Music Music Music Music Music Welcome everyone to episode one of season four of the Pogal podcast. This is Wayne Pearson back in the producer's chair for another season of podcast. This time around we are talking about teaching. We're having conversations with teachers from inside and outside of the Pogal project about topics of interest to our teaching community. Today's host is Alex Guichao. Hello, Alex. Hey Wayne, how you doing? I'm doing fine. What are we talking about today?
Well, we are going to be talking about teaching. We're going to be talking to two Pogal practitioners from the same family, but two very different settings. So with me I have Laura Parmentier. Laura, can you introduce yourself? Tell us what you do and where you're from. Hi, thanks, Alex. I teach organic chemistry at Beloit College. I've been there since 1991. Okay. And also joining us is Laura's daughter, Maddie Blaine. Maddie, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?
Hi. Yeah. I am a sixth grade social studies teacher at a pretty small middle school in Wisconsin. Pretty different. Well, thank you both for joining me here for the Pogal podcast. So both educators, both interested in using Pogal, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be here. But as you introduce yourself, it's two clearly different settings, two different subjects. However, I do understand that you guys talk to each other quite a bit about teaching Pogal.
And we'll sort of get into that as we get along. But I want to get started with how you were introduced to Pogal. Laura, since you've been doing this a little bit longer, we're going to start with you. How were you introduced to Pogal? Can you give us a little bit of a backstory there? Sure. Yeah. And my backstory is a little bit backward. Well, as I said, I've been teaching at Beloit since 1991 during those early 1990s.
Lots of folks around the country in chemistry were interested in education reforms. And so I was very actively involved in a chemical education reform initiative that was headquartered at Beloit College. And that was the ChemLinks coalition that developed in the 1990s. So this was another student-first guided inquiry learning project.
And so when I took over teaching organic chemistry in the early 2000s, I wanted to continue with the student-first guided inquiry learning sorts of things we had been doing at Beloit for the general chemistry courses. And so I got connected with Andres Dramanis, who was in the process of publishing his guided inquiry organic chemistry book. This wasn't the Pogal project yet. So this was pre-Pogal. His work was in manuscript form.
And I agreed to, and I was very interested in classroom testing his materials. So I classroom tested those materials and worked with Andres for a couple of years. And then the Pogal project became, especially the Pogal project, got Dennis funding, et cetera. And so I started using Pogal materials in my classroom seven, eight, nine years before I had attended a Pogal workshop. Yeah, that sounds familiar. I have a very similar... Right. So in kind of through the back door. Right.
Yeah. Although mine was in physical chemistry, different group of people, but yeah, same sort of thing. So Maddie, I'm sure you were not instructed in Pogal in organic chemistry at any point. Tell us about your introduction to Pogal. Be honest here. I like to joke that I had a Pogal to learn how to tie my shoes, like that's how I learned everything as a kid. It's not actually true, but that would be kind of fun. I think it's like the kind of thing I've really heard the word a lot.
And I was like, oh, that's just something mom does, Pogal, whatever that is. And then I think I must've been a year or two into teaching and I actually asked, like, okay, what is POGlL? What does that mean?
And it turns out that the whole idea of guided inquiry, this student centered education, like really fit with the pre-teacher education that I was doing at the time or had just finished my first couple of years of teaching, it's like, oh, this is a really nice method of doing kind of what I had been learning to do through my pre-service education.
So basically, you had already gone through college, you'd learned a whole lot of material, you were taking teacher preparation courses, and then you went back and sort of said, oh, my mom's been doing this for a while now. That kind of... Yeah. Okay. And so, Laura, you talked about how you came by the activities you use. Maddie, you're teaching sixth grade history. What do you got? Where does this stuff come from? I make it all.
I did a writer's workshop, gosh, a couple of years ago and wrote my first one. I took an activity that I was doing with kids and turned it into a Pogal activity. And now I've got a couple more, but I've created all of them and I run them past my mom for approval and past the kids. So you at least have some ability to get some feedback on your stuff, even though the disciplines are very different. And I'm just going to ask a quick question here.
Even though the disciplines are different, do you each feel like you can look at an activity in the other discipline and sort of see where there's Pogal? I mean, Laura, as Maddie was feeding you some of this stuff, was it like, I have no idea or does this sort of look like it? Well, Maddie and I typically talk more about process than about content. And so where I am pretty weak on ancient Mesopotamia, I'm pretty okay on concept development.
And the process skills that students engage in to do the sorts of really creative things that Maddie does. All right. So I mean, that's cool because even though the disciplines are different, there's the ability to converse and sort of share ideas and talk about this. So that's very interesting and cool to hear. So Laura, you have this full set of organic activities. I mean, is this how you teach all through the entire year? This is what your students get, right? Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much.
And we've been doing this at Beloit for a long time. And so there's that history. So students coming into the course know that this is how the course works. We've got a workbook. I don't necessarily take things in order of the workbook. I don't necessarily do all the things that are... Right. Yeah. But that's the expectation and that's what students expect to do. Right. And you have other colleagues who use Poggle at Beloit as well, or is it this is just the way organic is done?
Well, so we still teach our general chemistry course the way we developed this first guided inquiry course many decades ago. I have worked with many of my other colleagues at Beloit. So we have introduced Poggle activities in the biochemistry curriculum, in the inorganic chemistry curriculum, the activities in development, and in the physical chemistry curriculum. So, yes, we're working on becoming... Yeah, Poggle kind of all around. But you have buy-in from colleagues. Yes. And that's huge.
That is huge. So Maddie, tell us a little bit about how often Poggle gets used and what your colleagues, peers, and even, I mean, at a middle school you have to answer to administrators. What's that environment like? I'm really lucky where I work that I have a ton of professional freedom. I get to design my course how I want it to be for the most part. I don't have a set curriculum where I have to do all these things, which is really nice and it allows me to be really creative.
And because the sixth grade social studies department is two people, me and a colleague, we kind of have a lot of freedom there and we do lots of stuff. I do maybe one official Poggle activity early in our units that really is very foundational, a very foundational piece of content or skill. But a lot of what I do, I would classify as off-brand Poggle. So it's inquiry, it's very skill-focused, it's very student-centered, but it's not necessarily the full cycle in an activity every time. Right.
I mean, do you get students to do the using roles and working in teams and filling out stuff like that or you think as much as one can do with sixth grade students? Yes. It's a particular challenge to get group work going effectively. And it's October of this year, we're not quite there yet. By later in the year, the kids are a lot better at working in small teams. But I start out with partners. We're not the groups of four, but we're working in partners. And how do you work in partners?
And what does that mean? And what does that look like? And kind of build from there. So definitely working on building the process skills piece of it is probably, requires a little bit more effort. Laura, so given the environment that you have, I mean, how to process skills, do you have any difficulties? Because I get pushback from my students a lot when I try. I'm teaching college students, but there's not a lot of Poggle going on around me. And having pretty much full departmental buy-in.
So at Beloit, the chemistry department, but our biologists are engaging in student-centered work, our geologists are engaging in student-centered work, our physicists are. So sciences at Beloit over the decades have, yeah. And so that's changed over time. When we first started doing this stuff, Alex, and our undergraduate TAs had not done the course the way we were now doing the course. That was difficult. Right?
And we didn't have those upper-class student, if we didn't have that upper-class student buy-in, that made it harder in the class. But at this point, this is what you do in sciences at Beloit. You work in teams, those teams change sometimes. The instructor chooses the teams mostly. And so, and I can assign roles. I don't always do all four roles all the time. I always assign a facilitator. I use different means to pick who that is.
And the facilitator's primary job is read out loud or choose someone else in the team to read out loud so that somebody is doing something to move the project along. Maddie tells a really interesting story that illustrates a great difference between my teams who, they're young adults, 19, 20, 21 years old typically, will work together even if they don't necessarily like each other. Where Maddie tells a story about maybe someone will pick up and throw a table if they don't like one another.
So teamwork is different between adults in college and maybe a lot of people. You're nodding your head here. You've had furniture thrown in your classroom? That might be a bit extreme, but the teams, I put a lot, like when I have to make groups for things, I put a lot of thought into it. Certain kids working with certain kids, certain kids can't work with certain kids.
And I need somebody who is a strong reader in the group to help out the kids who maybe can't really read yet or don't yet speak English and things like that. So it's definitely a more in-depth process of making groups, even partners can be tough.
I think you said this earlier, you don't really jump into a lot of this until you get to know the students and figure out who is going to be able to work together and in what kinds of different environment, in what setting, how do I put this group together and what can I expect out of each of the students? I would agree with Laura. I see that sometimes and I will sometimes purposefully reorganize teams, but definitely don't have to worry about it nearly as much as you're making.
And I guess, again, it's maturity of the students, so these are things that you have to think about. So it's not like you can jump in on this day one and say, okay, class, this is what we're going to do. So you had said that basically the history is you and one other colleague, do you need to worry about what administrators are thinking about this or do you get any pushback from parents? Because as college professors, your mother and I don't really worry about what parents think. Not at all.
Not at all. And we have deans and other administrators who protect us from them, but you maybe do not. Has that played a factor for you in what you've had to do? Not directly. There have been other social studies educators who teach the same content, who've had more, I don't know, tension or conflict with community members or parents. I'm pretty careful about how I go about anything that might be, say, controversial. So that is something that I have to be really careful with in a public school.
In terms of methodology, it seems to be going okay. Kids seem to enjoy class and that makes parents enjoy it. Right. So as long as the kids come home and say, we did something fun today in school and I might have learned something. Exactly. You haven't had any real negative issues there. So we had alluded earlier that the two of you talk because, Maddie, you haven't moved too far from home.
And I understand that there's a special time of day where the two of you talk about Poggle together when you're out doing what? What do you guys do? Walking the dogs. Walking the dogs. So let us in a little bit on some of the conversations that you guys carry out when you're out walking the dogs. You had mentioned earlier, Laura, that a lot of what you worry about mostly is facilitation. And so tell us a little bit of something about the interactions that you guys talk about during those.
Yeah. So first off, imagine beautiful southern Wisconsin, rolling countryside, prairie, either a long leash or a dog's off leash and having a fabulous time. And we can walk for miles and just engage in great conversations. So we talk a lot about facilitation. We talk about, this happened to me in class on Wednesday. What would you have done in this particular situation? How might I have handled this differently? And those are typically facilitation things, right? About team dynamics.
If there's somebody whose voice maybe isn't being heard in the team, how do I sort this out? How do I bring out the strengths, the assets of this particular person if that's not happening right now? I have gained a lot of insights from talking with Maddie because she's a trained educator. And I got my PhD in organic chemistry back in the 1980s. And at that time, empathy didn't really figure into the equation for being an educator. We were not taught how to teach in graduate school.
No. And so I've learned a lot over the decades and I've learned a whole lot more on our wonderful dog walking mornings, just talking through with someone who is not only trained but is very insightful about what might make this situation better. Right. Right. So, Maddie, now that your mother has painted you in these glowing turn, can you give us one or two nuggets of things that you guys have talked about, something that really like this is really cool and I'm going to go use this?
It's funny to hear my mom say that she learned a lot from me as a trained educator because so many times at school, I think, oh gosh, I just really sounded like my mom. My teacher voice sounds like my mom. That's a good thing. It's a good thing. But it's just kind of funny that that's kind of come in full circle. Some notable conversations. We've talked, I think, a lot about one thing we talked about recently was kind of chemistry as a second language.
I have an ESL teaching license as well and I have a lot of kids in our district are English learners and so it's something I think about a lot and love making the parallel between chemistry as a second language and using some of the strategies for teaching English to teach the language of chemistry. That's been kind of a fun one. I agree with that wholeheartedly because as a physical chemist, I find organic chemistry is a completely foreign language. Don't ask me to do organic nomenclature.
No, and that's not the most interesting part of organic chemistry by a long shot, but Maddie is absolutely right. I've learned so much thinking about, there are even books about organic chemistry as a second language. This is not the first time, but thinking about my teaching of organic chemistry and comparing that with Maddie's teaching of English language learners, it's like the parallels are tremendous.
It's not only the new vocabulary that we need to talk about these concepts, but you have to have this foundation to be able to delve into the concepts. So peeling back some of those layers and understanding what students, and also I have students for whom English is not their first language. So there's this multiple level thing. That's been a huge insight in my teaching. Right, right. Cool. And so you're both talking about having students for whom English is not primary language.
So I imagine accessibility, not just being able to figure out how to facilitate an activity with students, but also making sure that, I think Maddie, you alluded to this too, who can actually read the activity out loud? What are some of the other issues in accessibility that you guys have talked about? Anything jump to mind there? I think the parallel between vocabulary and anything in chemistry, because it's all crazy vocabulary to me, but I think that's really big.
And the way that we use the sort of concept development arc is similar to how kids effectively learn new English words, that that meaning has to be there. You can't just know the word. You have to also make the meaning behind it. It needs some context. And so I think one of the things that's always fascinating to me, I teach a survey course. So it's basically the G part of a GOB, general organic biochem course. And I've got students in there for whom they really don't want to be in chemistry.
But they're there and they're talking about stuff that they don't really sort of see it at all, but when they're talking about it with one another, there's this connection that they draw. And then if you put the term on top of that afterwards, both of you, just so people at home know, they're both nodding on Zoom, I'm saying this. So do you see that also with the English language learners as well? Yeah. Yes. And that's sometimes the best way to learn new words. You already know what this is.
Here's a word for it. And they may know it in their own mother language. Cool. Very interesting stuff. So I guess one last thing that I want to ask about here, and that is the process skill issue. How do you get through the process skill piece to students at that sixth grade level? While you start slow in the year, do you feel like at the end of the academic year, they've figured out how to really work with one another? Is that a... Definitely it improves.
The way we have our course set up, we end with a really big group project. And that it's super rewarding to see the effort and the group work and the cooperation that goes into that big project that would not be possible in September, October. And that I think it always reminds me like, oh yeah, all those times where I have to stop and be like, okay, what does it look like when you're working well with a partner?
All those times we have to be so explicit about expectations and what good group work looks like. Like it finally pays off in June when they do their big project. And do the students realize that they've grown? They're 11 years old. So their self-awareness might not be where it is for a college-age student. So I wanted to swing this back to you, Laura. Do you see students...
Again, since they're working in teams a lot, do they come in already with this ability to do things or do you feel like they're still growing in their process skills as they move through organic chemistry? Oh, well, they're always still growing. I mean, it's a whole developmental arc.
I think one of the key differences maybe for my students in organic chemistry at their developmental stage relative to Maddie's students is that organic chemistry students are going to go on and look for internships or they're ultimately going to apply to medical school or graduate school or apply to a job. And they understand it when I tell them, when I remind them that it's the process skills that I will focus on in their letters of recommendation.
Can they communicate effectively about science? Can they work collaboratively in teams? Do they... Those are all of the check boxes that are asked on every evaluation. Every single evaluation. And so college students are likely pretty motivated by that sort of idea, whereas I think for middle school students, they're not thinking about that yet. And so yes, I see development over the course of two years, or one year, two semesters of organic chemistry.
And I love to be able to talk about that development in letters of recommendation. Well, this has been really interesting. I really appreciate the both of you coming onto the podcast, chatting with me. I almost wish I was a dog person and I lived in Southern Wisconsin to go out on a walk with you guys, but neither of those are the case. So I appreciate the time that you have spent with us here. Yeah. So any last words that you guys have?
I mean, something else, some one other nugget that you want to give to other people. I think having somebody to talk about teaching in general, whether it's specifically Pogel or anything, is just the most valuable. And I can talk to my colleagues at work. We share the same students, the same age, but it's kind of nice to talk to somebody who is in a completely different realm, have a different perspective on things. And I found that super valuable.
And I can ask, when we're talking about preparing kids for the next level, I can ask my mom, what do you want out of kids when they're coming into a college class? So I can actually speak to that when we're preparing kids. And I will add that the Pogel community is great for fostering conversations amongst practitioners of people who teach different subjects at different levels. And that's, I think, super valuable.
I love our Saturday and Sunday morning dog walks because we can dive pretty deeply into things that we're facing today. What am I going to do with this next week? And so I just find that super, super valuable. And I'd love to be able to foster that kind of level of conversation more broadly. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like you, Laura, I've been doing this kind of teaching for decades now. I shudder to say that, but true.
And I still find that even when I'm facilitating a workshop, just from questions from new people, it's like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Let's talk about this. And I mean, you two are very lucky that you've been able to carry on conversations. I'm sure that there's every now and again an emergency phone call, quick, we need to go walk the dogs. That's the new code word among Poggle people. We need to go walk the dogs.
And I'm sure that people in the Poggle office would agree that that is a good idea. All right. Maddie Blaine and Laura Parmentier, I want to thank you both for a really engaging conversation. What a way to kick off season four of the Poggle podcast. Thank you very much. Thanks so very much. And back to you, Wayne. So what a fantastic conversation. One of the things that I get to do while these conversations are going on is just be a fly on the wall. And I get to hear everything that gets said.
And there are two insights that occurred to me as this conversation was going. One, I'll echo Laura, is how great the Poggle community is for bringing people together from very diverse environments to talk about what we love to do. And that's teaching. And whether it's at an NCAP, a national meeting, whether it's in a workshop, whether it's at social hour, we always find a way to talk about these things, even though we're coming from very diverse environments.
And we may not be all in the same genetic family, but it's a great thing to have. And the other thing that occurred to me is that when a lot of people think about Poggle, I think about something that's very set up and very rigid, but I don't really think that's true. I think that if you work with Poggle, you can make Poggle work for you and you adapt it to your environment. So I think the conversation today just is a clear example of that. So I want to thank everybody for listening.
We'll be back in about another month with another Poggle podcast. So long, everybody.