[Factc] How to Imagine What You Haven't Seen (Yet)

[Jennifer Whetham]

Imagining What We Haven't Seen (Yet)

Playing the Believing Game with Guided Pathways

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

Viktor E. Frankl

Save the Date!



31st Annual

Assessment, Teaching, and Learning Conference



May 6-8, 2020

Lynwood Convention Center



Find out more: http://bit.ly/2020atlc

Dear Faculty Member,

So it's likely you've heard the term "Guided Pathways" floating around the hallways, and it's no secret that the Washington State legislature gave our colleges 34 million to fund this initiative.

But what is guided pathways (GP), exactly? One of the trends showing up in the 431 responses to the faculty survey<http://bit.ly/2odbDJM> (it's still open, so add your voice!) is a lack of access to basic knowledge about GP (the what). Another theme showing up is a need for effective communication with faculty as to their role and how GP will impact their work in and outside the classroom (the how). Still another is a feeling that faculty input has not been solicited in meaningful way. And of course, lots of people are wondering if we even need this reform at all (the why). Or, if we do need a reform, then why this one?

When I think about this year's Assessment, Teaching, and Learning Conference, the ATL, coming up this May 2020 ... well, I have a lot of thoughts.

For one thing, we have a moment that is unlike any other. For one thing, it's 2020. I mean, like, it's here. The Future.

And we also have a moment where our collective attention is focused on something. Whether or not it's the right thing, given all of the things competing for our attention ... that alone is powerful. The potential power of our collective attention is not to be taken lightly or glossed over. I can't think of one faculty member I know who is not incredibly busy. E-mail. Students. Other faculty. Colleagues from around the administration. Committees. Department meetings. And that's just work life. What about those who have littles? Or aging parents? It's a lot.

That, my friend and colleague, is where the ATL Conference comes in.

We've always convened faculty, for the last 30 years, regardless of the lingua franca or legislative mandate of the day, to leverage whatever that thing is people are talking about (or worried about or wondering about or angry about or excited about-the responses are always a spectrum). NOT because we want you to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid, but so that we can facilitate the kinds of conversations that are important to faculty. The kinds of conversations that matter.

Teaching. Learning. Students. What we're doing in our classrooms: the good, the bad, the things that keep us awake at night. The problems of practice we're encountering. Learning from and with others about what they are doing so we can "steal" it ("All good poets steal," says T.S. Eliot, and I think in this way, poeting is a lot like teaching).

Those of you who know me know I'm former English faculty, and that I have long had a pedagogical crush on Peter Elbow. First it was freewriting and then it was his notion of playing what he calls "the believing game<http://bit.ly/371W3CK>"-before you play the doubting game. And that's what I'd like to do at the upcoming ATL Conference. With You.

I think it's also important to note that, at the ATL Conference, when we say we want to play the believing game about guided pathways, "We" (and by that I mean me and my boss, Bill Moore) are not asking you to believe in guided pathways, per say.

Rather, we want to get at what's behind guided pathways and see what there is to believe in.

For example, there are lots of questions to ask about pathways that I'm not sure we've asked or entertained seriously. Questions like, "How can pathways be used to deepen learning?" Or, "How might pathways help us work together to foster successful student learning?" I, for one, am dying to talk about how guided pathways could help us, as Gerald Graff called for us to do so many years ago, "End CourseoCentrism<http://bit.ly/2Hthf7k>." Or take seriously, as Dr. Bob Morhbacher describes in his doctoral dissertation, the idea that faculty is a collective noun.

I had a memorable conversation with Dr. Bruce Hattendorf at Peninsula College recently where he described how pathways COULD be a way for us to do things that we have been meaning or wanting to do for a long time, but haven't been able to do because our institutions aren't built for them. He specifically mentioned high impact practices such as student learning communities, writing across the curriculum, undergraduate research opportunities ...

Rest assured that we can play the doubting game at the ATL too. Martin Cockcroft, one of our professional developers, asked this question in a recent presentation called "Supporting Faculty in their Real Work<http://bit.ly/2KA0U4n>": How do we make space for dissenting voices beyond hallway conversations?

So I want the ATL Conference to be a space for doubting as well.

This is all to say I hope you'll save the date and start navigating your institutional paperwork processes so we can, collectively, as many of us as possible, pause between the stimulus of the initiative and the money and the legislation and our gut-level responses.

I think the quote from Viktor E. Frankl, above, is resonant for a lot of different contexts and situations, and I hope he won't roll over in his grave that I'm using it in this one, writing about an arguably top-down change initiative in higher education.

But I want the ATL Conference, this year, to be that space, in a literal and a metaphorical sense. Let's pause, for 3 days, and choose our response. Let's claim growth. Let's claim freedom. Let's find out what's behind guided pathways that we can believe in.

I had another significant conversation with Dr. Judy Loveless-Morris, VP of Equity and Diversity at Tacoma CC, that deeply informed and inspired my thinking about this year's conference theme: "it's hard to imagine what you haven't seen," she said, and I thought, #TRUTH

So let's imagine what we haven't seen ... yet.

I can't do it alone, sitting in my ivory cubicle at the State Board. We can't even do it, I would argue, within our own campuses. For real growth and freedom, we need access to other faculty from around our Washington State CTC system.

As a faculty professional developer, I can throw an idea party, but I need the right guests for it to be an absolute blast.

If you've stuck with me and you've read this far ... know that I choose you. You're invited. I want you there.

Come and join us. We need you.

Much love and guided pathways,

Jennifer
________________________________

[Title: SBCTC logo - Description: Compass]Jennifer Whetham (pronouns: she/her/hers)
Assessment, Teaching, and Learning
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
jwhetham at sbctc.edu<mailto:jwhetham at sbctc.edu> * o: 360-704-4354 * c: 206-310-1291
2019-20 ATL Initiative: Supporting Faculty Engagement in Guided Pathways<http://bit.ly/2BpQe3q>
Add Your Voice: Take the Survey<http://bit.ly/2odbDJM>

"The problems of racism in writing classrooms are not primarily pedagogical problems to solve alone. Racism is an assessment problem, which can only be fully solved by changing the system of assessment, by changing the classroom writing assessment ecology. Thus assessment must be reconceived as an antiracist ecology."

 [FB671723]        Asao B. Inoue, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies<http://bit.ly/2xvacY4>

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