Camosun Stories – Page 2 – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Team-Based Learning (TBL): It’s not what you think it is…

Last spring, our Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) collaborated with the University of Victoria (UVic) and Royal Roads University (RRU) to run the first Team-Based Learning (TBL) Institute to be held in Victoria. I sat down with Derek Murray and Monique Brewer who were Camosun’s drivers on this collaboration, as well as two of the Institute’s participants, Kerry-Ann Dompierre and Robin Fast, to find out more about TBL, how the collaborative Institute went, and what’s next for TBL at Camosun.

I first wanted to know how Monique and Derek got involved with TBL. Monique, a fellow instructional designer in CETL and currently the Applied Learning Coordinator at Camosun, said “one of the biggest challenges I hear from faculty is related to group work – how to make groups work and ensure everyone is accountable for their work in a team. Then last year, Derek sent us information about a TBL Institute in Nanaimo. I thought it would be a great Scheduled Development opportunity and signed up.” It was only when Monique arrived that she realized that TBL “is more than just setting up teams with good instructions and clear accountability – it’s a whole pedagogical framework.”

Derek, an educational developer in CETL, told me “I’ve long had a fondness for collaborative learning and in 2018 I saw a notice about the Team-Based Learning Institute and was curious. Like many other instructors, I wanted to include group work in my courses, but often had challenges getting students to work together. So, when I saw the Institute, I thought I may as well try it.” After Derek completed the Institute, he decided to integrate TBL into the second-year course he was teaching at Capilano University. “Even though it was a lot of work to change the course to TBL and some students were resistant, that whole teaching experience was a blast. And seeing students really work together as teams was amazing. I also noticed that many of the international students, who had in some of my other classes clustered themselves away from the domestic students, were now part of teams where they had to engage with people of different backgrounds. TBL provided a structure to make that happen in a way that was really equitable for the people involved.” Then, in 2020, Derek taught one course using TBL and one course using active lecture, “two different sets of students, the same learning outcomes, but two different instructional styles. I tested to see if Team-Based Learning would lead to greater engagement and better higher achievement, and it did.”

While I figured I knew the answer, I wanted to hear from Monique and Derek about why they decided to bring TBL to Camosun. Monique herself, having been the only participant from Camosun at her Institute, was curious to see if other Camosun faculty would be interested in trying TBL so she could work with them to co-facilitate or co-design a course since she is not in the classroom herself. “I think it would be a much more engaged teaching environment and would work particularly well in the School of Business.” As for Derek, one of his UVic colleagues was at the Institute with Monique, which led to further conversations with UVic and thoughts of doing a South Island Institute. Derek and Monique brought RRU into the mix and the three institutional groups stated planning. “We connected with the folks at Vancouver Island University (VIU) who are the global leaders in TBL including Bill Roberson and Tine Reimers from VIU, as well as Jim Sibley from the University of British Columbia, who have led the TBL Institute at VIU for years. But by the time we spoke to them, Bill had retired, and we found out that Jim was retiring in the following June. So, without them we wondered what would happen with TBL in B.C. and realized running our own Institute was no longer a nice to do, it was something we had to do.” So, the VIU group developed a facilitator package, and last May led the South Island Institute for 20 participants from Camosun, UVic, and RRU, including seven who were there as facilitators-in-training.

I turned to two of those first participants in the South Island TBL Institutes and asked what brought them to TBL. Robin, who is both a faculty developer in CETL and an instructor in the Community, Family, and Child Studies (CFCS) program, said “I do a lot of group- and team-work in the courses I teach, and I think I’m pretty darn good at it. I work hard to create structure for students, so they don’t feel like they’re off on their own, and I thought that TBL would offer tools to enhance that structure.” Teamwork is central to the CFCS program, which is not the same for every program at Camosun. “I, too, have spoken to many instructors about their struggles with teamwork and teams, and while my teamwork strategies help people, I know even with all that effort teamwork doesn’t always work, even in my own classes.” Robin thought TBL would both help him develop better skills and provide him with more tools to support other faculty. But to his surprise, after attending the Institute, Robin discovered “that I’ve been doing quite a few things wrong and found it was a huge benefit to me to learn this different structure. There are a lot of things from TBL I can integrate into my own teaching, and I really see how it could be valuable for other faculty at Camosun.”

Kerry, who is a Nursing instructor, the Simulation (SIM) Coordinator in the School of Health and Human Services, and an instructional designer in CETL, at first dismissed the idea of TBL because she thought it was about team teaching or similar to Problem-Based Learning. But after doing some reading, she became intrigued. “I didn’t know until I participated in the Institute how similar TBL is to SIM design in terms of backward design. But what I found beautiful about TBL was how it brings students together to see each other’s humanity. Our program structure inadvertently creates competition between students, something which is counterproductive in healthcare. We need people to work collaboratively and to value each other’s perspectives.” Like Robin, Kerry’s classes include a lot of active learning, but she says she learned a tremendous amount during the institute, discovering that TBL is “a pedagogy that brings students together who would not have normally mixed in a class, who then see each other’s perspectives, which I think could be transformational for healthcare education.”

By this point, I was getting a general picture of what TBL is, but I wanted to be able to better understand its approach. Monique jumped in to explain that TBL “is a framework for teaching using a flipped learning model. The ‘lecture’ takes place before class and teams then spend class time solving authentic, meaningful problems that are complex enough that they can’t be solved by an individual. The philosophy behind TBL is that teamwork typically sets students up for failure by saying, we know you’re all taking full time courses, you’re probably working, you have families, but please find time to meet outside of class to do this additional work. TBL provides a structure that’s divided into five to seven modules of learning. At the beginning of each module is a readiness assurance process that where students demonstrate both individually and as a group that they have read and understood the materials. The readiness process also helps students learn the materials if they haven’t fully understood them. Then the teams complete problem activities where they have to work together to address an issue. The framework around the teamwork is called the 4S model [Significant Problems, Same Problems, Specific Choice, Simultaneous Report], where each group is presented with the same significant problem and presents their answers simultaneously.” Then the real learning happens, during the instructor-facilitated debrief and discussion.

Derek calls TBL “a coherent set of protocols designed to harness the power of small group learning in the process of collaborative decision-making,” avoiding the confusion of calling this “team-based” learning when it’s not really about “group work” at all. “Group work is, in fact, the vehicle that supports decision-making – we can make better decisions collectively than we can individually. When teams work well, they make good decisions together, but when they don’t work well, one person’s decision can override the group. The TBL protocols not only help create teams that work well together so that they can solve challenging problems, but also build skills that help students make decisions in any context. You need to have a rationale, you need to have evidence, and you need to think critically. The 4S application activities are designed to hold students accountable to both the instructor and to themselves and their group. When they have that accountability and come prepared to do the work, they are engaged in the process and invested in the decision that gets made.”

Kerry and Robin added to Derek and Monique’s comments. Kerry said, “I think there are several different pedagogical approaches underlying TBL. It made me think of interdisciplinary learning, bringing multiple perspectives to group work, as well as transformational and experiential learning. But the protocols are what’s so magical in TBL because they’ve worked out the kinks in terms of creating good groups.”

One thing occurred to Robin during the Institute was that “team-based learning is not simply assigning groups to work together for a semester. The team is also the entire class with the instructor; students are never left on their own to do work. The protocols encourage folks to come to the class prepared, they make decisions in their small groups, then are brought back together for a spontaneous reveal of their answers. Finally, the instructor facilitates a discussion among the groups, bringing in additional ideas, and making connections between ideas. In TBL the real teamwork, the real learning, happens altogether in class, in that final discussion.” And, as both Robin and Kerry noted, the Institute itself allowed them to both learn TBL while experiencing TBL.

Monique finished our discussion of the TBL model by saying “from an applied learning point of view, TBL drives home those key 21st century learning and employability skills: problem solving, critical thinking, communication, teamwork – those core competencies that students need for school and for work.”

I asked when and where does TBL work best in terms of courses, programs, and where students are at in their studies. Derek shared that the TBL literature suggests content-heavy disciplines are well-suited, “but also disciplines that require a lot of application and decision making, for example, Nursing and Business. The one area where, according to Jim Sibley and the folks at VIU, there does not seem to be a lot of uptake, is in writing intensive disciplines where so much of the work you do is internal. But I’m in a writing intensive discipline and I think TBL helps my students – I think it could be used by anyone in any discipline.”

Some of you might be thinking that revising your entire course to TBL sounds like a lot of work – I was, and I wondered if faculty could integrate pieces of it rather than committing to a complete revision. Monique said that at her Institute, this was a topic of discussion “and the advice they gave was that the 4S activities are just really good active learning activities. So, you could generate some good 4S activities and run those in your class. And then if you’re confident, if you’re enjoying it, and it seems to be working, you could work through your Scheduled Development period to start revising your whole course.”

Robin also spoke to the potential benefits of bringing TBL elements into CETL workshops. “If I’m designing a workshop and have participants do a 4S activity as part of this workshop, all those faculty are being introduced to a tool they can use that is not related to the workshop topic at all. This might be a nice way to seed TBL through the college.”

Derek also believes the 4S activities can, in addition to improving student engagement, support stronger assessment practices in light of Generative Artificial Intelligence concerns. But the question then becomes how to support faculty to learn more about the 4S activities. “They support meaningful discussions around a real problem where students have to make a decision and bring all of their knowledge to bear, but we’d have to discuss how to pitch it because a workshop called “4S Activities” isn’t going to go anywhere.”

Robin jumped in with some ideas for “selling” such a workshop. “We need to ask what the problem is that would draw faculty, and that’s probably: Do you struggle with getting your students to come prepared to class? Do you want to find ways to engage students and support them to work together? I think those questions would bring instructors in.”

Derek also mentioned constant feedback as another selling feature of TBL. “The 4S application activities generally start with an individual reflection about the problem, with students writing down their answers and rationale behind them. They then get into groups where they share their answers and rationale and build consensus. Through their group discussions, they are constantly receiving feedback on thinking skills, evidence-making skills, etc. Then when they come to a consensus as a group and present their interpretation to and discuss it with the rest of the class (with the instructor facilitating), they get feedback again because not every group will have chosen the same answer. And finally, as a group, they give each other feedback and encouragement around how they are working together. It’s that constant feedback amongst the learners in the group rather than it being back and forth with the instructor, that is key.” In this context, when the instructor goes to mark the more traditional assignments in the course, they have already seen the students in action – as Derek noted, you’ve seen their critical thinking skills in the classroom and can build from there, rather than feeling like you’re starting from scratch with each student on each assessment.

As we began to wind down our discussion, I wanted to know what was next in terms of TBL. Robin started us off. “My plan is to bring it to my professional practice course where there’s lots of application to field experience. It’s a first-year course, and because students don’t have field experience yet, they find some of the content hard to connect with meaning. TBL will be a great tool to support discussions around ethics and interprofessional practice, and I’m excited to give it a try.” And with Robin’s CETL hat on, he says that “the other piece is figuring out how to bring this to faculty in a way that is not too overwhelming – so you are not having to redesign course, but rather pulling in tools to support students digging into specific topics.”

Kerry is particularly excited because, while she was thought one of the biggest barriers to implementing TBL would be the team-teaching model in Nursing, her Program Lead is now encouraging her to go ahead with it as an individual instructor. “I went to the Institute thinking about a medical surgical course that I taught in the winter term. It is a very content heavy course where engagement has gone way down, so I’m going to try to TBL-ify that course for the winter term. I’m excited about it. As I said earlier, I think TBL could transform how we teach nurses, and I’m going to connect with Nursing programs at other institutions who have implemented TBL to learn from their experiences.”

As for Derek and Monique, they have plans to continue building on the institutional collaboration with UVic and RRU as well as to check-in with the Camosun participants from the spring Institute. “Part of that check-in is encouraging people to continue, and part of it is ensuring that when faculty go to implement the model, they’re not setting themselves up for failure. We also want to remind them that if they are not quite ready for a full implementation, they can focus on the 4S activities and bring the rest in later.” And of course, they will also be planning for next year’s Institute.

Monique will also be joining a faculty member’s TBL class in the fall so she can see it in action at Camosun, and “possibly do some co-teaching in winter term with a business faculty member if the right courses get assigned,” while Derek himself is playing around with the idea of making his January online synchronous course TBL. “I’m wondering if I want to make that leap because I’ve taught it online without TBL and it’s gone well, and I’ve taught it in person with TBL and it’s gone amazing.” I guess I will be checking in with Derek next year to find out how it went!

Camosun Story #67: Andrea

Andrea has been a faculty member in the Pipe Trades and Women in Trades since 2018, and was one of the recipients of a Camosun College Teacher Recognition Award this past spring.

I was so interested in Andrea’s journey. She originally completed training in the Culinary arts at Malaspina (now Vancouver Island University), but as time went by, she found she wanted something else. I asked Andrea why plumbing? “I was looking for a change to a career with better hours and better pay. Honestly, culinary was great and I love cooking – it’s still something that I do all the time, but I needed a change. I looked through the Camosun calendar at what was available in the trades because I like to work with my hands and thought, hey, plumbing sounds interesting. I’m going to give that a go. I put my name on the waiting list and got a last-minute seat, so I quit my job and moved to Victoria.”

Andrea apprenticed in Nanaimo and moved back to Victoria in 2013. “Then in 2018, there was a posting for a position that straddled being the women in trades homeroom instructor and a pipe trades instructor here at the college. I applied and got the position – obviously, I fit the bill to be a Women in Trades instructor. It was a great opportunity and learning experience.”

When I asked Andrea what courses she teaches, she called herself the Swiss army knife of her department. “I teach the plumbing week for Women in Trades, and I’ve taught the plumbing week for our youth sampler that ran for a while. I’ve also taught the plumbing week for Indigenous people in trades. Sometimes I’m the homeroom instructor for Women in Trades, although I haven’t done that in awhile. And in the Pipe Trades department, I’ve taught everything from our Foundation training levels one through four, Plumbing and levels one and two, Gas Fitting, as well as Cross Connection Control.”

Andrea did talk a bit about her experience supporting Women in Trades. “I didn’t realize just how important and meaningful it was for female students coming into the program to have a female instructor until I was teaching in my first foundations class, where I had a group of 12: six females and six males. One of the students told me how nervous she was coming into the program as a woman, and what a relief it was to show up on the first day and have a female instructor – seeing herself reflected in somebody who’s been a plumber for a long time and now in a teaching role helped her believe that she could do it too.”

Andrea told me that what she enjoys most about teaching is getting to know her students. “Getting to know their backgrounds, what they’re doing out in the field – I feel like I learn as much from them as they do from me because our industry is always changing.” Andrea also loves watching their journeys. “A student from the Women in Trades sampler went into Pipe Trade foundations, was then hired as a plumber in the field, and this past fall, obtained her red seal as a plumber. Seeing those students who come in green, find their passion, become more self confident, and then take on leadership roles is very rewarding to me.” And coming full circle, “that same woman who got her red seal moved to Australia to do plumbing with her husband and donated two bags of tools to the Women in the Pipe Trade Foundation program as starter kits.”

And Andrea’s students span the gamut. “I’ve taught high-school students in the South Island Partnership Program, and I’ve had students that are 50 years old seeking a new career. While typically women who enter the program are choosing trades a second career, we’re seeing more and more young women enter the program which is really amazing. Then in the gas fitting programs that I’ve taught, students come from all over the province because we are the only institution offering level two gas training. So, I see a very diverse pool of students in my courses.”

I was curious about the dynamics of Andrea’s classroom with such diversity. “I like to build a sense of community in my classes. We start off on day one talking about how we’re going to respectfully communicate and engage with each other, and then have conversations that draw upon experiences of students, because I think discussing things they’ve done and how those things relate to the topics we are working with enhances their learning. Sometimes the dynamics can be challenging with a broad spectrum of ages, but I find that the older students typically take on a mentorship role with the younger students – a kind of peer-teaching component which is important in my opinion.”

Like all faculty who have been teaching at Camosun since before 2020, Andrea saw her share of challenges when courses moved online teaching during the pandemic. “I had a week of instruction time in the classroom right before the college shut down. There was a lot of uncertainty, stress, and anxiety, especially for the level four plumber students who were supposed to write their Red Seal certification exam. We didn’t know if the certification exam was going to happen, or even if the class would continue.” What became important to Andrea was having open conversations with students about how things were going for them. “Every morning when we went online for class, we’d spend about 30 minutes sharing stories of weird things we saw at the grocery store, or talking about what challenges they were facing, trying to take the anxiety out of the room a little bit. Like me, a lot of students had kids at home, so we were facing the same struggles which humanized the situation for us all.”

But also, like other faculty, Andrea found some good things that came out of that experience. “I found that recording lessons was very beneficial to students because they could watch them over and over again. I also kept online study space open for students after class to work together and bounce ideas off each other.” Something else Andrea found effective was bringing in guest speakers. “With the Women and Trades program, we often bring in people from industry to speak about their experience. During the pandemic, we were able to bring in people from across Canada, including a crane operator and the first female site superintendent and Kamloops, to talk about their experiences. And we are continuing to bring in experts from outside using Zoom. The ability to connect students to people they would normally not have had the opportunity to connect with was a positive outcome.”

Some other cool COVID creations Andrea is still using include “instructional videos for the Women in Trades program about how to fix a toilet or how to clear hair out of the drain of your sink, and a project I developed for our students where they had to interview a trades person virtually. We pair students with people in the community who volunteer to be interviewed. Students record the interviews and share them so we can post them in the course and discuss them. This project creates connections between our students and people in the community who could become mentors or potential employers.”

Andrea’s students are inspirational. “We had a female student from my very first foundations class, obtain her red seal this year and receive a Camosun award as well. She’d had so many barriers in front of her during her apprenticeship, as a single mom working hard to make a better life for her and her son, so to see her succeed was very cool for me. We also often take our students to Hero Work, a charity that renovates other charities in Greater Victoria, where they donate their labor and their skills to complete renovations. We also took the Women in Trades class to the Salvation Army soup kitchen for their renovation last fall. Seeing the students engaged in giving back to the community and using the skills they’ve learned in the program is amazing, and it also gives them the opportunity to walk by and say, hey, look – I built that!”

But Andrea herself is inspirational as well. “I hear from students how important it is to see me here as a faculty member, whether it’s female students or queer students – I think it makes them feel more at ease. I try to provide that a little bit of connection by making sure everyone feels included and giving them a safe space within our department to connect with somebody. I believe if you feel included in the community and your learning environment, you’re going to be much more successful overall. And knowing that you have a touch point is important – it certainly was for me when I went through school. And I want to pay it forward and do the same thing for our students now.”

My final question to Andrea was what advice she might have for a new instructor starting in her area. “I feel fortunate to have an extraordinarily supportive department and I asked a lot of questions when I started. So don’t be afraid to ask questions, and don’t be afraid to lean on other faculty for help if you’re unsure about things. The biggest superpower of our department is that we are very collaborative – we all lean on one another, get along well, and work well as a team. When you have the opportunity to work within a team where everyone supports one another, it makes for a much better environment, for both faculty and students. Make sure to take advantage of the opportunities we have for learning at the college – you never know what little tidbits you’re going to learn that will support your teaching practice. And finally, poll your students to see how things are going. Then embrace that feedback, not as criticism, but as a way that you can improve your own practice.”

Camosun Story #66: Dianne

Dianne is a faculty member in the Healthcare Assistant (HCA) program, and she was a recipient of a Camosun College Teacher Recognition Award this past spring.

Dianne has been at Camosun since 2003; in fact, she retired for a spell (and was retired during the COVID pivot) and came back because she loves teaching. “My teaching actually goes back to a one-room public school in rural Manitoba where I invigilated exams and helped teach the little ones. My mom and grandmother were both teachers, as is my daughter.” While Dianne doesn’t have formal teacher training (she has a Bachelor of Nursing and a Bachelor of Management in Human Resources) as she told me, “a nurse is always a teacher because you have to teach patients, students, residents, and other health care staff.” Dianne has been a registered nurse in Australia, Manitoba, Alberta, and in British Columbia since 1989 where she was employed initially in occupational health and safety with Juan de Fuca hospitals and BC Ferries. “I’ve had a varied career for sure, working particularly with seniors and persons with dementia since 2000.” Since 2003, when she came to Camosun, Dianne has been teaching in the Healthcare Assistant program, which has grown from two intakes a year to many more when the Health Care Access Program (HCAP) began.

Dianne reflected on the changes in the student demographics over the years. “Today we have many more international and ESL students who come in with a lot of knowledge and varied backgrounds. I have a student right now who has a Master’s in Social Work from South Asia and I have three RN students from other countries. The diversity is phenomenal.” Dianne also notes that many of today’s students struggle with mental health issues and learning challenges. “More of our students are being supported by the Centre for Accessible Learning (CAL) than in previous years, but the HCA program is a great place to start, as it really is the basic beginning in healthcare education.”

I asked Dianne what keeps her coming back to teaching. “What I like most is helping students learn how to learn and gain confidence in themselves. Those students who already know how to learn don’t really need me, but so many students have been beaten down by the system, so, to me it’s about building their self-esteem. I am inspired when students who have struggled with education in the past get an A and take a picture to send to their mom, even though they are 45 years old!” Some students have not been in school for 20 to 30 years and these are the students Dianne especially enjoys mentoring. It seems to take longer to get some students to focus in class and I watch for students having difficulty with attendance.”

But what Dianne emphasized to me was her thinking around assignments and exams. “My personal philosophy is that an assignment is a measure of how effective your teaching was as you go through the material, in other words, assignments are tools for teaching not tools of evaluation, whereas exams are evaluative. Students hear only about 20%of the content presented by the instructor in class. I am not surprised that many students are unsure of what the assignment is asking when they first start the program. We fail as teachers if students don’t learn how to learn, so I spend a lot of time going over what’s expected of an assignment, making sure students understand what’s needed, referring them to the writing center, even looking at drafts before they submit them especially for students who have been away from studies as long time or for ESL students who want clarification on English wording. I don’t punish students for late assignments but try to get to know my students as well as I can so I can address their specific learning needs. The curriculum can be very difficult for some students.”

Dianne also finds that her own experiences coming back to teach post-COVID have been challenging, due to the increased use of technology to support teaching and learning. “It’s been very difficult, and it used to bother me terribly because I felt incompetent, but I’ve tried to put that away because I’m a nurse, not a computer technician.” But when the technology challenges affect the students, Dianne becomes very frustrated. “Students find writing exams stressful at the best of times and we shouldn’t be adding to this stress because our technology is not working.”

One of the Dianne’s thoughts resonated with me because other faculty member have mentioned it as well: that students should have a course built into all curriculum to help them learn the technologies and other skills they need to succeed at the college. “I think we need to step back from the academics during a student’s first week because they’re too anxious and overwhelmed to really learn much of the content. We need to give them practical hands-on skills. We need to build in more resources to help students be successful. Teaching is not just about covering content. It’s helping students learn how to learn, learn how to find things, and learn who’s there to help them. I would like to see a more supportive approach at Camosun with more integration of support services throughout the term and the program, not just on the first day. In the first three weeks of my classes, I build in how to study, how to read a textbook, how to highlight, how to make notes. And then I offer extra after-class time with students who need it.”

I asked Dianne about some of the memories that stood out for her over her many years of teaching, and one story she had for me was amazing. “I had a young woman who had to travel a long distance to get to her clinical sessions. Clinical started at seven and one day she got there right at seven with her coat on and was having trouble concentrating that morning. I went to talk to her later about being almost late and she said that on her way to clinical, she had come across an accident, so she stopped and found the driver was not breathing. She was by herself, so did CPR, and when somebody else came along he called 911 (she didn’t have a cellphone). She saved the driver’s life.” A good reminder to remember to have empathy for our students before jumping to conclusions about their behaviour.

My final question for Dianne was around what advice she would give new faculty coming in to teach in her program. And not surprisingly, she recommends new faculty get more help with technology, but also to “use the resources other people have already built for their courses and customize them, because this can be a good way to learn the material yourself.” Dianne also thinks new faculty should critically review the way existing assignments and exams are worded and “have the confidence to point out when they don’t make sense to them. Because of time constraints, we often repeat and reuse our content and assessments without fine-tuning, but new faculty see them with fresh eyes.”

In addition, Dianne wants new faculty to be better supported. “New faculty often come on term contracts. They get lost in the system and try to cope without a lot of support. I think sometimes we as an organization are so busy with bureaucracy and budgets, we lose sight of the people who are supporting our students, the people who are in the front of the classroom keeping the students in our programs.” Without faculty and students (and people to support them), our institution is just a building – it’s time for us to refocus on what really matters.

Camosun Story #65: Lynnea

Lynnea is one of this year’s Teacher Recognition award recipients at Camosun College, and like Pei Mei, she teaches in the English Language Development program. Lynnea has been at Camosun since 1985, starting as a substitute instructor for a faculty member who was ill, and continuing to pick up work until she was permanent.

Lynnea’s road to teaching ESL was circuitous. “I traveled to Asia with a singing group and every place I went, I was offered a job as an English teacher. And I thought, well, that’s curious. So, when I returned to Canada, I decided to apply for a Linguistics program and even though I was late with my application, I was accepted and suddenly there I was sitting in a linguistics class not knowing if I really wanted to be there.” Lynnea explained that one day a Camosun instructor by the name of Jamie Baird came to class and as he spoke about how you can give people dignity by teaching them to read a soup label or a street sign, Lynnea was moved to tears. By the time she went home that day, she knew she had decided to become an ESL teacher.

Lynnea says she generally teaches the intermediate ELD courses in BESL (Basic English as a Second Language) which she loves. “I have the world in my classroom, with both immigrants and international students which many colleges don’t have. We’ve had Fujian students from China, a group that came out of the Chechen war, a huge group from Panama, and even pilots from Vietnam who took English so they could fly Boeing airplanes. I love the variety of people I get to meet and work and learn with – you can have an 18-year-old from Japan and 75-year-old doctor or lawyer in the same classroom. I also enjoy seeing people who come in at one level of writing or speaking and, when they leave, have improved, whether it’s a small amount or by leaps and bounds. It is rewarding to see the confidence students gain as they improve.”

As I often do, I asked Lynnea what impact the last three years has had on her teaching. She started by telling me about her daughter who just graduated and in her valedictory speech recalled how their graduating class had spent all of their high school years under the pandemic (since it was only declared over May 5, 2023) and how much that changed them. For Lynnea and her students, the change was tremendous at the time of the lockdown. “Reading and writing online worked, but listening and speaking seemed ridiculous, but we still had to do it. I’m not a lover of technology although I can use it – I just prefer being face-to-face. Being online, for me, really reiterated the need to be together to learn.” But despite the frustrations, Lynnea, says “while I’m pretty flexible, I learned to be even more flexible and to think of creative ways to achieve my goals. I learned a lot about online teaching and what I like and don’t like about it. But while we did our best, the goalposts for student learning changed and that has been hard for us.”

I asked Lynnea if she has kept anything of what she learned teaching online during the pandemic, and while she at first said no, she amended that a little, saying “While I’ve always been pretty prolific on D2L, I definitely use the Assignments more, and while I stopped using Discussions for awhile, I am thinking about trying them again. I also feel more in control of how I organize my course materials on D2L, but most of my students’ learning now happens back in the classroom.” Lynnea feels the experience of the past three years has a lesson for us all, which I loved. “I have found in life that when you’re uncomfortable and stretched, you keep stretching and stretching and when you finally let go of the elastic, while it comes back to its original shape, it’s bigger. I think now we’re bigger because we’ve gained more skills and we’re able to do things more creatively than we could before.”

One of the things I am curious about when talking to faculty is what memories stand out for them over their years of teaching. Lynnea had three stories for me.

“Within my first five years of teaching, my classroom was upstairs, which was not usual. One of my students was a very tall older gentleman who struggled to get up to the classroom. One day I noticed he was out of breath so I sat down beside him and said, ‘Mr. Singh, can I ask you a question?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yes.’ I asked, ‘How old are you?’ And after a few minutes of not quite hearing his reply, I asked ‘Are you 89?’ And he said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ We started talking and I found out he had been one of the leaders in the Pakistani Parliament, but here he was, so humble, and struggling to go up upstairs. The next morning, I asked for a new classroom, explaining that I had an almost 90-year-old student in my class, and the next night, we were in a downstairs room. I still remember him – he was the best student in the class and always had his work done on time and when I retire, he’ll stand out for me.”

Lynnea’s second memory is reflective of students who have come to Canada to escape their countries. “Recently, one of my recent Ukrainian students was a young married lady who came in very late one day to class. She apologized and said ‘I’ve been looking for my family and I couldn’t find them, and I’ve been on the phone all night. But I finally found them – my parents are alive.’ This was after a weekend of terrible bombing in Kiev. We all just looked at her and suddenly everything about being in that classroom didn’t matter, and I realized that while what we do in the classroom is important, it’s all temporary.”

And Lynnea’s third memory involved having Sherri Bell come into the classroom to talk to her students. From what she recalls, Lynnea told me “Sherri said something I have quoted so many times since. She asked the students, ‘How many of you don’t know what you want to do in the future?’ Most of them put their hands and then she said, ‘I want to tell you the story of my kids. I have a daughter who after high school went right away to university Calgary but realized quickly she’d made a mistake. She had the courage to finish the year, came back home, took some time, then went to Royal Roads and now has a job in Alberta with an insurance company and loves it. But my son didn’t know what he wanted to do so he didn’t go to school right away and waited a couple of years. When he realized he wanted to play basketball and the Chargers wanted him, he came to Camosun. Eventually he went to UBC and became a physiotherapist.’ She looked at my class and said, ‘Don’t be in a rush to go to school. Wait until you know what you want to do – if you’re not ready, take the time to figure it out.’”

After reflecting a bit on the many memories Lynnea has, I asked what advice she would give a new faculty member joining the ELD department. “For new teachers that come in ESL, I would just say be as creative as you can, and don’t be afraid to try new things in class. Have a plan but be fluid, and always have more than you need to pull from. Be funny and be entertaining – I sometimes feel like I’m like Jay Leno. We have fun and laugh a lot in my classes. And remember that it’s ok to make mistakes.” For Lynnea, it’s also about creating that community in the classroom. “Many students are afraid of teachers, but if we can have fun and build trust, in a few days we feel like a family.” Then she shared one more piece of advice which the woman who hired her shared: “She told me nothing is worth teaching if you only teach it once. Students need to have it pulled in every different direction: scaffold it, add more, teach it over and over so they remember it.”

Lynnea and I ended out conversation with Lynnea telling me what a privilege teaching people from all over the world is for her. “Even though I originally didn’t want to teach ESL, at the end I am so grateful to everyone who taught me and hired me and supported me. Every person I work with is amazing, and I am grateful for each single person I have the privilege of teaching.”

Camosun Story #64: Beth

Beth is an instructor in the English Language Development (ELD) department. She has been teaching at Camosun since 2014, and this term she is back in the classroom after serving as a co-chair for the Basic English as a Second Language (BESL) program, teaching ELD 052 (a reading and writing class) and ELD 054 (a listening and speaking class.)

Beth came to ESL teaching in a roundabout way, first going to the University of Victoria (UVic), then Vancouver Island University (VIU) (Malaspina at the time), then graduating from Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a degree in Contemporary Arts. But, she says, “throughout my post-secondary journey, I was involved in the campus community radio scene. I had several radio shows at several different universities, first at UVic and then SFU where I helped community groups put together their shows and taught them how to use the gear and how to put together a basic show. Because several of these were non-English programming shows, there was a lot of English language teaching going on at the same time. “

After graduation, Beth was living in Vancouver struggling to make ends meet, so decided to look elsewhere for work. “I had a friend who was teaching in Japan, and they had a space available at their school, so, I went to Japan and taught English. My original plan was to go for just one year, but I stayed for seven because I loved it so much.” While Beth was working in Japan, she was also completing, by distance, the Master of Teaching English as a Second Foreign Language through the University of Birmingham. Beth returned to Canada in 2012 where she cobbled together bits of work around Victoria for a few years building experience and credentials, until she was hired at Camosun.

I had to ask Beth if she found that all her radio experience has helped in her teaching life. “When you’re hosting by yourself, you are doing multiple tasks at the same time, not multitasking, but managing many things all happening at the same time. You have to always be one step ahead, your plans ready and available. This really helped during my Master’s program where the students would get together and run webinars – it was a great group of people, some of whom I’ve never met in person, only online. Running webinars was like producing a radio show because you have to watch the chat, watch the video, make sure people have access to files, and make sure that you stay on time. You also learn flexibility because when things don’t go as planned, you can’t give up, you have to shift and go to a backup plan.” Kind of like teaching online during the pandemic, which I will come to shortly.

Beth told me what she enjoys most about teaching is “helping students realize their potential. “That’s the thing about language: it’s so exciting when you’re finally able to communicate a basic message in another language whether it’s listening and speaking or reading and writing and everything in between. Improving your English, especially for new immigrants, opens more employment, more education, and changes your confidence level. And at Camosun, we can see where students go, whether they take other programs at the college or at another university. I love that I am part of the School of Access – we’re providing access to a million different things.”

As has been my eternal question since I started these interviews in 2021, I asked Beth about the impact the last three years on her teaching and her students. “The past two years and eight months, I was co-chair of ELD so I wasn’t teaching as much as I am currently. I taught ELD 062 and 064 online during the lockdown in the summer of 2020, did some subbing later, taught for a couple of weeks in fall 2022 until we got an instructor. But I’ve always used a lot of technology in my classes, including D2L, so, I found it relatively easy to teach online and it didn’t seem too much of a shift to being remote. But what it confirmed to me was both the good things I was already doing, and the things that I needed to tweak. And it reminded me how important it is to take the time to organize things.”

Beth also noted how much of a toll the last three years have had on students. “Students have had to (and continue to have to) manage tiredness, confusion, uncertainty, on top of having to study. Instructors need to be a more flexible in terms of how they’re doing assignments, because if we continue to do things the way it used to be students are not going to be successful. We need to experiment more and explore alternative ways of assessment. In BESL, we use outcomes, and we need to look at different ways for satisfying each outcome, not just a paper and pencil test for example.” Beth is concerned about the complexity of student life today. “Students are stretched in all sorts of ways. They are working, have families, they are studying, and if they get COVID they may be away for a significant amount of time. And instructors have to support students as well as keep things moving, deliver effective lessons, get feedback to them as quickly as possible, as well as manage their own health and sanity.” These days, Beth noted, we seem to have to do more with less which means changing expectations and mindsets in our new reality.

I asked Beth if she had any memories from her teaching that stood out for her. “For me, it’s those tiny moments that are the most meaningful for me, like seeing the moment a student has understood a concept – when it clicks.” But she did have a couple of specific memories. “I taught English in a junior high in Japan for seven years, and when I left to return to Canada, my colleagues told my students, some of whom I had taught for 3 years, that I was leaving Japan. My students told me about the impact I had had on them. They said I helped them understand that speaking in another language with other people was fun and not scary, difficult but achievable.” And this term, Beth is using an Open Textbook in her class and discovering the importance of understanding student expectations. “Most of them want a hard copy book. They don’t want to be bothered with printing something or with having to read on a screen. But I didn’t have enough time to arrange for printed copies of the text before I started teaching the class. I will need to do a bit more planning which sections of the text I will use next time so there can be print copies and thinking about the difference in how your brain processes information through reading on-screen versus reading on paper. Maybe that’ll be my next PHD.”

Knowing that Beth served as co-chair for almost three years, I was curious about what advice she would give new faculty members coming into ELD. “Camosun’s ELD programs are unique for a few reasons. We have long semesters, and the curriculum and outcomes are loosely based on the Canadian Language Benchmarks, which is unusual in BC. So, becoming familiar with that is important. But at Camosun there are so many great people who are willing and able to help you. Our Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the ELD faculty, we all help each other. Just ask questions, reach out for help, but have patience because it can take time for people to respond if they are busy. And remember that teaching can be overwhelming for both new faculty and faculty who have been here for a long time. It’s not easy even after you’ve been doing it for a long time.”

Beth is always thinking ahead in her teaching and noted how fast things have been changing in recent years, for example Open Education, ungrading, and alternative assessments. “I’m not doing as much I want to yet because it takes planning and consideration around how it will fit with the course content, but I’m integrating more of these than I had before. We also have to keep our students and their needs in mind. For English language students, it’s not just about conversation, it’s about communication of all kinds. Some students need to use Whatsapp to communicate with their bosses or have to submit their hours by PDF – they need to be able to use many different tools and engaging with them in class provides direct application for them. It’s about more than just teaching language now.”

Camosun Story #63: Tony

Tony is a faculty member in the English Language Development (ELD) program and another one of our amazing Camosun instructors to receive a Teacher Recognition award this year.

Tony didn’t start out wanting to teach English. “I’ve always been interested in languages, and first completed a degree in Spanish literature intending to become a Spanish teacher. But when I finished, I thought my chances of teaching English in Montreal would be better than teaching Spanish. So, I completed a degree in English. Then I thought I would teach English somewhere in Latin America, but I ended up in Asia instead.” After teaching in Montreal and Korea, Tony came to Victoria and taught at UVic for two or three years before coming to Camosun where he been for 16 years. At Camosun, Tony mostly teaches the lower level ELD courses “and one thing that I’m teaching now is English support for the Health Care Assistant program in Health and Human Services.”

I asked Tony what he enjoys most about teaching. “When one of my students becomes gainfully employed after completing our program or has been accepted into a program at a college or university, knowing that I had something to do with that is rewarding, although we often don’t hear about those successes. But knowing that someone’s English has improved and they’re able to participate more in society is encouraging because for a lot of people, it can be frustrating when you don’t know the language.” And, like many of his colleagues, Tony also finds having the world in his classroom exciting. “We have a fair mix of students from all over the world in our classes right now, which is what I signed up for.”

When I asked Tony what impact the last three years had on him as an instructor, he told me “I was wrapping up my doctorate the first year of COVID, and relieved that it was out of the way. But the next hurdle was adjusting to teaching online. Fortunately, through the English Teachers Association (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, TESOL) in the US I was able to access a six-month online course about designing English language courses, which was a huge help for me. When I started teaching online, I noticed immediately that all those things you would normally do in the classroom you just can’t do online. I remember from those workshops the advice to sit down to consider your course outcomes and design your lessons and assessment around those. Then consider how can the online environment help you meet your outcomes, rather than wondering what I’ve always done is not working. The course was eye-opening and took me back to the basics, rethink the objectives asking, what am I trying to teach? What do I expect them to learn?” Tony has embraced backward syllabus design. “You start with the outcomes and work your way backwards: I felt I didn’t have a choice in the online environment, but I’m a backward design person now.

Tony discovered there were advantages to the online environment. “There are so many things you can do online that you can’t do on paper. Like adding videos – students love videos in their classes. I would make a video of myself explaining how to write a compare-contrast paragraph and think, no one’s going to watch this, but everyone watched it. I found the whole experience to be transformative. My fear last year was that we were going to take the great leap backward and put aside the COVID experience as a bad dream. But there were so many good things we can take from that experience, and I feel that I’m a better teacher now. I realize now how much easier it is to be organized when I use D2L; I never realized before how much that organization can empower students with learning difficulties. And for me, using tools like Teams and Zoom, I don’t have to run back and forth between campuses for meetings, I don’t carry books home anymore, and I can work pretty much anywhere.”

Tony also had some thoughts about what his program should be considering post-COVID, which I think applies to all programs at the college. “Students will encounter online courses at some point, and we in ELD need to prepare them for when they go to other institutions. For example, we need some digital course outcomes in our courses, help them with using computers, using online search engines, etc. And because so many resources are online now, we need to teach students how to use them.”

I then asked Tony to look back over his teaching years to see if any memories stood out to him. What he told me was unexpected, but really shows how we as teachers, and how we teach, can change with time and understanding. “There’s been a transformation over the past many years from making students learn all the grammar rules before using a language to supporting students to actually use the language – not hoping that by learning grammar students will suddenly be able to communicate accurately. About 12 years ago I decided, I am going to lick this issue of articles in English. I hammered the rules into the students believing they would stop making mistakes. We did lots of exercises, quizzes, routines, and then one day I said, here are some pictures of how to pot a plant. They’re mixed up. With your partner, rearrange them into the correct order, and then I want you to write a paragraph on how to pot a plant. And when I collected them, not one of the paragraphs had articles in it, after all those exercises and all those tests. I realized that just because I taught articles, did not mean my students were able to use them. We, as teachers, have to understand that it might take years for some students to acquire that ability.”

In addition, Tony spoke to some of the interactions he has had with students over the year. “I try to find value in every student in the class and to see everyone as an individual, because I think respect in the classroom is very important. I remember when I started teaching 25 years ago, I was concerned about classroom management and discipline, how was I going to get through two hours of teaching, and will they like me. But of course, those concerns have changed over time. Now I believe that with a good plan and respect for your students, you will have a managed classroom. I don’t know when that changed for me – it was probably a very gradual process.”

I wondered what advice Tony would give a new faculty member coming in to teach ELD at Camosun. “Make a good impression because you never know what will happen in future. Make an effort to learn the ‘culture,’ of the department, or at least learn the conventions of the department before you break them. And when you do break them, give a principled reason for doing so. Understand what technology is available to them at the college and take advantage of professional development opportunities as well. We are so lucky to have so many opportunities available for development, and people should take advantage of them.”

Tony also had some words about valuing the many approaches to teaching at the college and encourages new faculty to “bring in the experience and wisdom you have gained from where you’ve come and continue to maintain ties with people in other institutions. We need to know what else is going on out there to keep us all fresh. And we need to embrace the different ways we teach and support each other’s autonomy in the classroom” and may I also add, take the time to learn from each other.

Camosun Story #62: Pei Mei

Pei Mei is an instructor in the English Language Development (ELD) program and has been teaching at Camosun since 1993 at the former Carey Road campus. She was also one of 28 faculty members to receive a Teacher Recognition award this year.

I asked Pei Mei about her journey to becoming an ELD instructor. “I came from Singapore and, with my dad’s guidance, decided to become trained as an elementary school teacher.” After two years of training, Pei Mei says, “some of my fellow students and I talked about going overseas to get a university education and we promised each other one we would ask our parents. I did some research on costs, and surprisingly, despite being middle income earners, my parents said “yes”. I decided to come to Canada, to UVic, where I completed an English and Linguistics degree.” Pei Mei then took a break from school, but she wanted to stay in Canada. “I wanted to get my feet into teaching, but teaching alone would not get me permanent residency.” So, while Pei Mei taught at Camosun, she also enrolled in the Culinary Arts program and, after 18 months, became a chef. Acquiring this status did the trick to obtaining PR. Ten years later, Pei Mei decided to go back to school, completing her Master of Education, Curriculum and Instruction in 2006, and since then has been at Camosun, both teaching and serving in the role of co-Chair of ELD. 30 years after coming to Canada, Pei Mei (like many of us) wonders where the time has gone. “You get into the groove of your work and time just goes on.”

I asked Pei Mei what she enjoys about teaching English as a second, or additional, language. “I’ve met thousands of students and I’ve heard so many stories. Mostly they’re similar stories – they’ve come here for a better life, either by choice or not. But even if many of the circumstances are similar, the personal stories are different. I’ve also met a lot of fascinating people at the college, with my coworkers at the top of that list.”

Of course, the last three years threw a wrench into Pei Mei’s teaching world, as it did for so many. “When everything shut down, it threw us into panic mode, and I think I was the least tech savvy of everyone. Teaching online for me seemed like a huge stretch, and it took me a very long time in comparison to my coworkers to learn how to do it. I felt very sorry for my students who were in my class at the time we moved online. Thankfully, we had people in the department who were very adept at technical things, and while I couldn’t always understand what they were talking about, I had to learn and got individual tutoring from my coworkers – not that any of them could afford the time.” Essentially, for me it was learn and understand later! Pei Mei was one of four or five ELD instructors who chose to work from campus during the shutdown. “We had our own offices so keeping our distance from one another was easy. We had to get cameras, learn how to use the Elmo, learn to use Collaborate. We had to help the students learn how to get online – it was frenetic! But we got through that first day (yes, that was just day one.)” Pei Mei and her fellow faculty looked out for one another during that time. “It was such a supportive environment that we came to depend on it. We knew that if we got into trouble, we would be there to help each other. During a time where outside the college walls things were crazy, we found a sense of collegial peace and comfort working here in our little cohort.”

Supporting students in their learning was another matter. “In ELD, our students are not native English speakers but require learning it to go on to better their lives or to go on College courses. In a physical classroom, you can see right away when they are struggling, and you can tangibly help them. But when you’re online, all you can depend on are words. It was extremely challenging, because while we sent students documents about what to do, it was difficult for them to grasp the meaning when it was just words. A lot of our students are more visual learners, more tactile learners. They need to see, they need to observe, try to do it, and even then, often still need more instruction. All of this took up class time, so at best we could maybe get through half of the lesson plan. When we finally came back to face-to-face classes, I realized I needed to continue to be clearer with my instructions and more of a “hands-on” approach. Online, everything slowed down because of the challenges with the technology, but I picked up the pace when they finally came back to class. I noticed they struggled still with learning at a ‘faster’ pace. So, I had to slow down the pace to make sure everyone was together. I also had to work to catch the attention of the younger students because once they lose attention their learning stops, although that didn’t help the people who were slightly older and the more motivated ones. I needed to learn to balance the two groups of learners, and that was not easy.”

Today things have settled down for Pei Mei and her students. “There has been enough time for students to adjust back to normal expectations.” She is, however, carrying forward some of the things she learned to do during the pandemic. “I am putting more tests back online because students have mentioned that they like seeing the scores right away even though I prefer to have students writing on paper as it allows me to more easily see where they are strong or where they need more help. With ELD students, hand-written exercises and tests help us to gauge each student’s ability to use English script. That said for this Scheduled Development period I have loaded quite a few of the tests into D2L – but I am keeping a balance of both online and paper tests.”

I asked Pei Mei if there were any memories over her past 30 years of teaching that stand out to her. “Because I am an immigrant myself, my experiences are similar to those of my students. I started off as an international student, so I have that experience as well. And I believe that because of these experiences, I am able to connect with my students and understand them a little more. I don’t necessarily talk about myself, but I talk about the struggles of immigrants. I think that helps them see a way forward from the point of where they’re at. I try to provide guidance to them because often they are on their own, like I was when I came to Canada. Even though English is my native language, I still wish I had had someone to guide me back then because things were very different from what I was used to. So, if I have an opportunity to help an immigrant who needs guidance or directions, I step in. I feel very fortunate as an instructor to be able to share a similar perspective with them.”

For my last question to Pei Mei, I asked what kind of advice she would give to a new faculty member coming to teach in ELD. “Have patience. Listen to the students. If they want to tell you a story, listen to that story. I think in our society, we’re very quick to give advice without listening to the details, without truly understanding what is being relayed. With students, I try to be as patient as I can, especially with people who have gone through a tough time, people who did not choose to leave their country in the middle of the night but had to. And if you don’t understand, say you don’t understand, there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing is more important than listening to somebody to give them the space to speak. I believe that we aren’t just here to teach them English, but also to help them survive here. Yes, we need to help them understand what it means to be a student in our Western educational system, but we also need to accept them as they are and to try and help them move on.”

As we wrapped up our conversation, Pei Mei had some final thoughts for me. “When I received the Teacher Recognition award, I felt a bit guilty because it’s not for innovative teaching – there’s nothing new to what I do. Teaching gives me the opportunity to work with students, to help them, to meet them at their level, and to move them forward. I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be able to help them. For me as an instructor, that’s the bottom line. It’s not solely about the curriculum; it’s also about them individually. I’m very thankful for the student who nominated me even though I don’t think I deserve it. But I have experiences I can share with the students, and it’s up to them whether they want to learn from them. In the end, it’s about just being honest and real with your students.” When they ‘get it’, you’ll know because that’s when the light shines bright.

Camosun Story #61: Kendal

Kendal teaches in the Diagnostic Medical Sonography program in the Allied Health area of Health and Human Services. Like the Sonography program, Kendal is pretty new to Canada (moving up here from the United States in 2021) and to Camosun (becoming a term faculty member in the brand new Sonography program in January 2022), but she has obviously made an impact on her students as she was one of 28 faculty members who received a Teacher Recognition Award, this year.

Kendal has been a cardiac sonographer since 2015. “I’ve worked with a very wide patient population from premature babies in incubators all the way up to 100-year-old folks. I’ve worked in trauma centers, hospitals, outpatient clinics, cardiologist’s offices, and I’ve also done traveling ultrasound.” But in addition to being new to Canada and Camosun, Kendal was also new to formal teaching when she started working in the Sonography program.

When I asked how that initial experience was, Kendal told me that “it was a bit of trial by fire, and not just for me. As a new program, everyone was trying to figure things out.” Sonography has only been a program at Camosun since May 2021, with accreditation being approved in January 2023 (the program received the highest possible accreditation result for a new program without graduates.) It is a cohort-based program with 16 students per cohort and 7 faculty members, meaning that the Sonography group is like a family. “We get to be really close and build strong relationships with our students as a result of that. We have a good teacher to student ratio.” Students are full-time in the two-year program, taking roughly five courses per term. There are currently no options for part-time, “because we ideally need even numbers as our students are practicing their scanning on one another. When someone is missing, labs can become challenging because if one of the rooms has three students, they have to split that same amount of scanning time between three people now instead of two.” But the program group does recognize that they need to find ways to help students who struggle to finish within the two-year time frame. “I don’t know what the answer is, but we realize we need to decide what to do if not everybody finishes on time. So far we have not faced that as a newly established program.”

One of the things Kendal is most excited about is the Sonography program’s integrated school clinic where real patients come for scans run by students with preceptors who are Island Health employees. “In my second term at Camosun I was a clinical liaison, meaning I would drive out to Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital to check on the students there. Because the clinics were removed from the on-campus environment, you couldn’t see the direct communication between students understanding the conceptual knowledge between their didactic learning, their lab learning, and the clinical environment. Now, because the clinic is right downstairs, we have a closer relationship with those preceptors than the ones who were out in the hospitals. Unfortunately, our clinic didn’t open until the first cohort were out in practicum.” Not every hospital experience is positive, but the on-campus clinic is different. “Anybody who’s applied to be a preceptor in the on-campus clinic loves teaching – they wouldn’t have applied for the job otherwise. You have the people who are passionate about ultrasound, about health care, patient care, and also about teaching the next generation of sonographers. This also makes the instructor’s life a lot easier with that synchronicity between what’s going on in the classroom, what’s going on in the lab, and what’s going on in the clinical environment.”

I asked Kendal about her experience coming into the program after courses have returned to an in-person model, after the first year being wrapped up in COVID restrictions. “Because sonography is hands-on, my fellow faculty found the ultrasound lab hard to manage. We have a large TV in a classroom hooked into the ultrasound machines in each of the individual rooms. Instructors can watch what the students are doing on the machine. But, because one of the restrictions during COVID was a two people only per room requirement – meaning the student and the patient – how do you as an instructor guide the students to rotate the probe, apply more pressure, etc.? I cannot imagine how difficult that was for them. I came on board when restrictions were lifted on that.” Today, while the labs are back in person, some of the courses remain blended or asynchronous. Kendal, however, much prefers teaching in person. “In an asynchronous classroom I feel like you lose the connection you can have with students face-to-face– they can’t ask questions immediately and directly. And in person is much more fun!”

I asked Kendal what she loves best about teaching. “I love it when you see the students finally understand what you’re talking about, that little light bulb moment. In a hands-on field like ultrasound, you teach content in the classroom, then you’re go into the ultrasound lab where they apply that didactic learning. It’s even more exciting seeing those connections made when they apply their learning in the clinical world. I tell them that I celebrate all their wins where ever we find them, big or small.”

There have been some challenges along the way for Kendal and the program. “We had to do a lot of content creation because there was nothing there for the majority of these courses. Even after teaching a course once, there is a lot of retooling to be done for the next time around as we figure out what works and what doesn’t work.” Kendal is also the only term employee in the program which, of course, “comes with its own set of challenges balancing workload: trying to be there for the students as much as they need, and at the same time not burning yourself out. Being a new program and going through accreditation was also very tough, although our program leader did an excellent job preparing us for accreditation.”

One of the things students noted when they nominated Kendal for the Teacher Recognition Awards was her games. “My specialty is cardiac ultrasound. We teach them the basic cardiac ultrasound views – what the expectations of hemodynamics/pressures are, what happens when things go wrong inside of the heart. Lots of content that is very complex and overwhelming! So, what I try to do is integrate some fun activities in the classroom. For example, I made a 12-pound batch of playdough in different colours and distributed it to the students during one of their first cardiac anatomy and physiology lectures. This allowed them to make their own model of the heart. As I presented new ultrasound views (in ultrasound, we’re looking at a 3D structure in a 2D plane and sometimes the anatomy doesn’t look exactly like what you’d expect it to look like) they used the playdough to give them a better perspective of how the valves open, the orientation of the heart, etc. in a 3D view.” Kendal also leverages the technology available in the CHW building as much as possible. “I use the four projectors in the classrooms to project ultrasound views on each screen. Students break up into teams and draw out how blood moves through the heart. I keep integrating things like that to try and keep them interested because the courses can be very overwhelming. Everyone learns differently and I try to add techniques in for those who need a hands-on connection to knowledge in the classroom.”

Kendal told me that the moments from her teaching that stand out to her were “anytime they tell me, for example, that they scanned their first echocardiogram all by themselves – something that they couldn’t do before. Or telling me about an interesting case that they got to see. Moments where they feel proud of themselves for accomplishing something and want to share that with me. That makes me feel privileged and honoured, to be somebody on their list that they want to share that moment with.”

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Kendal, based on her recent experience of being a brand-new faculty member at Camosun, what advice she would give new faculty members. As a new and term faculty, Kendal had to learn the admin side of Camosun on top of teaching for the first time, teaching in a new program where she was developing new content, learning to use D2L, etc. and she advises “be patient with yourself and don’t expect to get everything correct right out of the gate. Be willing to advocate for yourself because sometimes people assume that you know specific information or someone else has explained what you need to do your job. Be humble and understand that you’re learning. It can be frustrating, especially when you move from having a level of proficiency in your chosen field to something where you’re a novice again. Just give yourself grace so you can absorb all this knowledge that’s coming at you from so many different directions, in the same way your students are trying to absorb all that new information from you.”

Camosun Story #60: Emah

Emah teaches in, and is Chair of, the Massage Therapy program at Camosun College, and she was also one of 28 faculty members who received a Teacher Recognition Award this year.

Massage Therapy is a relatively new program, starting in 2019 – yes, just before the pandemic hit – and Emah was the first faculty member hired in the program. Massage Therapy is a cohort-based, two-year program (six semesters with no breaks) with 24 students per cohort (which is the most they can accommodate in their spaces currently) and about 15 faculty (which surprised me – I had no idea it was so large!)

Like Sonography, Massage Therapy runs a clinic on campus to give students that work integrated learning experience. “It runs exactly like a regular massage therapy clinic, and students are directly supervised by Camosun faculty, which is a requirement of the program’s accreditation. This simulated clinic experience is most reflective of what it is like to be in a real practice” But in addition to the on-campus clinic, Massage Therapy students also engage in community outreach. “Our students go to locations like New Roads Therapeutic Recovery Community, a part of Our Place, where they treat folks who have substance disorders, are struggling with homelessness, and often have chronic health conditions with orthopedic conditions layered on top. The students also work with the Victoria Foundation, which is a society for youth who are struggling with mental health and substance abuse, as well as with other organizations. When students work in community, they’re working with specialized patient populations who are less likely to come into a clinical setting which is both valuable for student learning and valuable to the members of the public.” Emah told me that these outreach opportunities are not only close to her heart but are also wildly successful with the students.

I asked Emah what she enjoys most about teaching. “The first time I was in the classroom, I had that flow state experience where I lost track of time – I always tell my students that they will have to stop me because I will not know when it’s break time. That dynamic of students having meaningful conversations and watching them create relationship and community in the classroom, well its exciting to know that you have a little piece in that. That moment where the content suddenly makes sense to a student – it’s that high we all seek. I also joke about the fact that I’m the youngest of five children, so it’s just nice to have people listen, although after teaching for 15 years, I am now at a point where I feel comfortable turning it over to the students to do the talking.”

I, of course, had to ask Emah about the impact of COVID on her program, especially given that the program had just started when the pandemic shut things down (see Diane C’s story as well). “COVID had a massive impact because our program is, of course, literally face-to-face and hands-on. There were already enough challenges creating and running a brand-new program, with no faculty hired yet, and building everything from the ground up while a group of students was going through the program. COVID hitting made things extra hard. But, because we weren’t really stuck in our ways yet, it was also an opportunity to do something different, to engaging in lots of wild, creative problem-solving.” In addition, Emah told me that their program was one of the only ones in BC that managed to continue even through the initial lock-down. “Because it was our very first group of students, we were able to quickly move courses so that those that were not hands-on (some of the heavy science courses) came first, and the more hands-on came later. Was that great? No, it was terrible, but it kept us running (especially since this was a new program) and allowed the students to graduate on time where most other programs had to delay graduation.”

I wondered about the student experience from then until now. Emah noted that especially during the midst of the pandemic how challenging it was for students. “I don’t think we recognize the mental health impact that that experience had, particularly on younger people. And in my profession the vulnerability level is sky-high. If there is trauma, it will come up – I’ve been an educator for over 15 years and mental health crises are a part of this profession. But the two classes who went through COVID experienced escalated trauma and emotional dysregulation which really impacted the students academically. And now in year three with COVID moving past, this cohort is experiencing what I would call a sustainable level of mental health crisis, which is just part of the profession. But the temperature rose to a boiling point for two years which was a lot for our faculty to manage.”

Emah is very appreciative of the team she works with. “We have an incredible Department of faculty and not only do we enjoy working together, we also love to engage with each other outside of work. They’re just incredible human beings. Almost all of us have worked in private schools, and coming to Camosun feels amazing – we’re all so grateful to be here.”

When I asked Emah for a memory of teaching that stood out for her, she said “the biggest aha moment with this program is how we enter the classroom with a significant level of humility. We approach the classroom as an opportunity to engage with other adults to all learn. While I recognize that there is a power dynamic inherent in the post-secondary structure, I truly go into the classroom recognizing us as a group of human beings who want to work together. It goes well when you show up vulnerable and humble. Everybody just relaxes, including the faculty, and then we can get the job done. Students and faculty work together to figure it all out.”

I ended our conversation asking Emah, as a faculty member and Chair, what advice would she have for faculty starting at Camosun. “Things often feel like such a big deal, but most things are not, so try to bring that intensity down, even when it feels like your stress is sky high. In addition, be your authentic self. When the going gets tough people will work with you if you’re you and they sense that you’re you, particularly students. And finally, be kind but fierce. There will always be conflict and struggle, so take your stance, but try to be kind in the process.”

Camosun Story #59: Brooke

Brooke is a biology instructor in the School of Arts and Sciences. Last year, Brooke embarked on a journey she had been looking forward to taking for a long time. “When I was interviewed for my position in 2018, one of my questions to the interviewers was: how does the Biology Department embrace Indigenization? It’s a big part of Camosun College and what this college emphasizes in its identity. Biology has areas that can be easily Indigenized and areas that seem impossible, so when I began teaching, I was just flying by the seat of my pants. I was acknowledging territory, going with students on nature walks, and teaching and learning about SENĆOŦEN names and W̱SÁNEĆ uses, but it was small pieces here and there.” The real beginning of Brooke’s Indigenization journey began with the Indigenizing your Course workshop series she took in the summer of 2022.

“I can’t say enough wonderful things about that workshop. There were ten of us and we all said ‘I want to do this, but I know I’m going to make mistakes. I need to make sure that I’m okay with that and that I’ve been given permission to try.’” As Brooke told me, the program was not about checking the boxes, but about bringing together a community, all trying, failing, succeeding together, and supporting each other in a safe place. “That workshop gave me the confidence, the motivation, and the accountability I needed to move forward.”

One thing that helped Brooke think about how to go about Indigenizing her course was developing a framework. “Thinking about decolonizing your course can be overwhelming and intimidating. Instead, find one thing that resonates with you and start there. For me, my framework was that people are whole. So often we only engage with one part of that whole such as mind and body and I wanted to engage with others such as spirit and emotion.” One thing the workshop facilitators, Natasha Parrish and Charlotte Sheldrake, had Brooke and her workshop colleagues do was write an Indigenization statement, outlining what Indigenization meant to each of them, “[…]because it’s allowed to be different. The statement created accountability and the facilitators made sure that by the end of our workshop, we had our purpose and our framework ready to follow.”

The course Brooke Indigenized was her biodiversity course. “It’s a non-major’s biology course for students who need a science, but who aren’t necessarily going into biology. I thought it was a great course to break down because there was no expectation at the end of the course to entirely focus on the Western science perspective way through and through, so it was a chance for me to open worldviews.” The biodiversity course is a typical science class: lectures, tests, labs, assignments. The first thing Brooke did was remove tests she didn’t think were needed. “What that did was open two lab sessions for something different. I still had my Western science labs – those were still important – but I added a restoration project where we worked with the Saanich district and volunteers at Rithet’s Bog. We learned about the land, engaged in restoration, and connected with the material in a different way. We also took a field trip out to the Salish Sea Centre, where we saw living creatures rather than preserved specimens in jars. We observed how they interacted with one another in their mini ecosystems. I also invited Della Rice-Sylvester, a Cowichan elder and medicine woman, to give us a tour of campus with her eyes.” Brooke and her students were blown away, witnessing another perspective on biodiversity, those spiritual and emotional connections to the land, that had until then been completely absent. Brooke told me that she will be keeping all the changes she made to the labs saying, “I’m only going to be going forward from here.” And when she asked for student feedback, she heard nothing but resounding gratitude for the inclusion of these experiences, saying things like “I needed this in my education, and I didn’t even know I needed it. How could I have gone through my academic career up until now and not have this be part of my learning?” Brooke said, “it was such an easy thing to do and was something I could have done years ago if I had given myself the permission.”

Another aspect of the course Brooke pulled apart was the 20% of the grade from lab exams, putting that grade instead into a book meeting project. “We read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer and took five lecture periods, with two or three weeks in between, to meet and discuss the different parts of the book. I provided questions for students to consider, then they came to the book meetings and met in small groups to discuss the book and the questions.” This was Brooke’s chance to encourage her students to express their feelings and their emotions and their spirituality. “We have international students, and students from across Canada, coming in with different perspectives that they could share with the class. You don’t normally see that in a biology course – there isn’t often room for students to make cultural connections.”

In fact, this was the main reason Brooke wanted to Indigenize her course. “Western science is very much focused on ‘what did you see? What is physically there? What did you physically observe?’ And that’s it. But Indigenous science goes beyond that, also looking at how things make you feel and exploring your connection to, and your relationship with, what you observe. What I wanted to do in my course was to give my students an opportunity to discuss their feelings and their connections to what we were observing. And honestly, when it comes to conservation biology, climate change, and the biodiversity crisis, how can you not have feelings about them?”

But how do you assess feelings? “When you’re dealing with emotion and spirit, I don’t think it’s reasonable to assign limits. Sometimes I would see that a student only wrote a sentence, and I would ask them to dig a little bit deeper next time, and the next week they would. They knew that if they read the book and engaged, it was a low-pressure experience for them.” For each book meeting they also had an assignment giving them licence to be creative. “Robin Kimmerer mentions how in Indigenous sciences you see the personhood of non-human life, something not addressed in Western science. One time I asked them to write a story from a non-human perspective: imagine you’re a flower being picked, or a spider trying not to get squashed, or an old growth tree watching as your friends and family get felled. What emotions, what feelings, what knowledge do those organisms have? What is their personhood? But no pressure – I just wanted them to try. And these creative expressions were a gift to read.”

Aimee Bernard Biol102 Artwork — For our class you chose Braiding Sweetgrass in place of our lab exams because of the ways in which it blends Indigenous ways of knowing with Western science and argues the value of both for navigating the future of Biology. We revisited this idea/thesis throughout the course. For our final book project I wanted to try and visually represent this idea with Western science on one side and Indigenous ways of knowing on the other being braided together as the sweetgrass is braided within the book. Aimee Bernard

Maddy Harvey Biol 102 artwork — Maddy Harvey Biology 102 Artwork

With all these changes, Brooke was not sure how students would react, but she said she had never seen such amazing buy-in. “For the first time since I’ve taught this course, nobody dropped, and nobody failed. I felt so full knowing that my students committed to this journey.” And Brooke clarified that she still lectures and, there were still traditional assessments, but she provided a gateway into Indigenous science. “I was touched to hear my students say, “this education is essential for me; I should be respecting the land; I need to recognize the importance of reciprocity.” These were not concepts I lectured to them. The book taught them, our nature walks taught them, and I provided them space to learn it.” Brooke is keeping the book discussions, but says she may provide more specificity, perhaps through rubrics, because students do like structure and clarity. “Overall, I think my students are at an advantage having these other perspectives and potentially being able to challenge Western perspectives as needed in whatever they study in the future.”

Brooke’s changes also created community, gratitude, and hope as students began to see themselves as part of the ecosystem. “We are such an invasive species and students had a very negative perspective of human impact on the world when they came into the course. But leaving the course, they had hope that we can still recognize our roles and responsibilities and learn to respect our relationship to the land and the organisms on it. They left feeling a bit more empowered knowing that, as humans, we can do better.”

The biodiversity course opened itself well to Indigenization, but Brooke admits that other biology courses are a bit more challenging. “When you’re discussing enzyme pathways in a cell where there’s a molecular change, it’s not necessarily about bringing in Indigenous perspectives on that content, but more about trying to embrace a more holistic view of assessment and course delivery and Indigenous ways of learning.”

Brooke will be sharing her experiences with her colleagues and has already shown them some of her students’ creative projects, but she knows that there will be some questions around how they can Indigenize their courses. “I think that is where the Indigenizing your Course program is important, because the facilitators give you permission to try and to consider: why is it so important that students open their minds to multiple perspectives? Why is that going to benefit our students in their academic career and in their lives? Faculty know that they should, but don’t necessarily know the why or the how, and they don’t often have a community they can try and fail with.”

But Brooke does recognize that in the end, this is a personal journey. “Sometimes being an instructor is exhausting. You have to carve out the space for this work, and that’s a lot to ask. But I don’t want people to be so fearful of getting it wrong that they don’t do anything. It’s okay to get it wrong and to keep trying. Be vulnerable because you are trying something worthwhile. Just commit to one change. And if you think it went well, and if you get good feedback, that might encourage you to do more. You’re not helping anyone when you don’t try.”

Moving forward, Brooke has plans to Indigenize some of her other courses as well as do some more Indigenization work with her biodiversity course. “I’m going to continue to remove content that’s not serving my students and offer Indigenous perspectives. I also brought in three guest lecturers. A fantastic pair of teachers came to talk about climate anxiety and renewable resources speaking from a more social science perspective. An amazing enthusiast came in thrilled to talk about phylum Porifera (sea sponges) and it was great to experience someone’s joy and passion for something most folks overlook. It wasn’t just me as the sole holder of information – this was community-based learning and I’m absolutely going to keep bringing in other voices.” As for her other courses, she is looking at Indigenizing a course that is based on molecular and cellular content, but also about family traits and epigenetics, topics which she thinks will lend themselves to a more holistic approach.

I wanted to close with these words from Brooke, summing up her first Indigenization experience. “I used to think my students just needed to know and do the things I gave them in the syllabus. But now I want to expose them to a variety of perspectives and to engage with the four quadrants of themselves as human beings (physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental). I see them as whole people who deserve to be challenged physically and mentally and to have their emotions and their spirituality addressed – that is what Indigenization has brought to me and my students.”