First, I need to thank TLS for giving me this opportunity
to talk about one of the projects I’ve been doing in my classes.
I’m going to talk about how to Connect Classroom Skills to Everyday Life.
And specifically, the project I have, I called "Three-Column Approach."
One semester on the first day of class, I went to the class, I started talking to my
students about course and syllabus, expectations and what they supposed to learn in this class.
And I look at my students, some of them looked interested, some were preoccupied and,
and some of these students have to sleep which was understandable, my classes are in the morning,
very early, so I thought it’s very early in the morning. Then just thinking about it,
I realized that I need to demonstrate to my students that there is a reason they
need to take physics, I mean, all the physics classes so I have four non majors.
So, I don’t have physics major in my class.
So, some of the students they always wonder why they need to take this class.
I needed to demonstrate to them that no matter what your major is,
you can improve and learn skills. And some of those skills are marketable skills to be
able to use those skills later on. So, to be able to do that, I came up with the project
or activity I called "Three-Column Approach."
So, what I asked the students to do, I asked them to grab a piece of paper,
and I told them, I don’t need their names to be on it.
And after I explained what that activity is, they understood why I asked for that.
Picking up a piece of paper, and then I asked them to divide that paper to three columns.
After they divided the paper in three columns, I asked them to put in the first column problems,
in the second column solutions. And then I asked them to write whatever problems they have.
It could be school related, family related, whatever that keeping them awake at night,
whatever that is troubling them. And then I ask them to think about solution for that specific problem.
Is there anything they can do that to kind of start solving that problems?
And also, I told them some of the problems we might not have a solution.
Sometimes we do not have solutions. If you’re watching this video, you may pause this and do this practice.
I’ve done this practice myself and some of my colleagues, it helps no matter what stage we are,
and I will explain why this is the case. Especially these days there are a lot of things on our minds
and we think about a lot of different things.
Some of them we have solutions, some of them we do not have.
Students, they wrote their problems and then they wrote their solution.
And then I asked them on the third column to write their passion, after they wrote their passion,
which could be anything. What are you passionate about,
a lot of our passion, a lot of us are passionate about teaching.
A lot of us that I found is very common in our students are passionate about helping other people.
So, whatever you passionate, whatever it’s like, no matter when you are tired or not,
whatever is bothering you still can enjoy that and do whatever your passion is.
So, after putting your passion on the third column, I wanted them to go back and think about the solutions
they had to their problems. Not that considering their passion. I wanted to go back for them
to go back and see if they want to modify their solutions, or have they come up with
the new solution, have they come up with another way of attacking their problem?
I got a various response. There was some like for instance, there’s an example,
the students was talking about divorce and child custody. That’s a very big problem.
And that’s kind of like a life problem. It’s obviously it’s going to occupy your mind
and the solution was communicating better with the Ex to figure out a solution for child custody.
But many and oftentimes and this is a case and all most of our students everywhere they are dealing with,
this is worrying about rent, tuition, textbooks and money in general.
Some of the solutions that students had was either finding another job
or some they were talking about budgeting.
So, there’s some of the problems and again, as I said, these are all real problems.
Our students have real problems like everybody else.
These are some of the handwritten examples of the students
if I just quickly talk about feel like parents' separation,
the solution was, see a counselor, voice concern, get advice.
These are very good solution. These are helpful solution.
And then I want you to look at the passion, helping others, medical field,
learning new things, making others feel happy. These are priceless.
And what I read about the students, no matter what they were going through,
and some of the problems was like, really, really important and again, life problems.
But most of the students had this helping other, that fascinates me about our students.
We have fantastic students and making other feel happy, that’s amazing.
So, then when I talked about adding passion, this is student wrote, talk to those I have concerned with,
heart to heart talk, research alcoholism, because one of their problem was that drinking,
so they added different kinds of solutions to the problem.
There are more examples. I had many of these papers during a few years I’ve collected
and I’ll go through them and I’ve learned so much about our students.
And then I explained to the students. After I collect their papers from them, they were okay
if they didn’t want to give me their piece of papers, I was okay.
But since there was no name or nothing, I collected them just to kind of get to know our students.
I explained the purpose of this activity. I explained that when I asked them to fill in the first and second column,
the problems and solutions, I wanted them to start focusing on the solutions.
I wanted to them to start focusing on analyzing what they know and how they can solve their problem.
That’s exactly what we do in physics. When we have a physics problem, we write knowns,
what are the variables we know? What do we know about that problem?
And then what are our knowns? Where are we trying to get? What are the steps between unknowns and knowns,
we can do that in life. I wanted them to practice problem solving and analytical thinking.
And as I said before, these are marketable skills, any jobs you would be using these skills.
So, I wanted them to see the relationship between physics and their life,
anything they’re going to do in future no matter what career they choose.
And then third column, I told them to focus on their passion. That’s kind of sounds very different.
There is an idea that it was for two reasons. When we think about our passion, think about yourself.
As soon as you think about what you’re passionate about, you become happier.
There’s a smile on your face and you have heard people talking about their passion, you see,
they become like happier, they are in another happy state of mind.
So, what I believe is when we think about our passions, when we are happier,
and you have noticed this if you’re happier and you’re relax, you can come up with solutions.
So, I believe that when our students, they thought about passion, they could be a little bit move forward
to a better state of mind and to be able to solve their problems in some effective ways if they didn’t have
any solutions. But another very important one, few examples we saw,
a lot of our problems are related toward passion. That’s kind of funny to say, but let’s say students
have problem with paying rent, textbooks, a lot of tuition in general school expenses,
those are problems yet but why does a student have those problems?
Because these students want to make a better life for themselves. They want a better life for their family.
They want to become a medical doctor. They’re going to make a great career for themselves.
So, they have those problems because they trying to follow their dreams.
Yes, some of our problems are not directly related to our passions and this just happens, life happens,
but there are a lot of other things that relates to our passion. For instance, as faculty oftentimes,
like maybe we have days we have to write a proposal and we have to do grading,
there are things going on and we might feel overwhelmed. But if you step back and think about it,
why do I need to write a proposal? Why do I have to grade? Because I love to teach,
I love to be a professor, I love to do my job. And all of these are not problems.
These are things that relates to my job. So, when you think of that, I wanted the students to feel empowered.
When you say that, these are because you choose to do something you feel empowered.
When you feel empowered, and you reflect on it, it’s a different story, you don’t look at your
problems as problems, you think of them as steps to go through your goal.
So, that’s another reason I asked for passion. There are other possible outcomes too.
When a student's think about their passion, when most of them mentioned something about furthering their
education, they figure out what they going through worth it regardless of difficulties, regardless of problems.
This is worth it when they graduate. So, these kind of, I am hoping
in indirectly affects our retention and graduation.
When we appreciate why we doing and what we doing,
we go through it knowing that this is because of our passion.
Hopefully this would help student's retention and graduation.
Another outcomes and other outcomes I talked about it but and I learned that later on a lot of these outcomes,
it wasn’t like something I was thinking when I did the project, I just thought about connecting physics
to real evidence and some things came out of it that I am humble about that.
Another one was student feeling the instructor cares about them.
I show you examples of my comments for my evaluation.
Students felt that as an instructor, I care what they go through. I care, I look at them as a person with problems,
solution and pull life out of the classroom. So, students felt that instructor cares about them.
There are many studies as I learn these comments and over
and back there are a lot of studies about caring in teaching.
One of the interesting I have these as references, but there are more you can look for them.
One of these references is when a student know that their teachers genuinely care,
they respond by exerting greater effort to reach their potential.
And that’s happens to us too, when someone says I care about you, I’m proud of you,
you feel like you have to do more, you have to do your own very best.
But there are a lot of studies showing that oftentimes care doesn’t is not a big deal in higher education.
I mean, we all care about the students, our universities,
the campus with the heart, but generally speaking in highest school and K12,
it carries a little bit more obvious, but when in college, there are not much focus on it.
So, this is a good way to put focus on care for a student. Again, we have an amazing University and I don’t
see that being a problem in our campus, but in general, speaking of care, it’s important.
What are other possible outcomes? It changing the way I think about my students too.
As an educator, when I started my classroom, and I feel like this is common for other educators.
We thinking about how we’re going to teach the subject, how we’re going to teach it effectively.
We do our best to be understanding and respectful. But sometimes I’m talking about myself,
I forget what my students are going through. Some days, it’s like,
I feel like the most important thing for them is to prepare for exams,
maybe temporarily forgetting what they go through out of the classroom.
These experiments was a humble experiments that my students share their struggles with me,
their hopes, their dreams with me. It connected me to my students in more ways
than I could ever imagine or hope. When you get to know your students,
when you get to see their faces and knowing what’s going through it,
that connection, that’s priceless. And I was lucky enough to feel that connection.
These are examples of commons I thought it’s a in the course evaluation, it says "The first
thing she did in the class was ask us our struggle and then encourage us, it was very thoughtful and heartfelt"
These words repeated in my comments. "Through this exercise,
I was able to learn how to analytically think about my issues."
That’s what I started to think about this project, but led to more outcomes.
I want to call that and my favorite physicist Albert Einstein, he says,
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in a school."
So, when we educate our students, they’re not taught about physics,
all of these equations. I never make my students to memorize equations anyway, but also,
I know that I can expect them to remember it. I’m not going to -- if six months from now
I see them, I’m not going to ask them what was the equation. I want them to see what they have learned.
If they carry the skills, analytical thinking, problem solving, being proud of themselves,
knowing that what they go through it because of their passion.
If they carry these with them, I’m happy. That’s what I feel like I’ve done my job.
This was the project that I wrote it in an online journal.
It’s faculty focus. I have put the link here. And also, if you just Google the title of my presentation,
you will see the copy of this assignment. If you would like, you please feel free to email me,
I can send you a copy as well.
Thank you very much for your attention.