribly snarky there when people are having real conversations. We can certainly joke and laugh and tease one another, but you know, we understand that everyone is worthy of support.
So if I can just interject a comment, we are slightly over 800 members now of the Facebook page. So I think this is about three years old in that timeframe. So we have grown considerably and the conversations there are just terrific.
I also want to say it's a positive place to be too, because it's not just people sharing challenges or problems that they had, or you know, I had a bad class, things didn't go the way they, you know, I planned, but there's a lot of positive like reinforcement of like, you know, celebrating successes as well. Yeah, I think it's a great place to really just share, you know, the ups and the downs, you know, of this particular type of pedagogy and to get feedback and support about it.
I think a lot of POGO practitioners can feel like they're on an island by themselves and the Facebook page is a way to prove that no, you're not. There's a lot of other people out there who are going through that same thing too. But we have other online options beyond just our Facebook page. And one of them is the E series and Wayne is one of the people in charge of the E series. So I'm going to hand it off to Wayne to talk about what that is, what it covers and how do you sign up for it?
Yes. Well, I am very fortunate to be the host of the E series. I think we started around 2017, 2018 with the E series in that timeframe. And it was an opportunity to bring discussions on very focused topics to a group of people and to have it in a POGO type of setting. So we do it online, but we try to do it as much of a POGO session as possible so that you'll deal with a particular subject. You'll go into breakout groups, you'll talk about that, you'll come back and report that.
So it's a very POGO experience. This season, we have actually been very closely tied to the podcast in that almost everything we've done has involved facilitation. I think we had three in the spring, three in the fall. In the spring, we had tips for increasing diversity in the classroom, for accepting diversity, for we've also had writing for inquiry, how to improve your writing as a facilitator if you choose to do that.
And I think our first January E series was just a mini POGO, an introduction to POGO. So we've been very facilitator oriented. The E series is populated through registration. We typically advertise our E series on the webpage, www.pogle.org. In fact, all of this information you can find some way or another on our website. But that is generally the way to sign up for an E series. You would register through the site at pogle.org. And we typically have anywhere from 10 to 25 people.
It's a great way to meet other practitioners too, by the way, is to attend an E series. All right. Thank you so much, Wayne. I know for me personally, I haven't attended an E series yet, but you make it sound pretty good and I think I might be signing up for one next year. Well, so Siobhan, tell us what kind of E series you want and then we'll make sure we get you in.
Okay. I mean, I know you said you were focusing a lot on facilitation this year, but that's always a big one, especially for high school teachers, especially when we're servicing populations that don't always want to be there doing the activity. Another way to get involved in the project is something that's been in the works for a long time called the Poggle Activity Clearinghouse or the PAC.
And this is, I think, a really exciting project in terms of creating or distributing or reading or editing or getting feedback on Poggle activities, like the writing of activities. And Joyce is going to talk to you now about how do we get involved in the PAC? What is it? How do you have access to these activities that aren't the formal published Poggle activities? So the Poggle Activity Clearinghouse was developed from a Poggle National Meeting Working Group, another example of that.
It took many years for that working group to get to the point where we are today. It was an idea and a group of people that said we need to be able to do this, but they had to develop the technology that would work for it. So really, there's two main purposes for the PAC. One is to provide the structure to support authors through the entire process of creating Poggle content from idea generation all the way through peer review and classroom testing and even as far as Poggle approval.
And then the second one is not really for the authors themselves, but for the practitioners, to provide instructors access to peer reviewed materials that meet the high standards of the Poggle project. So whether you're an author or not, you can actually get valuable benefits for yourself through being participating in the PAC.
So as an author, you could gain a place for you to get ideas, to collaborate with somebody, to have your activities reviewed or even have your activities classroom tested. As a practitioner, you can gain access to those activities or collaborate with somebody who else who's an author, even if you've never authored something before, right? So what happens is whether you're an author or a practitioner, you can become a member of the PAC by completing the collaborative peer review training session.
This is offered three or four times a year. It's in a synchronous virtual format. You have some homework and then you meet together with a group of people virtually and you go through the training. And then once you've completed that training, you have access to the content that has been published in any issue, archived or the current issues. And then you can serve as a peer reviewer and you can submit your own material for review or classroom testing at that point.
Personally, I've participated in several of the collaborative peer feedback sessions for authors. So I've gotten multiple activities that have been peer reviewed in a small group with two or three other authors. So we like peer review each other's and then we have a nice little session where we talk about it and you get really valuable feedback. A little bit different than getting just written feedback to be able to talk to the reviewers. So I've received quality feedback from that experience.
I've also served as a reviewer, both like I said, in those peer review feedback groups, but also in a more traditional review session as well, where you get the materials, you review it on your own and then you provide written feedback. I think it's helped me to improve my activities, of course, because you're getting feedback.
But even if you're not offering your own activities, you can benefit from it because they provide you an opportunity to participate in the creation of these high quality content, but also, you know, allow you to be a peer reviewer and provide that feedback. And if you're a reviewer, a class tester, you're learning more about the Poggle pedagogy, the learning cycle, the process skills.
So it actually makes you a better facilitator, I think, in the classroom because you're working through this rubric, is this activity doing this? Is it inclusive? Do the prompts actually have you work on the process skill that you intend to have them work on? All these things. So it can help you improve as a facilitator as well as an author. So I think it's a really great system that they've developed and I highly recommend it to people whether they're authors or just want to be a reviewer.
Yeah, it's a really impressive system that is now in place. And again, if you want to be a reviewer, you've got to go through the training. But it's like, as Joyce said, it's not a huge thing to become one of the reviewers.
And I think just on the most basic level, being able to see Poggle activities in all levels of development is really helpful in understanding, you know, really from the inside out what's going on with the activities, which then helps us understand how to make it work in our classroom. And again, information for all of these you can find on the Poggle website will be including with this podcast when it goes out.
A perhaps less heavy, less serious way that you can get involved with the Poggle podcast is something new that we've been doing recently, which is the Poggle happy hour. So instead of getting all serious about reviewing activities, you can, you know, grab a beverage of your choosing and sit and vibe out with us and talk about Poggle. So Wayne, you've been leading some of the Poggle happy hours. How do you sign up? What do we chat about? Yeah, I think I get all the fun jobs.
This is an absolutely brand new thing that we're doing that grew out of the networks group in conjunction with the Poggle podcast. We meet, or we have met every first Thursday of the month, and we are planning another one for May coming up. And it's just a very low key kind of event where you come together and you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. We can set up breakout rooms if you want to talk about something that is Poggle.
If you have a question and you want to talk to some people face to face remotely, then you can do that. Or you can just hang out and have a good time because we don't talk as much as other educators might. We don't talk as much as lecturers do in the classroom. But when we get together, we sure do like to talk to each other. So it's a real fun time. So you can sign up a couple of ways. There are emails that go out to a wide swath of the database.
So you probably have been notified at one time or another about the happy hour. But we also advertise on the Facebook page. And I usually tell people if the only reason you are on Facebook is to be on the Poggle practitioners Facebook page, that's enough of a reason. You could ignore everything else if you want. But you will get lots of valuable information. And one of those things is a link to sign up for the happy hour. But we're very happy with the way it's been received.
And it's just a very relaxed, fun time. Yeah. And Poggle people love to hang out with other Poggle people. But I do want to stress that we also want to hang out with new Poggle people. So if you haven't attended one of these things before, we are so ecstatic to welcome you in. It is truly a very, very welcoming and open group of people. We love to hang out with each other, but we would also love to hang out with new people as well and bond over shared interests.
All of these things that we've been talking about so far have been online. Poggle practitioners, for the most part, are fairly spread out across the country and across the world. However, we do have a few opportunities to get involved in the project that are face-to-face, that are actually in person. And the first of which is that national conference that Joyce mentioned at the beginning, the National Conference to Advance Poggle Practice.
So Joyce, tell us a little bit more about that conference. Yeah, the Poggle Project offers a wide variety of both now virtual and in-person workshops. But for those of you that want something beyond the workshops, you might be interested in NCAP. The National Conference to Advance Poggle Practice was created to serve the population of already existing Poggle practitioners. As I mentioned earlier, it was created at a Poggle National Meeting from a working group.
And since 2017, the conference has been held biannually, typically in the end of June of odd-numbered years. So the conference provides opportunities for sharing ideas, challenges, and successes that participants have had using Poggle in their classrooms and labs. The format of the conference includes a variety of session types, so all of which are participant-centered. But they range from discussions and conversations to workshops and poster sessions.
And then we always bring in a few plenary speakers as well. The conference itself promotes an engaging environment, and within that environment, practitioners can gain insight into effective teaching and facilitation. They can share and find new activities and approaches for the classroom and the laboratory. They can develop support networks, which we mentioned earlier as being a very important part, and also establish collaborations.
As a participant, I always leave with new ideas for my Poggle activities. I get new strategies for implementation, and I meet new colleagues that are now part of my network. And I have even started collaborative projects from those meetings. So I think it's really important to kind of expand your toolkit of what you have available to you.
So I think those who want to develop skills as a practitioner and broaden their participation and their contributions in the Poggle community should definitely consider applying to the NCAP 2025. It's probably a little too late for this year, but we will be sending out notifications in another year for 2025 NCAP. NCAP was definitely one of my ways into the project. And from after my first time, I immediately went back to my home district.
I went back to other local chemistry teachers that I was in a network with, and I almost ran a session saying, here, this is what I learned at NCAP. And I want to share it with you. But I also had a lot of fun there, too. It's a very fun conference. And something, thank you, Joyce, and something that we've been hearing an awful lot about in this podcast so far that's been mentioned, I think at least five times, are the working groups. We say, oh, this came out of a working group.
This came out of a working group. So Tim, what are these working groups, and they work together both virtually and in person. So I'm going to have you talk a little bit about both of them, please. Sure. One of the great things about the POGO project is that it has a strategic plan, and it actually works very intentionally toward achieving the goals in that strategic plan.
And the goals of the strategic plan are related to growing the project, reaching out to new people, creating opportunities, working on equity and inclusivity of the project, learning about what's going on, and then how can we sustain the project. So the working groups are all really carefully aligned to those. And the working groups are basically groups of people who are interested in furthering the project to get together.
It kind of is spearheaded around PNM, but the work happens all throughout the year. The working groups are made up of one team leader, Joseph and Joyce and I both have been and are currently team leaders of different groups in the project, and a member from the steering committee, so some kind of central leadership involved in helping guide us and keep us together and looking for connectivity, and then a lot of people who are interested in working.
And so at PNM, both in person and virtually, we work together on creating our plans, on figuring out what we want to do, on solving problems, creating opportunities, developing new ideas, pushing the project in ways that it has been before. And those working groups are an incredible way for somebody who's just getting involved with the project to step in and really make a difference.
And I think one of the best things about the working groups is you never really build community as much as you do when you work together with people on a common purpose.
And I believe that the working groups do that better than anything else in the project, that we really, everybody's bought into this idea because the idea was generated and developed together, the plan is generated and developed together in a collaborative way, and that team gets together and figures out what are we trying to do, and then by solving those problems or working together and generating all kinds of amazing things, we really build
that strong community and you build connections, the connections of people that I've met on the working groups I've been on are friends of mine for life. And many of them are in this room with me right now. And obviously all of the people in this room are friends of mine for life because we've had a chance to work together in different working groups. And I just think that's such a powerful part of the POGO project structure and how work gets done.
Yeah, I remember the first time I heard about PNM was actually at NCAP and someone explained it to me. They said, well, NCAP is a conference. You go to sessions and you learn things and you have some fun and you work together. I said, but PNM is a working meeting and really the focal point is around those working groups on doing the work for the project. But the working groups don't just meet at PNM, right Tim? Yeah, that's right. The working groups work throughout the year.
Virtually the we schedule meetings, the working groups that I'm on right now meets once a month in a virtual setting. And sometimes it's complex to figure out how to do that when you've got people who are teaching high school in California and people who live on the East Coast working together. But we find a way and are incredibly productive. And I think one of the great things about those working groups is that they really are really focused and get things done.
And I know many times we've been on teams that don't get things done and it's really frustrating. But I think the working groups, the POGO projects, have really do a great job in that. And so if you want to get involved for people who are listening, if you want to get involved in the work of the project, you can look at the POGO website and see what the working groups are. Several of them say the word continuing group, new members welcome.
And so if you have interest in getting involved, you can just reach out to the project. I think it's POGO at POGO.org is the email address for the project, right? And you can just send an email and say, this is my, this is who I am and I'd like to get involved and, and that opportunity is there. And just to piggyback off of that, Tim really does mean it when he says that new people come in and have ideas and help us move forward.
It's not just the same people getting together and working, it's new, new voices are added. Sometimes groups are switched up. And the first time I was in a working group, the very first thing, like the very first thing that was made abundantly clear to me was you have purpose here. We want to hear your voice. You know, just because you're new doesn't mean you're going to get shunted to the side.
You know, you're going to sit shoulder to shoulder and be treated as an equal with people who've been doing this for a long time. And that's very, very true about the POGO project in general. You know, just cause you haven't been involved before, does not mean that we don't want you there. We very much do. So that does sound like something you're interested in. We are happy to have you consider some of our working groups.
And wrapping this up now, what has not working with POGO, not working with POGO activities in the classroom, but just what is working with the POGO project as a professional community meant to you and why should our listeners want to get more involved with the POGO project? So Joyce, I'll start with you. I would say one of the greatest rewards of my involvement with the POGO project is the inspiration and the support that I gain from participating in this really transformative community.
For me, it's the interactions with the members of the community, as well as the sharing of our experiences, our expertise, our insights, right? All of those things. But it also, it allows me to also serve the organization, serve the community members and our students. That's why I stay involved, right? With all the demands of my time, I still find time to do my service towards the POGO community because I think it is so important.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I wanted to have a positive impact on the educational system and my involvement with the project allows me multiple avenues to do so while still allowing me to grow as an educator myself. So I'm learning while I'm serving, which I think is an incredible double use of my time. Love that. Thank you so much, Joyce. So Tim, what has your time being involved in the POGO project meant and why should our listeners want to get more involved?
Well, my answers have a lot in common with Joyce's. I think the first and like kind of the driving force for me in POGO was what it's meant to my students in my classroom and the connections I see them build because of the way that I'm able to teach because of the things I've learned through POGO and the way that they build community and the way they learn and develop all the process skills and everything that helps them in all their classes and in all their work going forward.
And that's really been important. The project part of it has been super important too. Like Joyce said, the ability to feel like I'm making a difference, you know, like getting involved in workshop kind of things where you get a chance to have that kind of exponential effect where you help an educator educate more people, right, or educate educators, right, this kind of cumulative effect that builds up from people who learn this amazing tool.
And then finally, I think the personal connections for me and the project are really, really meaningful to me. I mean, there's all this incredible professional development I've been a part in and it's really helped my career in all kinds of ways.
But I think for me, it's just these connections that I've formed with and the friendships that I've built and the people that I know I can go to and I trust and, you know, when I need help or support or, you know, like Joyce said earlier, to celebrate accomplishments together and all of that together has just been a really incredibly meaningful professional experience for me.
And if I just might add my experience because I love talking about it so much, but so yeah, for me, my first thing being involved with the project was in NCAP 2017 and then it just kind of was one event after the other. It was training workshop the next year and then it was NCAP 2019 and then it was PNM and then it was running, being asked to run workshops and it's sort of like I kept on getting more, the more involved with the project, the more I fell in love with it.
And then the more the project, you know, kept on looking to me and saying, Hey, we're, we're about this thing. Would you help us with this? Hey, we've got this podcast. Would you like to host? And I was like, yes. But it's just been so rewarding. I think for me on a professional level as high school teachers, we don't always get to be involved in professional organizations. That's not usually the focal point. Our schools often say it's nice if you are, but it's not a requirement.
But the POGAL project has really, I really do. Like you've mentioned, I feel like I've had an impact on, on a very large scale and to advance pedagogy, to work on something that's so cool, but also just to work with some of the nicest people in the entire world who are so smart and so kind and so supportive. Thank you so much, Tim and Joyce for being here today. We really appreciate the perspectives that you brought. So just thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
For our listeners, you might not know this about me, but I'm actually an introvert and you might not know that about me because I don't think I come off that way here. And the reason I don't come off that way here is because the POGAL people are so lovely and so kind and so supportive that they have beaten all sense of introvertedness out of my head that they have really made it, made it so clear that I am accepted and that I should be here.
And so if you're thinking, yeah, well, you guys seem kind of tight, kind of like a click. No, trust me. We welcome your involvement. We are always looking for new voices. The POGAL projects understands the point of having new people. We understand that you are going to bring your own unique perspective when you talk to us about POGAL and you have an ability to make a change here.
So go on the Facebook page, sign up for an e-series, think about joining one of the working groups because we want to hear what you have to say wherever you are in your POGAL journey. I hope that this season has inspired you to try out some new techniques, some new strategies in your classroom. And I hope that you continue to carry on POGALing and keep on listening to the podcast. Thanks. Is it time for you to get off of your POGAL Island? Of course it is. Visit the POGAL website, www.pogle.org.
There you will find all of the contact information, the emails, the phone numbers that will allow you to reach out to the project. As Siobhan has noted, this is the end of our regular season for season three of the podcast. But there is a postseason just around the corner. We are planning to have a couple of special episodes in May to celebrate our POGAL award winners. So you will want to stay tuned for that.
For Siobhan, Tim and Joyce and everyone at the POGAL podcast, thanks for listening and we will see you in May.