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3.9 Pause & Reflect (Required to earn certificate)
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Posted by CUNY Mindset Initiative on July 3, 2024 at 7:30 pm💬  Share your reflection:
In an effort to model a metacognition exercise, we’re going to pause for a moment here. You just consumed a lot of information about a sense of belonging and we invite you to simply reflect on everything you’ve encountered thus far.
Use the following questions to reflect and post your reflection on the discussion forum.
- What are some of the strategies discussed in this module that you already use to connect with your students?
- What is something new that you were introduced to?
- What are some concerns you may have about creating a sense of belonging now that you’ve learned what it could encompass?
After sharing your reflection, take a moment to read others’ posts and respond to two of your peers with a comment.
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- Some strategies I have already used in my class: group activities, collaboration, pair work, peer review.
- Although I greet my students at the beginning of most of my classes, I think it would be helpful to take more time to ask them how they’re doing and send more encouraging messages.
- I’d like to try some of the strategies on the list. For those who often don’t come to class and don’t respond to check-in emails, I’m wondering how we can reach out to them and encourage them to participate in class.
In this module, strategies that were discussed to foster a sense of belonging with students are communication, connection, and community. At the start of the course, I send a welcoming letter to students and provide them with the course syllabus, progression criteria, week-by-week schedule, Â exam dates, make-up exams, or appeal grade criteria. Additionally, I discuss and post my office hours, contact details, and the purpose of office hours for students’ convenience. I also facilitate connections by allowing students to select learning partners during clinical experiences, offering opportunities for think-pair-share exercises in the classroom, and informing students about available resources such as the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Disability, Access-Ability Services, and Counseling. Furthermore, I encourage participation in college volunteer activities to foster a sense of community.
One new strategy I will incorporate is metacognition reflection in the classroom, where students contemplate their thinking processes to foster growth in their academic and personal lives. While my students already engage in self-reflections after clinical nursing experiences, I have recognized the importance of my role in coaching and facilitating metacognition. This is vital in promoting self-directed learning and avoiding a robotic approach. In the future, I plan to introduce social/collaborative reflection, allowing students to reflect together and gain insights from their peers, strengthening the sense of belonging and community.
I am also concerned about fostering a sense of belonging in the classroom, given the diversity of students’ backgrounds, cultures, and values. Cultivating this sense of belonging may be challenging, particularly as some students’ cultural backgrounds view failures as unacceptable and mistakes as signs of weakness rather than opportunities for growth. To address this, I am committed to using language, actions, and examples that build trusting relationships, create a comfortable environment, and normalize setbacks, thereby creating a rewarding learning experience for all students. This commitment is at the core of my teaching and will guide my interactions with students.
I have encountered similar instances where students have not responded to emails or phone calls. Upon reviewing the materials within the sense of belonging module, I am contemplating pairing students or establishing small groups at the commencement of the semester. This approach would allow students to cultivate relationships amongst themselves. Ideally, fostering student-to-student connections would facilitate mutual support and community development, resulting in the advancement and success of all students. Notably, a student running late for an exam during the previous semester texted a classmate nearby to notify her of the delay. As my objective for this semester, I am prioritizing cultivating a conducive learning environment and providing avenues for students to engage with their peers and the faculty.
Some strategies that I already use to connect with my students are sending an introductory/welcoming video, having extensive office hours, organizing review workshops, writing weekly announcements to touch base with students and highlight the week’s tasks, reviewing course content through class discussion, telling students when certain aspects of the course content have historically been challenging for students so that they see that their own feelings of being challenged are not unusual, and working with the tutoring center to create additional resources for students to get help.
Like others, something new that I was introduced to was the idea of metacognition and self reflection. Students often struggle to know whether they understand complex content and are surprised when they do not perform as well as they expect. Promoting more opportunities for metacognition is something I had not considered before. I also had not considered the importance of a sense of belonging, as I have been primarily focused on ways to make the course content more clear.
Some challenges I have already encountered include students who miss class, do not respond to emails, do not reach out for help or go to tuttoring, or they do come to class but do not actively engage during the class session and therefore do not benefit from my instruction or the class discussions. One thing I have noticed is that I have had students who initially seemed to not connect with me and the course material, but when I had the opportunity to work with them one on one, it changed dramatically. The challenge for me is reaching these students as early as possible in the semester.
One thing I am planning on trying this semester is a “buddy system” where I pair students up with specific tutors from the tutoring center. My initial hope was that this would help students get the individualized attention they might benefit from for learning course content, but after reading this module, I think this will also help first year students feel more connected with the college and contribute to their sense of belonging. I am excited to try this out.
I am very friendly and welcoming to my students, and I tell them directly that I like them and feel honored to teach at BMCC. I have them write about a challenge they’ve overcome, and many open up a great deal in this essay, and I feel they trust me more. I’ve worked hard to build a supportive atmosphere, and over the years, my students have made friends in the class and sort of organically build relationships that they use to support their studies. This has become much tougher the last couple of years because students who were in high school during the pandemic have not developed the social skills students used to develop organically.
I believe it’s time for me to to do much more group work. I’ve hesitated before because of the uneven work distribution that always happens, but I believe now that I can find ways around this. For example, they can all be required to write about the experience using skills we’ve been working on. Also, I believe I should take five or ten minutes here or there and just suggest they talk about their lives, their weekends, hobbies, jobs, and dreams for the future. I will constantly emphasize that we are a unit supporting each other.
I will need to do some experimenting to see what works to help them begin making small talk before and after class. Phones are also a big obstacle in this process, but I think I’ll just try a few different short conversation directives to see what works.
Since the pandemic, I have continued to post a welcome video on Blackboard and send a welcome email before the course begins, and I’ve also made sure to post and include on syllabi info on additional campus services (health & wellness, counseling, food pantry, etc.) whereas before the pandemic I included accessibility, tutoring, but fewer other things. Material in this module reminded me that when I first started teaching, I sometimes did a mid-semester anonymous survey to get feedback from students, but I haven’t done this in years; I think it’s a good idea to consider doing this again. I do frequently ask toward the end of a term for students to write about something from the course that they learned, that changed their thinking, that was new to them — Â but I can see ways in which I could make more of a metacognition exercise in ways that might benefit them and me as the instructor. I like ice breakers and some of the other ways to get to know students — their career goals, and so on — but I’m hesitant about some of the suggestions given, such as asking students to share things about their home or work situations that may pose challenges to them. Students who are really struggling do share, when asking for help — and maybe some who are struggling don’t share and should — but I tend to try to keep solid boundaries with students and would not want to pry, or ask for personal information, that they may not wish to be open about.
Group work, pair-work, welcome message, in class review time, sharing college wide resources or workshops are just a few strategies which I have used. More recently, I have revisited my syllabus to incorporate more validating and collaborative language.
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