Well, welcome back everyone. I am your host, Wayne Pearson, and you are listening to episode nine of season three of the Poggle podcast. Boy, do we have an important conversation for you in this episode. As Poggle practitioners, we have probably all been faced with talking about Poggle to folks who don't really know much about Poggle. Some of those people might be our colleagues who are interested in Poggle and might want to bring this pedagogy into their classrooms.
So you have an opportunity for outreach. Another common scenario is that your teaching is being evaluated and you need to educate your departmental or institutional administration about what you are doing in your classroom. We have a great team of people to talk about talking about Poggle. Sheila Barback is currently a member of the science faculty at Golda Ock Academy in West Orange, New Jersey.
She previously taught fifth to eighth grade science at Gerard Berman Day School in Oakland, New Jersey, where she also served as general studies principal. She has taught high school science in grades nine through 11 in New Jersey and biology at the community college level at County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey. Kristi Martis is a faculty member and chair of the Department of Chemistry, Physics and Engineering Studies at Chicago State University in all places, Chicago, Illinois.
Our interviewer is Alex Gushow, who is a faculty member at Reiter University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and chair of the Department of Earth and Chemical Sciences. So we have three people who have multiple perspectives on the importance of talking about Poggle. So I'm just going to step on back and turn it over to Alex. Thanks Wayne. So first I want to have you each introduce yourselves. I know Wayne gave us a nice little introduction of where you're at.
But I also want you to tell us a little bit about those experiences and how you got, you know, what is your institutional culture when it comes to sort of perhaps using non-traditional teaching methods. So Kristi, I'm going to start with you. Yeah. So I am currently in the first year of being the chair of chemistry and physics. I was an interim chair for a year during COVID, but now I'm chairing my own right.
But I've been at CSU for almost 20 years and I've taught primarily chemistry, a few physical science classes, but chemistry, coming out of physical chemistry and general chemistry. And I think I've been very lucky that Chicago State in my department has a pretty extensive history of interest in active learning and teaching different pedagogies. We have an actual chemistry educator, Andre Van Duser on staff.
We have a physics educator, Mel Sibela, who is past president of the American Association of Physics Teachers. We have quite a bit of freedom in our department to teach and try out new teaching methods. And we write our own DACs, the department of, you know, basically the document that says whether you get tenure or not.
And so even before I started there, we pretty much written in, you know, they were at the point where they were transitioning from being more lecture-based to more guided inquiry-based when I started there. And we've just kind of kind of slid that in. It's not actually specifically required that you do active learning, but it's certainly not any kind of barrier to tenure, the way we do the evaluations. Right.
Yeah. And you mentioned something that's very important and actually I've been very fortunate at Rider University in that the department sort of generates most of the decision-making when it comes to your teaching. And that is you have some evaluation going on from outside the department, but primarily the department is the one that sets the criteria. And that is very helpful. Not everybody gets that luxury. Sheila, you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your experiences?
Sure. So, hi. So I was actually introduced to Poggle when I taught at County College of Morris by my chairperson, so that was great because it really came as a suggestion from the department. I was the only person using the method in my department, but there was no barrier to trying it out or anything like that.
And then when I left County College of Morris, it was to actually go to a school that wanted to implement inquiry-based learning in specialized programming for the middle school students. So it was also already there. I just kind of kept following it and finding opportunities to teach that way. And in my current position, I actually interviewed, I wrote about using Poggle method and inquiry learning in my teaching practice and my demo lesson was a Poggle lesson.
And we have built into the middle schoolers weekly schedule our inquiry lab classes where the teachers, we have a rotation of teachers that design a two-month long inquiry-based project in any subject. So I designed one, the social studies collaborated, there was a Spanish one, but my point is that there was, the inquiry is very much woven into the curriculum here.
So it's always been, I don't want to say expected, but at least from the minimum of being open to it, like, okay, to we actively encouraging inquiry-based learning. Right. Yeah. So it sounds like both of you have found yourself in very fertile ground for adopting Poggle or any kinds of active methods. I will say that I did not land in fertile ground and it's been a challenge here to get colleagues on board.
I've been here quite a while, longer than Christie, and I'm not going to say how long, but when I got here, there was no idea of what active learning was. And I still have colleagues who, I don't want to say actively oppose, but they resist that in the department. And so, I'm going to throw this out to each of you. I don't want to talk about the idea of how do you win people over, but what do you do when there is sort of a reticence to adopt something?
Let's say you're hiring somebody, Christie, and they want to be a traditional lecturer. What do you do? I will say that the people we have hired recently, because we're on the state of Illinois, it's kind of been a hiring freeze, have been all part-time, I imagine, lecturers, right?
And Andre and I just, because partly because we were hiring them into GenCamp, which is the class that Andre and I have taught for a number of years, we have said, hey, we've got these materials and let me show you how we do it. And it wasn't really an option. And it's worked very well. Andre is good about being gentle. And not that the chair has a lot of power, but with an adjunct, you get a little bit more power of, hey, this is what we need you to do.
I think it helps that we give them the materials. So I'm not telling somebody, hey, I know you're getting paid the very low amount that adjuncts get paid and I want you to reinvent your teaching. It's here are all the Poggle activities that we do in GenCamp. Here's the schedule. And we also have, we have learning assistance, which is a program. And so, you know, we tend to offer some of our more, and that's a general approach.
You know, people who are less excited about Poggling, it's like, but we're going to give you a learning assistant. And the learning assistant students who all have been kind of coached in the joys of active learning. So they'll be kind of nudging their faculty mentor and say, well, hey, we could try this and it would work well with the students and hey, the students would like this.
And that's the other thing is if the students have done active learning activities in GenCamp and in the first physics classes, they tend to kind of hope that that keeps going. So they'll themselves do a little bit of advocating for that. So it tends to propagate that way. Sheila, what have you, what have you observed with colleagues coming in, you know, and sort of trying to convince them or sort of help them along the way to providing active learning in their classrooms?
So in my, in my previous school, I had first like a half administrative half teacher role, and then I was principal for a period of time. And we really, there was, I don't know, it was like a slow but steady approach. I don't know how else to describe it. Because most of our staff had been there before I was and had a particular outlook on teaching. It was definitely like, find the first teacher who was willing to try this like crazy thing, right?
And reflect on where they thought they could bring more active learning into their classroom. And I do think that at the age level that I, of my school, it was a kindergarten through eighth grade program. It's already very active learning, but it was, it really started with conversations about switching it from, which was, I think, a language that the teachers were a little more like comfortable with, teacher centered versus student centered.
So that's kind of where it started as a student centered classroom. And how can you guide students to try something more independently or bring in a little bit more independence? And then there were some teachers who were just kind of moving along the continuum, right? That may be like, okay, I'll let the students handle the math manipulatives themselves, right? Like the cubes and they'll put them together themselves, you know?
And then there was another first grade teacher who said, I want to do a genius hour. So with first graders, I mean, she was really outside the box. So it's sort of like we do with our students was figuring out which, where each teacher was in the continuum of his or her teaching practice and then taking them sort of step by step to, okay, what's the next thing I can try?
It was very incremental, but that's, to me, that's the only way that you're going to change someone's teaching practice is going to change. When we have the opportunity to hire new staff, then that was part of the interview process, right? Then it was like, okay, what is your outlook on active learning? What does it look like in your classroom? What experience do you have with it? So we can have that conversation. Colleague to colleague, a little different.
It's more, at least in the school where I am, the culture is such that we observe each other as part of our reflection for the year. So I've had teachers come to my classroom to observe inquiry-based lessons or POGO lessons and then kind of talk about it a little bit. And then kind of see who your allies are or who else is swimming in that same pool and then share the things that have been successful about that teaching method. So I guess I'm a very grassroots kind of approach, right?
And even when I was in an administrative position, it wasn't like something that the job hinged on, but it was, let's see where you're going to grow as a teacher. And this is a vision that I have for our curriculum and let's see where you fit into it. So trying to be inclusive, but also give like that little, but you can do it.
Yeah. And I think that the key there is nudging them along, providing, as Christy said, if you provide materials to like particularly adjuncts, and those of us in higher education, we're often, well, I guess we're increasingly reliant upon adjuncts now. And many of them come in with very little teaching background.
They may have like, particularly in the sciences, they may have come from an industrial exposure or they may be sort of have bounced around various teaching gigs and they may have not necessarily sort of been exposed to active learning techniques. And so really what it is is just offering up, because they're not sure what they want to do.
You try to give them as much support to do active learning as possible without necessarily pushing them, because if you push, I've found it doesn't really go over if you push too hard. It's funny because I have some supportive colleagues here who really like what I do in the classroom because it makes the students that they get after me that much better, but they are unwilling to really jump in because it's just something that it's not their style.
And I think that that's something that needs to be honored is that some people, it's not their style. They can be very effective lecturers and they can be very engaging. In some ways, that does bring students along. I just wish that they would do more, but there's very little I seem to be able to do to move the needle on what they're doing. Do you have any thoughts on how to help people out in that position? I'm looking for help here.
I think that for teachers to make a significant change in their teaching practice, it either comes out of a pain point. Like, okay, I just can't do this anymore. And I remember when I went to my chairperson, and I was a very young faculty person at that point, it was like the end of my second year, but I said, I can't imagine trying to be funny for the next 20 years in a lecture to try to keep students engaged. And then how much do I have to bend over backwards and this and that.
So for me, that was a pain point. I was just like kind of, I needed something different. And I also just knew myself as a learner, I didn't, I really had a hard time in classes where it was just the professor speaking and then I had to memorize what the professor was saying and then repeat at least 80% of it when I took a test at whatever point, right, at whatever assessment point.
So I think the pain point struggle is one, which I think is also a way to access the teacher's reflection and say like, well, how do you feel in terms of, you know, asking like kind of probing questions and helping them reflect on what feels right about their practice and what doesn't. And then I think the other is really just the example, like really inviting, being very, very transparent with your teaching, always teaching with the door open.
Like in my case, I never closed my door, there's students all around, there's teachers all around and I talk really loud. And then really just being vocal about, not on purpose, it's just how I talk, but, and just inviting people in and saying, you know, why don't you just come see.
And one of the things that I've always wanted to try and have just never gotten off the ground around, you know, it was one of those things that you learn in graduate school, like, oh, there are schools that have instructional rounds and teachers travel from room to room and watch each other, you know, engaged in teaching and then you debrief it later and discuss it.
And I think that releases a lot of the fear of trying something because you see somebody else doing it and it just opens up reflection. So I guess those are the two ways I look at it.
One is if you have the opportunity to have the conversation in like a low stakes way and help the reflection component think about what's working in their practice and then what is it and then also being very open to sharing the way that you teach and allowing people to see you kind of do the inquiry or active teaching or whatever it is.
Yeah, I think there's still the fear I hear most often is, well, you know, since students are going to graduate and they're going to go to medical school, they're going to go to pharmacy school for us or graduate school and we've done them a disservice because we've never taught them how to survive in the lecture only environment. And I think that's a real fear, especially at a school like ours where we have small classes to begin with. We don't have giant lecture halls.
The students aren't having that experience. And so I think that's a concern. I think the counter to that is, A, if they never learn enough, they're not going to get up there anyway. But also, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing. You don't have to commit to doing nothing but active learning every day. Maybe there's one topic that you know, we all know this, right? You give the test and you know from year to year that no one is going to get this particular question right.
You know, other than the people who happen to know it before they started out in the class. You know, that's the one thing that maybe figure out what could I try? Try a more active learning approach to that. Or you know, something you just talk about, you know, that it is a journey.
I did a number of years of clicker questions and just in time learning sorts of questions before I started Poggle and I still sometimes for there's a few topics in GenCAM that get the clicker questions because whatever I've been trying with Poggle isn't working that year and so we're going to briefly default to clicker questions and see how that goes. So I think it's okay to tell people you're not putting all of your chips in one basket when you do this. Right. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, there are some people, you know, we know in the project who, you know, this is, you know, Poggle is all they do for their classes all the time and that works for them. And, you know, I think that, you know, the notion of trying to bring colleagues along, letting them recognize that it's not an all or nothing thing.
I would say that, you know, you know, every couple of classes, I'm going to spend about half of the class time, you know, just talking through some points rather than allowing the students to struggle with it because either they're tired of the struggle sometimes and, you know, you need to support them.
So I think that, you know, all of these, you know, just have, I think one of the things that's a really good message for people who are curious about active learning but afraid of it is that I think one of the things that has, it has allowed me is to better understand what students are doing in the moment in the classroom because, you know, you're engaging with them the whole time.
I mean, even if they're off in their teams doing something and you're purposefully standing back, you're still engaged. You're still paying attention to what they're doing, which is not something that happens in a sort of a more traditional environment. So I think that one of the things that we haven't really touched on a little bit is how do we talk about, you know, the people who are higher up in the pay grade than we the Poggle practitioners?
I mean, so we've each had some administrative experience and we know that that administrative experience means more responsibility, not necessarily any more authority. So how do you pursue talking with administrators above you with this? I mean, we've all been fortunate enough to be, you know, the three of us have been fortunate enough to be in places where we're given enough latitude and our departments have allowed us to move forward.
But how do we how do we sort of bring that forward to like the new administrator who just, you know, the dean who just got hired or the principal who just got hired and who has no idea what you're doing? Anybody want to join jump in here?
Well, I think it helps that even, you know, I sometimes use the word Poggle when I'm describing things to hire people, even if I know what the faculty member isn't doing isn't quite Poggle, it's guided inquiry in general or it's, you know, heuristic writing or something, you know, related to that in lab. So it's not to confuse things because it does help that Poggle is a national organization with a web page.
And I can say we're doing what these people are doing, you know, and it links up well, you know, you know, I highlight the interconnectedness between the learning assistant alliance and Poggle and how those complement each other. And it helps that we've got a few small grants because money talks to universities.
And so, you know, even that very small grant that Andre and I got from Poggle to write a couple of polymer labs, we can say, look, we got a little bit of money to do this in the classroom. And they're like, oh, overhead. Yay. So I don't think that it's, at least again, in my standpoint, we haven't had a lot of, oh, we want to see a lecture or anything like that. They've been relatively comfortable with us doing our thing.
And again, it helps we've had a department with a lot of success with our teaching from different fronts, Poggle and not Poggle. But I think we've got enough built in credibility that even if there's an occasional, because that's what faculty worry about, right, is that they're going to have one bad semester of teaching evaluations and that's going to sink their job. But that's again, just an argument for, well, don't try to do all Poggle all the time from the first day of class.
If you're just starting out, do, like you said, one a week or one every other week. And that's not likely to do anything to your teaching evaluations. Right. I think for, I guess I'll speak from the perspective of now a classroom teacher without an administrative role. And again, I, when I applied for this job, it was already, I use Poggle and inquiry based learning and I have a very active classroom. But I think for teachers who are feeling like, how do I talk about this with my administrator?
I do think that secondary teachers, I think we have the advantage because at this point there's the expectation that you're not a frontal teacher, right, that you're not just standing in front of the room. And I think we also know at this age range and where we are kind of post remote learning and all of that, the students do really want to be active in the classroom. So I think it's a little bit lower hanging fruit for the age range that I'm working with.
And I think that in the case of a chairperson, you want to have that rapport with the chairperson and kind of like those conversations of like, well, this is what I'm thinking about this and how I'm teaching, like sort of again, that transparency. I think we, if we feel like we have to hide the way we're teaching or the way we're teaching won't be accepted and we kind of have to think about like, all right, what's the culture like in my school and what's going on there?
And we don't all have the privilege of picking up and moving and going to a different school. So you definitely have to operate in the culture that you're operating in. So when that happens, I always say like, well, okay, well, find your allies, find the teachers who you know, your work best friend who teaches like you or thinks like you or aspires like you. And that way, at least you don't feel like so by yourself.
Which I often felt like there was a time where I had a chairperson who wanted everybody lecturing and everybody who was teaching the same section of the same class should be on the same topic in the departmental syllabus on the same day, whether you were teaching one three hour lecture, two hour and a half or three 45 minutes, which I can see from everybody's face.
So you find you know, you find that ally and I think so I do feel optimistic that at least in the I don't even want to say K to 12, let's say middle school and high school level. This is where published curricula are heading in the first place inquiry and thinking and you know, being student centered and having social skills infused into the curriculum across the curriculum.
So I think it's a great time for this type of for this for us to bring Pogel to this to K to 12 or five to 12 or whatever, whatever age range. Yeah, I mean, I agree. And even your suggestion of finding your allies is really important. Being open with your administrators is very important. When I started here again, it was there were a lot of sages on the stage at this institution and the notion that I would walk.
I mean, you know, it's a small institution, but the idea that during the classroom, I would walk around and sort of see what students are doing. That was sort of viewed as a little strange to like, why would I leave the chalkboard? You know, because I mean, how are you going to move to the next transparency? Oh, wait a minute. I just dated myself. And so, you know, and even today when I am lecturing, I am not up front. I'm usually sitting in the back.
I love the remote control on my computer because I want to be in amongst the students. And just that activity alone shows some engagement and allows you, you know, because I noticed early on that students, when you're up there talking, students will lean over and ask the person next to them, what did he say? You know, or try to explain that.
And so I found that if I'm just sitting amongst them or not necessarily sitting, but standing or leaning on a chair or whatever, they have more comfort in just leaning over and say, OK, what does that mean up there? And I mean, just those little things right there sort of promote student engagement. I think that those little things are helpful. And you know, I actually sort of learned doing this, learned sort of this habit from a colleague of mine in our education department.
I mean, this is how she did things because she used to be, you know, a high school math teacher. And so this is how you do things in high school math teaching. I'd never had any formal teacher preparation, you know, as a college professor. We don't get that. I mean, other than being a TA and back in those days, you know, there was no active learning. I was just grading stuff and holding office hours.
So I think, you know, getting the education part is important, but finding the people who you can talk to at your institution is a huge, huge support mechanism to keep you going. Well, it might be worth checking in with your recruiting staff because at least, I mean, state schools, right, which are primarily driven by enrollment.
And we know that the number of future college students is declining across the country, at least in the vast majority of states, that the institutions are sensitive to enrollment. So if you can have somebody or talk to somebody about how this is actually something that students, for the most part, because they are seeing it in the high schools, they sort of want, now they might not.
There's where you want to use the word guided, you know, active learning and maybe not, not Poggle because some high school students have had, you know, unfortunate experiences with Poggle's homework, not as an active learning experience. But you know, I've noticed, I've got a junior in college myself, or sorry, junior in high school looking at colleges now that the number of the colleges starting to mention, you know, come here for active, engaged learning, right? Well, great.
What do you mean by that? So the incoming students are savvy enough to know that that's something that they might want, or at least it's a differentiator. And so we should check. And that gives you a little bit of play if you want to, if you need to talk your way into trying something, you can say, well, you know, the recruiting people said that people are asking for this. Right.
Yeah. Okay. So any, any other final thoughts that people have here on, on, on helping, helping our future Poggle colleagues sort of get, you know, increase their use or sort of get more comfortable doing it at their home institution? Well, obviously reach out to the Poggle project, see if there's somebody in your area, you know, like a local Poggle practitioner who's a little further down the path and connect and, you know, find it always helps to not feel like you're alone.
Right. Yeah, I was going to say that those, you know, one of, you know, we've been, our adjunct has paid, or we paid, covered, you know, one of the E series, which isn't necessarily an obvious introduction, but it's a short introduction on some part of it. And it's $20, which is generally within the price point for most departments to cover. Right. Oh, so, so you actually have been, you have paid for adjuncts to participate in the series.
Okay. So that's, we can't quite afford a whole three day trip or anything, but we can afford $20 to. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, there, that's a, that's a good way to sort of bring people along. I mean, I will say that I have gotten a few of my colleagues to go, I mean, go to workshops and participate in things just at least so that they think about how to put it into their, into their teaching.
And again, you know, you're not going to win over everybody to be going 100% active learning in their classroom, but you know, anything that we can do to move the needle and help others to move the needle. So well, Christie, Sheila, I really want to thank you both for an engaging conversation.
You know, it's, it's sort of a tricky spot for people who want to sort of develop more active learning of figuring out how to do it and, and, and how to make it, you know, be a comfortable thing for them to do as well as something that, you know, is accepted in their institution is it's a really important topic, you know, and I hope we have a further conversation on this. Yes, Alex, I couldn't agree more.
It's very interesting that as POGLE practitioners, we don't talk as much in the classroom as some other people might, but we certainly enjoy talking about POGLE and we certainly enjoy those conversations when we get a chance to tell people what we're really doing in our classroom. So again, we invite all our listeners out there to, to talk to us at the podcast.
You can do that through hashtag the POGLE podcast on the Facebook page and we will be having another happy hour coming up here pretty soon. So for everybody at the podcast, we wish you the best of classroom experiences that you can have. Keep POGLING on and we'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye everybody.