This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Oh, welcome back to Busted Pencils,
fully-ledded education talk.
Yes, the pod.
We're here with our great friend, Jonathan Gerko,
who had an incredibly powerful in the weeds,
talking to our neighbor's conversation about publicization.
But Jonathan, in that intro, though,
your other claim to fame.
Thank you.
The Association for College and University Educators.
I love the introduction, the whole idea,
the Association of College and University Educators.
You've founded this.
It's 10 years now, the organization.
You're the president.
Why?
What was your driving force?
I mean, there's something in there,
obviously college, university education.
Make it make sense.
Yeah, well, look, success has many mothers and fathers,
and I think we're now established enough to call it a success,
and I'd be remiss if I didn't give credit
to those other co-founders, Jeffrey Leeds,
Penny McCormick, Doug Statenberg, Brad Felix,
and many others on our amazing team.
It's really a simple insight.
As professors, myself included,
we're not taught how to teach.
We are subject matter experts.
We produce world-class research in this country.
Research that powers the most innovative economy
in the history of the world.
But we're not taught as instructors.
And we founded a queue with other leaders in higher ed,
Eduardo Padrone, Molly, the late Molly Broad,
and others because success efforts,
the college success agenda to reach 20, 30 completion goals
was focused nearly entirely outside of class.
Think of advising, pure mentoring, supplemental support,
digital nudges, scholarships, spot grants.
All of that is about access, support,
but it's not where the action is.
It's not what it does is what I like to say
it ignores the core.
And the core is teaching and learning
between professor and student, right?
So we said, look, we're not going to reach
those national completion goals.
We're not going to help institutions deliver
on their promise.
Unless we get really serious
about quality, college, teaching, and learning.
And that's what we do.
Now in our 10th year, 42,000 professors nationwide
hold an AQ credential.
That might be a full certification
and effective online teaching or effective classroom teaching.
It might be a pathway, certificate,
building toward that full certification,
but given typical teaching loads,
that means five million students,
college students are getting a better education
from those professors.
And we know it because we have published
now pushing two dozen rigorous longitudinal studies
to show, guess what, a professors are hungry
to become better teachers, to improve the craft.
They do improve and teaching improves.
And we see it in higher student grades, completion rates,
lower dropout rates, higher retention to graduation.
So teaching works and we got to see it
in every college classroom full stop.
I think when you talk about that too,
the kind of the other initiatives
because college university education,
there is this, it's a campus experience.
And the idea that we've said you put a lot of time into,
should we have better advising?
Should there be better hubs for the students to get together?
Should there be, and the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes.
But yeah, wait a minute.
They're going to college and university
to get an education in some form of credential.
And when you talk to students too,
they'll say, you know, they're pretty quick
to tell you that a lot of their college experiences
with teaching and learning are some of the places
where they have the most complaints.
Because what you point out Jonathan too,
which is a fact, it's not a critique,
it's a fact, which is that professors
at colleges and universities aren't taught to teach,
aren't taught to think about learners
and individual learning styles and individual learning needs
and how we can tool assessments in ways
that make sense for certain.
You know, it's just not parties.
Like you said, they're experts.
They know, I think Johnny, you pointed out, you know,
they know a lot about certain adhesives
and how those adhesives and how much they make things
stick together and nobody knows more
about how to make a certain adhesives stick together
than Dr. So and so.
And when you come to their class,
they're going to tell you everything they know
about adhesives.
And guess what, that's part of teaching,
but it's not what it means to actually engage
in an educational discourse between a faculty member
and a student when your goal is learning.
Does that make sense?
Did I, did I, did I do okay there, Jonathan?
You nailed it on the head.
It is as I like to say, not professors fault.
Right.
But it is higher ed's problem.
Yes.
You know, we're not, we're no longer in a world
where look to your left, look to your right,
is satisfactory.
We're no longer in a world
where those dropout rates can be horribly inequitable
by race and class.
And it's not just student anecdote.
The National Science Foundation has done a lot of research
in the STEM areas.
And you know, there's this solid evidence to show
that one of the major top reasons why students
change majors out of STEM
or leave college all together
is because of the quality of instruction.
And what a, I mean, in some ways, what a simple fix, right?
This is actually in institutions control to say,
we're going to have a world class instructors
and researchers.
And there's a 40 year literature
that shows what good teaching is.
There are programs like AQ
that we can bring the campus to certify everybody.
And it's in our own self-interest
because we're going to see retention
and ROI and all those good things.
I wondered though, you started getting to it there
when you say AQ, but somebody says,
okay, great, we want better teaching,
we want better learning, we're great.
Why would AQ make a difference in that?
So I'm a dean at a university
and I'm thinking, I'm listening to Jonathan and Johnny and Tim
and oh my God, wait, there's a committed organization
with a 10 year history that wants to create better teaching.
What happens when I go to AQ?
I mean, what do I learn?
What is it that you do?
What tell, like tell me how I get,
how do I get better, Jonathan?
Well, you answered your own question in a way, right?
Rather than reinventing the wheel,
there's AQ, which has been out of for 10 years,
has proof of student impact.
We've built the courses and the training experiences
that's ready to go.
And that's a lot easier than a DIY.
We're gonna try to do this ourselves
for all of our professors.
What does it mean to get AQ certified?
Well, it means you're going to take
what I think is the highest quality teaching college
teaching methods course you could possibly find
in the country, just like future K12 teachers
have to take their methods courses.
What we offer online, a modular over eight week experiences,
year-long experience, sometimes asynchronous
self-paced experiences, but what we offer
is equates to three credits of graduate study
in college teaching methods.
In a learning design that's collaborative,
you're gonna be there with peers, certification courses
are facilitated, so you're gonna get coaching
and real-time feedback.
And that learning design requires implementation.
So you can't just sit, do some chat boards,
watch some videos and call it a day.
To get AQ certified, you've gotta choose
from among recommended evidence-based practices
implemented in your teaching, reflect in writing
on that experience to keep scaffolding new practices
as you go through the courses.
That is a very proven learning cycle
of learning, doing, reflecting, refining,
learning, reflecting, doing, and that's why we see
the student impact in these research studies
because I can say with confidence, professors
are better teachers when they're AQ certified.
And that's huge, Jonathan.
I love that because even though,
I'm thinking about it as, you know,
I've taught in college forums, 20 some years now,
you know, but I've taught high school math longer
and you know, I'm a good math teacher,
but I've struggled even though I have pretty good,
I think I have a level up on some of my peers
like Tim mentioned, like the guy who's the world's leading,
you know, thinker and researcher and plastic coatings.
I mean, he's a genius, we have him on faculty
and it's awesome.
You know, and I have a leg up because my study was teaching
so I have some hunches about how college teaching
could be better and I have some, you know,
advantages coming in because my craft was similar,
my expert knowledge wasn't in teaching
and I'm teaching teachers and even with that leg up,
man, it has been a lot of relearning
and it has been a lot of figuring out, okay,
so how do adults learn?
Because when we learn to be teachers,
we learn about childhood development
or adolescent development, but there are real ways
that we learn differently as adults.
And then there's all kinds of new curriculums and new ways
that there's research out there on how, say,
undergraduate, you know, students
and this generation are learning and diverse cultures
and what does it mean to be, you know, culturally sustaining
as an educator and higher ed
and all these things that have come up in recent years
that I've thought, wow, even as a teacher,
I've needed to dedicate time to become a better teacher
in college and I'll be honest and totally transparent.
There's not a lot of time for it.
And in fact, there's, and I'm not one of those guys
who punches up often, especially in higher ed
because I mean, we all take our turn
being in higher ed leadership.
It's one of the wonderful things about higher ed
is like, you would think we have special people trained
to be in the leadership,
but we kind of each rotate through into it
or get elected into or nominated
or draw the shortest straw to be mental management
in the chair or the dean, you know?
And so as we begin to think differently
about leading in higher ed,
because I just see like, I'm curious to pick your brain
a little bit, it's been an area where I've noted
and I need to get better.
And I'm pretty good like my student reviews are good,
like retention rate.
But even as that, you know, the more you know,
the more you know, you don't know.
And I'm like, I don't know.
This is not going as good as it should be.
Well, and you've put your, you know,
you're sideling up.
Can I say sideling up?
Is that a horse reference, an animal husbandry reference?
I don't know.
You're sideling up to this issue of incentives
and what matters on higher ed and presidents and provosts
and deans and department chairs.
I have total confidence that vast majority
of professors wanna be good teachers.
And they would love the time and the support
to become better teachers.
But, you know, research remains the coin of the realm.
And rankings are based on publications
and research dollars and selectivity.
And we have a Carnegie research classification
that everybody wants to be part of, right?
And we don't have a Carnegie teaching classification yet.
So you can't blame people for responding
to what the culture and the profession
and the industry values.
So what I have started to spend a lot of time on
is thinking about how do we move the sectors
priorities, incentives, what it values,
such that quality teaching has a pride of place
alongside quality research and quality service.
The big, the big holy trinity of what it means
to be a professor.
And that is where then, you know,
and thank you so much for inviting me
to the conference this year.
When I just see this, though, you're saying,
you know, we wanna create a movement.
AQs committed to that movement
because it's within that movement
that we might be able to say, no, this does matter.
It matters a lot.
And in fact, I now have a connection
through an AQ course that I took at an institution,
you know, a thousand miles away.
I have another connection to a leader
who's a department head at another place
because I'm kind of finding these others
at other institutions that have that same desire
and that commitment.
And you really are building a movement, Jonathan.
Well, I think that's part of what it's gonna take.
It's that ground swell of bottom up activity.
Professor is saying, this is important.
We have to do this.
And there are very simple things
that we can do on our jobs.
For example, if we are 10 year, 10 year track
in our regular department meetings,
we have a lot of meetings.
Yeah, we do.
Is there a standing item on the agenda
to talk about teaching?
Are we simply talking about teaching
and getting that on the agenda?
It's zero to one.
It's an infinite change.
It sounds small,
but it can make a big difference
and the start of that larger change.
You know, at the same time,
I just came back a couple weeks ago
from a gathering in DC of sort of policy makers
and funders and agenda setters
talking about the big incentives
that could that could drive real change
like the rankings, like the classification system.
Because I think it's going to be that combination
of the ground swell saying, we need this.
We want this.
It's important to do.
And the policy makers figuring out
how to how to really incentivize it.
The incentives are there too.
And you know, push, not pushing so wrong word,
but as Johnny and I continue to talk about this
in our connection, the relationship we've developed
with you over the past three months,
and just the conversations we've been having
is that Johnny and I keep talking and going like,
man, I want to start taking some AQ courses.
I want to start doing this.
And in fact, you know, we're using this moment
to say that we're kind of pursuing
that type of a partnership, Jonathan with AQ,
that, you know, Johnny Lupinacci
and I hopefully are going to be able to
be that kind of first person testimony
on a regular basis.
You have any thoughts about this potential
emerging partnership?
Yeah, look, I love it.
Now that I'm president, I don't get involved
in these little details.
So conceptually, I am 1,000% behind it.
And it's going to take your listeners
putting their hands up to say, I want to do this.
I want my department to support it.
I want my institution to support it.
Frankly, to take the fear away, you know,
we still hear a lot of presidents and provost
fearful of their professors.
Now, I think that's crazy talk.
I actually don't think that's leadership
because you create the conditions as a leader,
the tone, the opportunity.
You know, it's in your control as a leader
to say, to make your team celebrate your leadership
or condemn it.
Johnny, so what about, you know, I know, John,
you've said, though, too, just our own interest
is just, you know, I go through the AQ website
and I'm looking at the courses and I'm just like,
I want to do that.
I want to be a part of this, you know,
and saying this, John.
Yeah, I think, you know, especially being an educator
and knowing that, like, there are areas of growth
that we always have and, and I get excited, you know,
Jonathan brought it up into the beginning of this, you know,
the second leg of our extended pod, you know,
a long conversation, but it's connected to all this
equality education is, it looks different at different levels
and especially in different subject area,
but there are some, there's research
around what it takes to change instruction
and there are learning needs that are,
that demand change and how we teach.
We know more now about how young people are learning
and I shouldn't just say young people about our students
because they may be of all ages,
which there was a whole bunch of new curveballs,
but we have really good research out there
on how change of instruction can happen, you know,
and I know even as a teacher, this is the pitfalls I fall into,
even with a really great selection of readings
and even with some inspiring, you know,
short lectures that are digestible and, you know,
fun to have and conversations in class, you know,
it's still to have change in instruction.
I may, I might know that I need to do different,
but doing different is really hard to do.
And that's right, Jonathan was talking about
that AQ does or Jonathan was saying is like,
you know, we know that it takes hours of coaching,
it takes implementing, it takes,
and this, we shouldn't need research for this
because teachers will tell you this,
but teachers talking with other teachers
about their students and about the things they're teaching
help us to learn to teach differently,
to try and not just have the courage to,
but to have the sort of wear with all,
to change our socialization too.
Well, you know, my grad teachers kind of taught me this way,
sign the readings, talk about the readings,
call it good, write a paper, you know, that's college.
And we're like, wait, there are so much more to learning,
but changing what we do is harder,
even when we know better, and I use examples,
I know how to be to design engaging curriculum,
and I do it as much as I can,
but often I even look back and say, you know,
there's a lot I don't know,
and I don't, and I'm not, not blaming anybody
because I'll assume responsibility.
It's why I get excited about opportunities to learn
that aren't like, well, here's a book to read.
It's like, I've read every book.
Yeah.
It's like a golf swing.
I could read a book about a golf swing,
and my golf swing was literally any better.
I need someone to coach me, to give me some feedback,
to have me say, go out and try that today.
I know it's gonna be uncomfortable,
but I want you to know to put a piece of paper
under your right arm and tuck it in there
and hold it down.
And even though it's not familiar for you to swing,
and see if there's a paper in there.
I need that same kind of thing in a classroom,
and we know that's what works
when I'm working with a new math teacher in high school,
and want them to teach differently, you know?
So, but Jonathan, you hit the note,
that we don't necessarily have that valued or in place.
And again, I'm not blaming anyone,
because here we are, like, hey, let's get better together,
but it's not valued.
So I'm also curious, like, what do we need to do?
What are some of the ways,
because you put it out there,
it's gonna take that commitment.
What are some of the ways
when we're having conversations with our school leaders,
like, hey, if you care about this,
here's something we can do.
Yeah.
Well, look, here is a three word change.
Three words.
Three words.
Yeah.
And I was shopping it around at this gathering,
it may have been a little too provocative for the attendees,
but today,
750,000 professors are part time.
That's half of the 1.5 million professors working today.
It used to be as high as 60% pre-code.
Now, they come in a lot of names, contingent,
instructor, adjunct, you name it,
but let's, for sake of argument, assume,
they're basically only being asked to teach.
These, these part timers are not researchers.
Researchers are not part time employees.
Right.
Now, imagine if Congress
in the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act
or in the regulatory process,
if such processes exist, post the Chevron decision,
maybe the Department of Ed doesn't have any regulatory authority
anymore, but imagine if,
to be eligible for federal funds,
professors, or even just part time professors,
have to be qualified to teach,
qualified to teach written into federal law.
There's certainly a public interest.
We're spending billions of dollars,
half of the workforce is part time at a minimum.
Higher ed, can you make sure they are qualified to teach?
Well, man, I think that would put people in a panic.
What does that mean?
What does it mean?
Well, there are actually standards out there.
AQ has standards, national academies
is publishing standards this fall.
Oh, okay, we've got standards.
How do we show people are meet the standards?
Well, there are probably some assessments
like T-VAL to show that a college teaching meets these standards.
There are standard aligned trainings and certifications
like AQ and others.
And if given enough lead time,
let's say this was gonna be implemented over three, five years,
you could imagine higher ed pretty quickly
because of this really strong federal incentive,
three words, figuring it out.
That's one example.
We've talked in the past about our Carnegie teaching classification
where T-1 and R-1 were a small liberal arts college.
We're never gonna be R-1, but we are T-1.
T-1.
T-1.
Another example comes out of the UK,
which for a decade now,
has had the teaching excellence framework
and institutions are Tef Gold, Silver Bronze,
a state could do that.
Hmm.
Feds could do that and not profit could do that.
There are things and I know we're not fans
of neoliberal principles of competition,
but that kind of distinction
would create a healthy, positive pressure on the sector.
What's a, it's not necessarily a competition,
but a collaboration, a conversation
around these things that you just said,
what does it mean to,
I know people get all hung up on qualified.
Well then, oh my God, somebody's going to exclude me
and that could be a problem,
but what we're saying here is is that we could,
along with AQ and as you say,
there are other places doing this,
create a movement around having the conversation
about how we continue to make a commitment
to making teaching truly a priority here.
And there are structures that we could put in place
that would kind of give institutions an incentive
to be better, to be better,
to claim teaching as an excellent thing.
I could just see some small liberal arts institutions
just really saying,
we really do this well anyway.
You mean to tell me we can put it on a t-shirt
or a bumper sticker?
And that's where I see this.
And then the excitement here is,
so maybe to Johnny and then Jonathan,
as Johnny and I get the opportunity
to kind of give that first person narrative
about what we feel like as we're going through these courses
and we say this partnership with AQ and busted pencils,
to sit down and say,
guess what?
You know what, Johnny and Tim,
maybe at the end of this,
we can quote call ourselves AQ qualified.
Well, you know, and I'm going to put it,
I'm going to put this out there
and I've worked in higher ed for like Jonathan said,
you know, we're successful at being researchers.
It's the currency we have to navigate,
but I'm also, you know,
I like to think of it a pretty good educator
and I've worked in a number of capacities
on helping to improve education on campus, you know,
learning like how can we work to better connect content
to our students in different areas of learning,
STEM learning especially,
you know, I have yet to see any model sustainably valued
or funded that actually brings to the table,
the stuff we know we need in order to be a better teacher,
come back to that like,
we've like researchers have studied this,
it's not my area of research,
although I read about it and I learn from it,
I just know there are things that you need to do
in order to change how you teach
and it's more than just have a list of what those things are to do.
There's a lot to it.
It's like I can't just throw a recipe of a cake on my counter
and say, we're going to eat cake.
I mean, someone's got to bake it,
I got to know how to bake, I can follow the rest,
there's a lot to it.
So I'm excited that like AQ is doing this
because I've worked in a couple universities
and then been, you know, consultant here or there or participant
and I'm not knocking because everyone's trying little
but not valuing it enough, right?
There's teaching academies and there's opportunities
to, you know, do teaching leadership and teacher mentorship
and there's a lot of,
I'll kind of just throw them out at the wall
because we know it's a problem that we have
and we're not solving it, we're just addressing it in some way.
And so I love that there's an organization that's outside,
again, that says, hey, we want a partner,
we want to be able to provide for you
because you don't have enough people to pull this off on your own
and you can't just move somebody who is also research
and something else and say, hey, in addition,
you're pretty good at teaching,
you've done good teaching for a while,
show these other teachers how to be good teachers.
You know, there's an opportunity to learn to be good.
Well, that's right and now we've been at it long enough,
we can show how this is in the self-interest
of key decision makers.
So, you know, for a president who's worried about the bottom line,
president's always got to be worried about the budget,
we can now show retention,
plausibly attributable to better teaching,
run that through a very well-constructed ROI calculator
to show you're going to make 2x, 4x,
6x return on investing in your people.
What a concept.
For a provost who's under so much pressure
to increase graduation rates, right?
And goes to the president says, give me more money.
We can show to the provost.
This is, we have the leading indicator,
so you're not going to be waiting around for months and months and months
and we've got the lagging data to show increases in course completion
and retention.
For faculty, I actually enjoy my job now
because I know what I'm doing.
I'm not an imposter like my students.
I don't feel the same imposter syndrome.
And for students who actually are having fun learning
because the teaching and the learning conditions are well-constructed,
is that a win-win-win-win?
I think we've got four wins.
I love it.
I love it, Jonathan, and I got to pick your brain.
What does talk about this look?
Because we've been vague about this
and I'll just be specific and transparent with my own teaching.
I actually loved school, not like schooling schooling,
but I love grad school.
I was that once I got really interested in particular things like philosophy
and policies in school and all these different theories
and ways that we could really think broadly about the world,
love the knowledge of higher education.
So for me, and I'm, again, update myself a little bit,
schools mostly, that level of education
was mostly go and listen to a really awesome genius.
Talk about that stuff for an hour of maybe a little bit.
I was like, man, if David Harvey could talk about capitalism
and neoliberalism for three more hours,
I would be scared just so it was my jam.
So I thrived in higher education because it was the kind of thing I did.
But one, I know that's not good teaching.
Two, for me, I would sometimes love like,
hey, I got this grad class on school policies
and school reform and all this.
And I have just studied this stuff for years.
So what I can do is I can talk about it with these students.
I can talk to them about it all day.
They can listen and they can gain my knowledge,
put it into, it's like a banking method in higher ed,
even though we're all critical educators and no better.
And so, you know, I learned that way.
I'm not blaming those folks.
I also still honor and was excited that they did what they did.
But I know it's not working by and large for most students.
So I'm like, okay, how do I learn to do different?
And of course, listen out there.
I do different stuff.
We have like, no, of course you do.
You're a good teacher.
But I hate to break it to you, Johnny.
You probably weren't the typical college student.
And I hate to further break it to you.
It makes sense that you went into teaching
both at the K-12 and college level.
But we know you're not typical in the graduate.
And we know we absolutely know that for many reasons,
including the college graduation rates.
Now, there has been improvement.
And again, we honor the improvement.
But today, the baccalaureate six-year graduation rate,
nobody in America thinks you go to college for six years,
the baccalaureate six-year rate is 63%.
You got a two-in-five chance of crapping out
in the poker sense, in the Vegas sense,
not in the other sense.
At the community college level, it's 30%.
And you wait those two averages by enrollment.
We're still losing 50% of college students in America.
It is such a waste of talent, of time, of potential.
Money.
Money, theirs, ours, as institutions.
So among those other student success strategies,
teaching is such an obvious one.
It's such a natural, especially with the data
to show we will retain two, three, four, five percent
more of our students at least.
That's so cool. Yeah.
Well, Enjant and I share that because you know what I think
I have a hunch, okay?
You guys just mind blown.
I'm not typical college student.
I thought I thought I was really thought I was.
But you know what I might be?
And you could also say, no, I might be more typical
of the college professor demographic.
They learned by being told, they sucked it in,
they ate it up, they loved it, it felt good.
And so then we go.
That's right.
Oh, it's a good question.
That's right.
We succeeded in that modality, and that's why we're in it.
And we're recreating that modality.
What could be more human nature?
But this is about changing the modality, not for,
for the students who aren't succeeding in that modality
and there are millions of them.
So like I did earlier, what in a much more political
discussion I kind of played, okay,
but here's some like, here's some perspectives.
Here's what sometimes, and it's not me
because I'm really excited about the change
and I'm really excited.
Been actually a few years now, I'm actually decades into being,
you know, responsive to students being like,
man, that was boring.
And I was like, wait, that was just like the most amazing
two hours of my life.
What do you mean it was boring?
So I've been in that process,
but I'm gonna back up to when I was first starting that
or to where some of my peers are at times
and I value that, but I love reading,
and I love writing and higher ed is about reading
and then writing what I know and it's been that way
and it's what's wrong with the Jonathan,
like why does it have to change?
Should, are you asking, should we read and write less?
Well, I'm just curious because sometimes I feel like
the strategies and the different ways that I'm learning
to teach differently, you know, I can't cover as much.
I have 15 weeks, I have really important,
we got nine books to read and four papers to write.
Or if I'm in the hard sciences,
it might be like, I have these 12 labs and these 15 weeks.
And so I'm just saying like, it feels scary to me
that my job is to make sure these students learn
all this stuff in 15 weeks.
Yeah, that's the best way for a hundred years,
Jonathan, why would I change?
Okay, well, you know and I suspect your listeners know
the critique of coverage.
Cover more and more and more.
You know, it's not the right mental model.
You made reference to Palo Freyran banking
and just putting more and more in.
But let's take that example of 12 labs, right?
I've got to do 12 labs and lab reports.
What are the experimental skills
that we need students to develop
as a function of being laboratory practitioners?
And do you need 12 to develop the skills?
Do you need 12 write-ups to sufficiently demonstrate
that I've acquired those aptitudes
and those habits that make for good laboratory research?
It does challenge us to, you know,
what are we actually trying to achieve here?
And what does it take to get there?
It's probably not reading all nine books.
What?
No, I know.
Oh, I'm with you, Jonathan.
I love this because I will never argue against writing
because man as a writer,
there's no better way to clarify one's thinking
but perhaps it's 500 words,
not a thousand or two thousand.
I just lit because I'm prepping for my fall course.
I just counted the number of words in a New Yorker brief.
If you know the New Yorker, there are the longer book reviews
and then there's always a column of four or five book reviews.
In 50 words, they've captured the essence of a book.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's about depth and clarity and focus, not about volume.
Every word counts.
And I'm with you, like, especially as an educator,
you know, writing is a transformative practice, right?
It really helps us to have a conversation of ideas
with ourselves and there's lots of ways to do that
and exciting and engaging ways.
Jonathan, I love this because, you know,
I was playing not quite devil's advocate.
Just an alternate perspective or a stubborn moment.
Sometimes I get in when I'm like,
what's for me?
Why can't it work for them?
You know, and to me, that's a little bit real
and being honest when I work with faculty
that we can get some of that on the table.
Like some of this is frustrating
because it worked for us for a particular reason.
But the goal isn't to replicate ourselves in this process.
It's the effective educators.
And I'm speaking about like high level grad stuff.
Undergrad, it's even more of a responsibility of all of us.
Totally.
We have engaging different types of learners.
And what are we trying to achieve here?
I, late in life, I developed a real fondness for Dickens.
I think he's funny, the characterization, the dialogue,
and I end in the field.
I think there's been a re-appreciation for Dickens.
But in my junior year in college, undergrad,
I took a 19th century literature course
and among other writings, my professor
assigned our mutual friend, which is easily 900 pages.
What possibly was the learning objective
in assigning 900 pages?
It was not because I did not get an appreciation
for the language, for the development
of character, for the exploration of social issues.
If that was the objective, it did not happen in 900 pages,
which I don't think I got through in college,
but did last year.
I loved it.
But that's the difference, too, is recognizing.
You say what you stated before you said 900 pages,
the goals were blank, the goals were blank, the goals were blank.
If we start talking by going, wait a minute,
before I assign materials and find things,
what do I want the students to, quote,
learn, achieve, demonstrate, and show me?
And guess what?
There could be more, God forbid, this word,
efficient ways to get students to that place.
You say it's a goal.
There's so much there.
Jonathan, though, I know, man, we are just breaking.
I mean, we can do this for hours and hours.
It's one of our favorite things.
And it's something that we all like to get better at.
Being a better teacher for us is really why we do this.
So we value teaching so much.
And it's tangent to our research.
I mean, that's the nice thing about being an education research
that you are really constantly feeding each other.
So I mean, Jonathan, appreciate you for it.
I'm not going to end this, but I just wanted to make sure
to get an appreciate your time and both what you do as a researcher
and what you're doing as a leader, you know, leader leading learners.
You know, like leading learners.
Yeah, and then just the whole AQ putting forward,
I'm just going to say the movement, the movement,
we're building a movement.
And Jonathan, I want to say thank you for busting pencils.
And I can't wait to hopefully join and become part
of this movement with this busted pencils, AQ partnership.
And listener, stay tuned because we're going to be announcing a lot more
about that as the details come together.
But this is just a little bit of a tease.
And Jonathan, yeah, it's just one more time.
Thanks for busting pencils, man.
Thank you, guys.
Thanks for the national conversation you're leading.
We said it last time, it is a passion project of yours.
And I'm so glad you're passionate about it.
And thank you, listener, for always busting pencils.
Stay tuned, man.
Lots more busted pencils, podcasts on their way.