New Developmental Education White Paper Coming Soon

The TYCA (Two-Year College English Association)  conference brought to my attention a new Developmental Education white paper that is coming out soon. I will devote this blog to information about that document. Be watching for it in the TETYC or other NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) journals.

The first topic broached in this session was that the national completion agenda "rests on good intentions but flawed assumptions." Reform is imposed, under resourced, and hasty. Such institutional and disciplinary divisions often lead to disarray and difficulty.

A Case Study: Florida SB1720 is one such hastily drawn piece of legislation set into effect in 2013. This law imposes the following, according to the white paper:

• exempts recent high school graduates and others from being required to take developmental education courses and from mandatory placement testing
• forbids standard semester format for developmental courses
• impacts curriculum, advising, workload, departmental structures, college-level instruction. Colleges were forced to hire more advisers and left no funding to hire more faculty.

Other Program Responses to  Legislative Interventions

• Some California admissions departments have turned developmental students away.
• Placement has been impacted.
• Program design has been impacted:
• mainstreaming with accelerated learning
• module courses developed
• studio courses developed
• stretch courses developed
• compression of programs

Recommendations for Institutional Administration and Educators

1. Include developmental instructors in designing reform.
2. Initiate improvement to developmental education programs and course through research-based pilots.
3. Prioritize evidence from local assessments and research on student success. (What works in Kansas may not work in Arizona.)
4. Assess students' needs for developmental education and readiness for credit-bearing courses based on multiple pieces of evidence including student writing.
5. Eliminate multiple-choice exit tests.
6. Fund and develop strong developmental education departments.
7. Support professional development for developmental educators.
8. More ideas were offered, but I didn't capture them all. Please eagerly await the real completed report for full and accurate information.

Anyone interested in the NCTE's Policy Analysis Initiative can follow this Web site for further information.  Also, the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) has a statement on preparing teachers of college writing. They ask, "How do we teach full-time and adjunct faculty how to teach for our institution?" The CCCC recommend that colleges offer training to show all English faculty how our institution approaches writing.

As a college, English teachers here can read the list and see areas of strength and places for continued growth opportunity at Yavapai College. Personally, I feel we are doing better than many colleges, and am grateful for thse potential of hiring a Developmental Education administrator in the near future. Colleges need to ask, "What issues are most pressing here?"

One state represented at the conference, Texas, said they have Reverse Transfer Agreements in their state (RMAs). When I asked for clarification on what an RMA is, I was told that their college tracks down students who transfer to another institution before they graduate from the university. The college gives credit for classes taken at the university toward completing a community college degree. They transfer back, and in so doing, students earn associates degrees, and the community college gets credit for completion. Do we have a system like this in Arizona? If not, perhaps this is an idea that Arizona colleges can seek to get instituted into our system.

Top Ten Reasons for Going to Conferences

This blog is a little late, but thanks to Todd's coupon, I still was eligible for the lovely house plant. I send thanks to the horticulture students here at Yavapai College! So here is my excuse  . . . no, the dog didn't eat my blog.  I went to a conference, and I have been playing catch up ever since, but when I post this blog, I think I will have done so . . . caught up, that is.

So why would an English teacher go to TYCA-West in Mesa, Arizona, right in the middle of October when so much work needs to be done on campus? Well, here are the top ten reasons for attending professional conferences that I could come up with after attending this one.

1) Promoting growth in our profession is a must, and what better way to gather than at a conference where we can bring our best ideas and present them to others, gather feedback, and polish them.

2) It is essential to protect the integrity of our profession from state and federal lawmakers who want to regulate and make laws to serve taxpayers and voters. Often these lawmakers do so without understanding the potential impact or the implications of these regulations and laws, and it is our responsibility to stand in the gap for our students.

3) Keeping abreast of new research and development in our profession is another great benefit we receive from keynote speakers and other sessions. Also, at conferences, we gain insight into professional journals and articles that will help us keep up with the latest.

4) Networking with fellow faculty helps us to sharpen one another.

5) Sharing tips on how to engage students in the classroom is another benefit.  Breakout sessions and meal time give us opportunity to do so.

6) Discovering new ways to teach curriculum is always a blessing. No one faculty member, nor no single college has ALL of the good ideas.

7) Meeting lifetime friends with fellow faculty members who have similar interests is so likely.

8) Textbook publishers bring textbooks, catalogs, software demonstrations, and offer suggestions to help bridge areas missing in curriculum.

9) Other vendors bring free book samples, guides, pens, and more. 

10) The conference itself usually gives you a cool bag to carry all of your handouts, flyers, and the guide to sessions.

Okay, besides all of these reasons for attending conferences, one must agree that a change of place, good food, a nice room, and a little out of town shopping is good for the soul.

So I mentioned keynote speakers can be a bonus. At this particular conference, the speaker took me back to college days. He got up and read a report on Paulo Freire, banking vs. praxis, and a lot of other professional jargon not spoken in the community college classroom, but indeed practiced on a regular basis.

So, he reminded us, is the teacher a sage on the stage? Or a guide on the side? According to Strauss, we should always assume there is one silent student in the classroom who is smarter than we are. For me personally, believing this student is there helps me to keep myself sharp and prepared for class. Believing this student is there helps me to call upon students in the classroom with expectation that they will have something essential to share, and often they do, and then we learn from more than Mrs. Luffman. We learn from the best ideas we have in common as a classroom, and that is what education is all about. Maybe I am overstating slightly, but not by much.

Then the keynote speaker encouraged us to check out They Say, I Say, a book that presents templates to help students write various types of prose for different purposes. Students gain help discovering how to write cognitive or narrative, investigative or reflective. And then students insert self into these templates to create meaning inside correct format. Okay, so that last part is all my own interpretation of what was being said on stage.

By the way, did I mention that at this conference the sage on the stage was actually reading his paper. Yikes, I would never do that in the classroom, but apparently this gentleman felt the precision of his prose was worth the risk of losing the audience. Apparently he didn't lose me since I did take voracious notes just in case I could write something about it in my blog.

Anyway, if anyone out there actually reads this blog, please consider going to a professional conference, participating, even presenting. It goes a long way in developing who we are and preserving our profession for posterity.

Sincerely submitted.
Tina Luffman

Oral Readings Plus for College Students

A few years ago I attended a SWADE (Southwest Association for Developmental Education) conference in the Phoenix area along with several other staff and instructional employees from Yavapai College. Along with presenting with three others, I also enjoyed learning from other developmental education instructors from colleges in our region. The best tip I picked up was the oral reading activity to assist students with fluency, pronunciation, and comprehension.

Here is how the oral reading works. First, I read a passage out loud for about two minutes. Then I mark how much text I had covered. Second, I type this text into slides. Third, I add a background and clip art to make the slides visually appealing. Finally, I record myself reading these slides in Jing.

Once these slides are recorded, I save the file in Screencast.com. Screencast gives me a link that I paste into Blackboard. You can use any site that you like, but this one has worked well for me. (11)

When introducing these readings to the class, sometimes I have the students do a pre-reading activity such as completing a K-W-L sheet. K-W-L sheets are broken down into three columns. In the "K" column, students write what they already Know about the topic in the reading. In the "W" column, students write what they Want to learn about the topic. 

If we do the K-W-L activity, now is the time to share the recording. I dim the lights and play the recording. Students have the choice of following along in their textbook or of watching the PowerPoint slides roll through as they listen to me reading the text. Hopefully the modeling of intonation, pronunciation, and pace train the class to use similar positive reading habits.

So what if we don't do the K-W-L activity? Sometimes we skim-read the passage. Some days we annotate the reading. Some days we just dive right in and create an outline or a summary later. But the main point here is that students do more with the reading than to just read it through one time.

After the class listens to the slide presentation, we get into pairs. If we have an odd number of students, one reads with me. I watch the clock and have student A read the beginning of the passage for thirty seconds. Then student B reads the same passage as A. Then both A and B read the same passage a second time.

Over the semester, students get better and better at being able to read out loud, they gain comprehension in a noisy environment, and they gain enjoyment reading in a social environment. If you have a class that needs to comprehend a lot of reading materials, please consider adopting some of these techniques, and you can always ask a reading teacher at Yavapai College for ideas to work with your specific curriculum and/or situation. Enjoy!