Honors International Faculty Institute (Summer 2019)
Branding at TCU is almost as aggressive as at HPU, and we have the same school colors. I felt right at home.
As a part of my Honors Faculty Fellowship, I received additional development funds, and the Honors Scholar Program director at the time, Dr. Bill Carpenter, recommended this conference to me. I had never really attended anything like it, and I was delighted to find a new community of interesting and creative people. In particular, the warmth and passion of the conference presenters, Dr. Mara Wolfensberger, Dr. John Zubizaretta, and Dr. Beata Jones, really touched me. I met them all again later at the NCHC Conference in the Fall of 2019, and they greeted me like family.
The three-day conference was filled with active learning sessions, including Place-as-Text exercises on the TCU campus and at the Forth Worth Stockyards. We created small digital portfolios to house our ideas and reflections, and as a final project, I created a short musical piece that summarized some of my take-aways. Three main ideas from the conference that I was able to put into practice immediately were the three pillars of honors education, critical reflection, and Place-as-Text.
The three pillars of honors education are based on Dr. Wolfensberger’s work studying honors (or “talent development”) programs in Europe, and include community, academic competence, and bounded freedom. After reading her work and hearing her presentation, I was even more impressed with Dr. Carpenter’s work in crafting the HPU honors program, however, I have worked to incorporate them into my non-honors courses, and, under the mentor-ship of Dr. Ken Elston, into the music curriculum revision.
The first pillar, community, has become something of a passion. X makes the argument in Book Title, that we are more human when we live in community (there are Catholic overtones to this as well!). In all of my classes I work to create community through shared experiences in Problem-Based Learning units and Place-as-Text exercises. I also use ungrading, especially in the earlier weeks of the semester, in order to make my classes “safe spaces,” where students can struggle with new ideas without fear of penalties. My work with Growth Mindset interventions has also reinforced this, actively building a class-specific culture of grit and patience through unit slogans, growth-oriented feedback, and critical reflection.
The second pillar, academic competence, would seem to be self-evident, but I’m finding that my sense of what “academic competence” consists is shifting. I would rather my students learn research methods. frameworks for thought, and communication skills, for example, than names, dates, etc. Not that accurate facts aren’t important, but, if they learn the broader skills, they will always have access to data. This conception of academic competence has opened up considerable freedom to pursue relevant, interesting material, and the students seem to be coming away from the units and projects, ironically, with a stronger understanding of the data.
The final pillar, bounded freedom, was something I had been using, but the conference presentation “gave me permission,” as it were, to embrace it more completely. The more I curate the educational experience, the less experience students get in breaking down complex problems, dealing with challenges, and finding solutions. Again, they learn more as I “teach” less. Since the conference, I joke frequently that I “teach by the light in their eyes” - what do you enjoy? Let’s write a paper about that. What do you want to get from the program that seems to be missing? Let’s figure out how to fill that blank. Indeed, the more bounded freedom I grant the students, the more I have become free of routine and burnout.
Critical reflection pervaded the conference. We completed nightly reflections on the day’s activities as well as on the conference as a whole. In my own development, I have found such value in this exercise, that I have replaced the traditional mid term and final exams with reflective statements, in all of my courses, I have experimented with weekly journaling, and with my returning students, had them read and reflect on their previous semester papers. This last was devastatingly effective: as the students read their own work, they saw immediately what they needed to change. This saved me the trouble of making comments, certainly, but also made for a much more visceral learning experience.
Finally, the Place-as-Text experiences affected me profoundly. I immediately put them into practice in my Summer course, and, while my assignments were more directed than a classic Place-as-Text experience, the results were very exciting. Students took the projects seriously, made insightful observations, and turned in some of the best writing I’d seen. I was so delighted with their success that I incorporated additional assignments into my Fall courses, arranged to give a short presentation on the concept to the music faculty at the Fall development seminars, and was asked to make a second presentation for HPU’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. The most wicked application were the “Library-as-Text” experiences I created for my music courses. We even created maps of the library, illustrated with photos the students had taken. While they don’t always use the resources, at least they know about them.
HIFI is presented annually, and alternates between venues in the US and Europe. At the solicitation of Dr. Jones, I submitted a proposal that was accepted for presentation at the 2020 conference in Groningen, Netherlands. Unfortunately, with the travel bans surrounding COVID-19, the conference was postponed, but I hope to rejoin my colleagues in the summer of 2121.