Tag: faculty stories

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.

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.”

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.”

Lynelle is a faculty member in the School Health and Human Services (HHS), in the Allied Health Technologies Department.  Since 2017, Lynelle has been a facilitator of the Interdisciplinary Education (IDE) Student Festival at Camosun College, and I wanted to talk to her about how the festival started, how it has evolved over the years, and where it is headed in the future. 

Lynelle started our conversation by sharing that the predecessor of the IDE festival originated out of a program review of the Medical Radiography program.  “One of the competencies being added by the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (CAMRT) was around inter-professional communication.  The hope behind this competency was that if students are taught how to communicate inter-professionally at school, that skill will carry forward into their careers and ultimately improve patient-client outcomes because when practitioners communicate better, they can provide better coordinated collaborative care.”  Thus, a project-based course in interprofessional communication was born. 

The newly created course was MRAD 264, and Lynelle spoke passionately about its interdisciplinary nature. “Interdisciplinary education is about learning with, from, and about others – it’s peer-to-peer learning, and students were tasked with teaching other students about their profession and providing an integrated learning experience.”  In other words, students were not only working together within the course itself, but also required to communicate with students outside of the course.   “Students came up with the idea to run a mini conference on campus. They split into groups, and we ran four learning activities, inviting fellow Camosun students to come in and learn about our professions and about some of the unique challenges that we face, creating a moment in time where they could inter-professionally communicate.”  Students did not just run the conference itself, however.  They had to plan and market the event, ran a post-event pizza party (meaning they needed to get food safe certificates and organize food services), solicited donations, booked space for the event, etc.  The collaboration students engaged in went well beyond the course outcomes. 

Lynelle emphasized that every element of that conference was student produced, while she supported them to bring their vision alive.  “It was hard for the students because they wanted to be told what to do, and how they were going to be graded.  We spent a lot of time talking about how to accomplish a shared goal, how to organize their labour, how to ensure everybody understands their individual roles, etc.” 

The Dean of HHS and other college leadership attended that first mini-conference, and excitement grew.  Lynelle and others applied for and were awarded one of the Camosun Innovation Awards which gave them some budget to work with for the next year so students would not have to look for donations.  “The second year, we had enough money to do better promotion and to support participation from more students. That year, we went with poster-style presentations which are very common in health care learning.”  Then the following year they applied for another grant from outside of Camosun, and with that funding were able to build out the event even further.  During this time as well, students from more HHS programs were beginning to participate in the event. 

In 2019, although they didn’t know it at the time, they held the last fully in-person event.  “We had almost all of the health programs participating by that time and had to book off two floors of the Ewing building. We had both poster presentations and interactive displays as well as health and wellness activities – all student-led activities for the benefit of other students. We added a passport that listed all of the activities and each time you participated in one of them, you got a stamp. Students were then able to take that passport back to their instructors for bonus points or as part of a required activity in their courses.”  

But then, in 2020, COVID threw a wrench in the works when the college shut down shortly before the festival was to take place.  Because they couldn’t hold an in-person event they “pivoted in a dramatic way to a WordPress site where we posted all the presentation materials for students to interact with online.”  Lynelle reflected that, despite the stress, “ultimately that activity was quite successful and recording all of the work that we had intended to do under the circumstances was brilliant.” 

According to Lynelle, the level of engagement in this pandemic IDE was superficial, through comments on the site. But the next year, they took the online format and built on it.  “The following year we added another group of students to the mix – students in the Interactive Media Development (IMD)program in Computer Science which had been created by an interdisciplinary team at the College.  The purpose of bringing in the inter-professional practices course arose from an industry criticism of graduates from these types of highly technical programs that graduates struggle to communicate with clients.  We asked ourselves, I wonder what would happen if we put these IMD students in a situation where they had to learn with, from, and about students in a very dissimilar discipline: health.”  This was tactical as well, Lynelle noted, because health students tend to have lower technical expertise, although they are asked to work with electronic health records, digital imaging, app tracking, online health appointments. “Health students in general need to understand how technology works and how to communicate with the people who are building, maintaining, supporting technology in our workplaces.” Hence the decision to bring these two groups together. 

Lynelle didn’t teach the first IMD course, but she did the following year.  But because of low enrolments in that second pandemic year, they took the two cohorts of students (one from health and one from IMD) and combined them together into one section, a rare event with two cohorts of students in two separate Schools taking the same course.  It was a tough year, Lynelle said.  “We were all having a hard time with the pandemic, so what we did that year was refine the virtual-only experience. The first cohort of IMD students had built a brand-new website from scratch, collaborating with the health students and instructors; this section of combined students didn’t have the same capacity and we had to discover together what was possible.” And her additional challenge was teaching to two completely different groups of students.  “When you teach this particular course to a specific discipline, you work within that discipline’s perspective. But teaching from two perspectives is an interesting challenge. It was difficult for the students to grasp initially, but we walked through the steps and processes, convincing them of their own capabilities, and at about week eight or nine they started to see what was possible, and by week 13, they were pretty darn proud of themselves for what they had accomplished.” 

During this iteration, the virtual festival integrated more interactive elements into the website. In addition to the projects, the students included more information about different programs, they interviewed Dean of HHS about interdisciplinary education at Camosun and included some keynote speakers. The focus of the IMD students was peer-to-peer technical support for instructors and for students submitting projects to the website as well as providing troubleshooting support and updating the website.” And along the way, learning skills their profession had been criticized for lacking.  Lynelle was proud to report that the whole cohort of IMD students was immediately employed after graduation, and most were hired where they wanted to be hired. 

And now we come to the current year (2023).  “This semester, I’m teaching the course to Sonography students for the first time. And this year, the students are using H5P to develop an interactive virtual simulation that teaches their profession to people in other health care professions. The theme of this year’s interdisciplinary student festival, which will be held in the spring, is What we wish our colleagues knew: Get the scoop on our scope.”  Basically, students are looking at improving communication between professions, for example between nurses, care aids and allied health professionals, to reduce medical mistakes or miscommunications.  “The students created a simulation exercise: you click through it, learning bits here and there, watch some patient interactions, so at the end their peer colleagues should have a fundamental understanding of what sonographers need in order to do their job. And that’s the point of this student interdisciplinary festival – improving interprofessional communication.” 

As Lynelle and the IDE festival group think about the future, they are reaching out to the interdisciplinary education community of practice at Camosun College to see if there are ways to bring more students in to this kind of student-led learning for and about each other. “We’ve proven that it works with a group of students in a computer science program that realistically have no reason to take a health program, but this course does speak to one of their program outcomes explicitly.” To start, a student in Mental Health and Addictions has been interviewed by Lynelle’s students as a first step in learning about that profession, in hopes that “they will then be interested in learning more about us. Then maybe in the next iteration, they’ll be more interested in learning with us.” 

But it’s not just service-education programs Lynelle sees fitting in with the current model. “I want to learn how someone in Economics might see their students participating. When I think about how important economics is to funding our healthcare system, if economics students gained a better understanding of where they might fit in the world through collaborative learning and understanding, how would that improve our society? Because if we understand each other better, if we recognize not only what makes us different but what makes us the same, and what we need in order to work in a more collaborative way, I don’t think discipline matters so much – it’s about beginning to have those conversations.” 

And why shouldn’t anyone at Camosun be allowed and encouraged, and even required, to take an interdisciplinary communication course? “I would love for any student to be able to take this course and be able to participate in these kinds of activities – even to go so far as to create open programming where students could choose to take the courses that they’re excited to take.” Lynelle’s point hit home with me.  This course addresses an essential skill that ALL students should be engaged in learning.  “These are the skills employers are looking for – working with teams, working with clients – capabilities aren’t necessarily included in discipline-specific programs. Everyone who learns to take an X-ray can functionally execute an X-ray, but who can do it with the best client-centred care perspective? Who can interact with other colleagues in the department or interact with the other departments that we have to work with.?  This is why the IDE festival was born.” 

Lynelle concluded our conversation by telling me “I don’t know where this is going to go, but almost every single allied health, nursing, and health-related credential now includes some sort of inter-professional or interdisciplinary competency, so I think it’s here to stay in all those programs. But what about other essential courses? I would love to see, for example, a course about Indigenous history in every single program.  If we’re talking about the skills and capabilities that are going to help graduates function better as employees and be more attractive to employers, we have to look ways to incorporate those important topics and skills into the core of all our programs, so they are not something that students or instructors have to do off the side of their desk.”  That should be the future of education – whole and inclusive. 

Anthony is a faculty member in the Centre for Sport and Exercise Education (CSEE).  In fact, he was a brand-new term faculty member in the Fall of 2022 when I first heard his name from my instructional designer colleague, Kristina, who was amazed with the work Anthony was doing in his classroom around assessments and engagement activities.  So, last December, I sat down in Teams to chat with Anthony and Kristina about his experiences.

Anthony came to Camosun in a very roundabout way.  He was born in the U.S., was drafted to Major League Baseball at 17, received a scholarship for a Bachelor of Psychology program which he completed in 2011, got married and moved to Canada in 2012, completed a Master’s of Science in Kinesiology (after starting a Master’s or Education) at UVic, became a master coach developer for baseball in B.C. and Canada, then started applying to teach at Camosun.  After about two years of applying, he finally got the call one week before the Fall 2022 term started!

Anthony was hired to teach SPMA460, which is the Media and Public Relations for the Sport Management program, and with only four days to prepare, he was feeling a bit overwhelmed.  But fortunately he was able to meet with Kristina who introduced him to D2L, and helped him navigate the course syllabus, the assessments, etc. “I had the opportunity to work with several new term faculty in CSEE that semester and the first time Anthony and I sat down, I was captivated by his passion to give the students an authentic learning experience.”  Kristina mused that in our work as instructional designers, much of our time is spent “trying to help new instructors understand various approaches to teaching and how to inspire engagement in students. But Anthony brought all of that from his professional life so those first meetings were more about helping him navigate D2L and the college system versus actually teaching.”  Kristina found this a new experience for her “because Anthony was bringing so much expertise to the table already. We spent more time discussing higher-level questions and had deeper conversations about teaching that we as instructional designers don’t normally have until an instructor has had two or three years of in-classroom teaching experience.”

While Anthony has been a guest speaker and presented to rooms full of hundreds and thousands of people, he had never taught a course over a long period of time.  “I really wanted to do a good job because the classroom is an integral part of these students’ lives and I’m a part of it. I wanted to give them the best opportunity to learn from me and my experiences and my network.” For Anthony, this meant a lot of late nights.  “For the most part, I was finishing the lecture at 1:00 am the night before I was supposed to deliver it, as well as reviewing some of the content the night before so I could better guide the students.”  Because Anthony had less experience with some of the course topics, he brought in guest speakers to enhance the content. “My background in media and public relations was only from an athlete’s point of view.  For example, I had been a participant in press conferences, but I never had to set one up.  But thankfully the head of communications for BC Transit came in and shared some experiences from running press conferences for BC Ferries, etc.”

But Anthony reflected that his background as a coach and as a facilitator for the Coaching Association of Canada helped a great deal. “The rule of thumb is you talk 25% of the time and let the coaches speak the other 75%, and your 25% comes in by asking them questions to help them come up with a better answer. In my class, there were times the students didn’t want to talk, and I had to ask them very specific questions to get them going.”

Anthony also used a model he appreciated from his grad school days.  “We would break up a four-hour classroom day by doing activities throughout the four hours, as well as small group presentations. So, most days, I would plan an activity that wasn’t for a grade, where the students had to put themselves in a role-play type of situation. What I found, oddly enough, was that in-class participation during the ungraded activities was superior to that of the graded assignments because students were not stressed about being graded.”  So, the puzzle now becomes how to reduce that stress when students are being assessed for marks.

Another one of my colleagues, Derek, from the Faculty Development area, also supported Anthony.  “I asked him to come and observe the class, and we’ve since had some very deep conversations about teaching.  My big takeaway was that I wish I could start day one again and add more things to my delivery.”  But as Kristina noted, “the first time around, you’re figuring out the grading, what your expectations are, etc. Next time around you can work on the assignment instructions, the guidance you give the students, because you will be able to anticipate things that come up.”

One other thing I wanted to note about Anthony’s approach was that he had no hard due dates on any assignment.  Everything was ultimately due on the last day of class.  “If a student wanted to turn in their assignment 100 times, I would grade it 100 times and give it back so they could improve and get steadily better marks until they were satisfied. Some students have taken advantage of that – they turned everything in during the first week of class and we’ve been back-and-forth four or five times with me asking questions. On the other hand, some of the class has just appreciated that they could wait until the last minute and then hand everything in on the last day.”  While some students have commented that Anthony is just too nice, he notes that it’s not about being nice, it’s about supporting student learning.  “I want them to understand what they’re turning in so that if I ask them these questions two years from now, they’re going to remember, as opposed to if they cram and give me an assignment last minute. It’s made for some tough grading days, but I think the students appreciated my efforts.”

While Anthony admitted to having some concerns about the sustainability of this model if he were to be teaching multiple courses at once, Kristina assured him that “while the workload increases with more students, you’re able to anticipate, plan, and incorporate for that because you now have a solid foundation (and feedback from students) to work with, and each time you teach, you’re going to add another layer to it. I think if you had tried to add all those pieces at the very beginning, things may have fallen apart along the way. But because you started simple, you were able to deliver that exceptionally and in a way that you can now add too.”

Anthony doesn’t just think of his students inside the classroom.  He also sees his role as linking them with the right people for the information they need, or to help them move forward in their career, or help them discover another path they might want to pursue. “Athletes often don’t have mentors. They typically don’t start school with a job in mind, but rather think that for the rest of their lives they are going to play a sport, become famous, and make money.  But this only happens for a small percentage of those athletes.  So, this class is not just about what students learn, but it’s also about making connections, utilizing networks, and figuring out how this can propel them further. This class may take them somewhere that has nothing to do with media and public relations, but because of the connections they’ve made, they can go anywhere.”  In fact, one of Anthony’s dreams would be to have an entire course of just guest speakers.  “Nobody in the class knew what an agent does except for one student who was a professional baseball player and had an agent, but even he didn’t understand the nuances. We could bring in CEOs or general managers of sports teams – if we had a class full of guest speakers, I think it could be a huge benefit for the students.

Kristina ended our conversation with something I had also been thinking. “When you (Anthony) talk about your teaching, if feel like there is no boundary between the classroom and the real-world. You’ve taken down those walls and you’ve immersed your course material and your students within the context of what they would encounter in real life and connect those authentically rather than teaching the concept and then applying it to an artificial example. I think that’s something very unique you’re giving your students. You have a gift, and sometimes we don’t take the time to recognize those gifts in other people.”  I couldn’t agree more.

You will be happy to know that Anthony is back with Camosun this term, teaching more classes.  I am excited for his students and look forward to finding out what amazing things he is doing!

Nancy is a faculty member and counsellor at Camosun, and I would be remiss if I did not also mention that she has worked here for 45 years.  Over those 45 years, Nancy has filled a variety of roles. “While I’ve served mostly in direct service roles, I’ve also done some admin work in student affairs and student development and have also been chair of our department.  And I’m probably the only person at Camosun who’s worked with all six presidents.”  Nancy reflected that she has seen a lot of changes at Camosun and the experience of working from home and supporting students virtually during COVID was just one of many.  Just as one example, “when I first came to the college, one of my first roles was to look at women’s access to the college. At that time, there might have been two women on faculty and the majority of students were male. But over the years those demographics have grown and changed tremendously.”

When I asked how she adapted to working remotely, Nancy says she was relieved.  “I was getting information from my daughter [whose first degree was in microbiology and immunology] long before the decision was made to work off-campus. There were a couple of weeks where we worried about working so directly with people, when distancing physically was awkward, and also because we work in small offices that are not well ventilated, and deal with a lot of emotion. So, it felt very vulnerable.”

Once the counsellors moved to working from home, they found adapting to remote counselling challenging.  Before moving to Teams, the group worked with students over the phone.  “Very rarely would we have phone sessions with students prior to COVID – to get a sense of a person we felt it was better to meet with them in person. Losing that meant losing important visual information.  It was awkward at first and you really had to compensate for what you couldn’t see by listening carefully, for example listening to breathing more carefully, like when you lose one sense, you compensate by developing another.”  One of the most dramatic phone sessions Nancy had was when she was talking to a student who began to sound jumbled.  Nancy suspected something was wrong, and it turned out the student was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.  Fortunately, she was able to get help and pulled through ok.  Nancy mentioned that one advantage some of her colleagues noted with phone sessions was that “some students are willing to disclose more easily over the phone because they feel less vulnerable, because they’re not visible. I found that’s true often with male students – it seems to be easier for them to disclose more quickly when they can’t be seen.”

Eventually the counsellors switched from phone to video sessions.  “Teams, while there were some technical glitches, was good. However, it was more work for our counselling admin people to set up Teams interviews. We have a confidentiality statement that students initial in-person but doing this online adds another level of complexity. In addition, when confidentiality needs to be broken, for example if a student wants us to communicate with an instructor, we have to get their written permission to break confidentiality which can be stressful for students to manoeuvre virtually.” However, in spite of the challenges, Nancy has found that some students prefer the virtual sessions and now students are given a choice between being seen in-person, or through Teams, or by phone. “Giving students the opportunity to make their own decision as to how they want to meet sets the relationship off to a better start.”

While student choice was one benefit of moving to online service, using Teams carried with it some challenges as well.  “When we meet with students in person, they can see our environment and that we are honouring their confidentiality. However, they don’t see that when we’re working at home. I’m always very careful to say that I’m by myself, and only my aged cat is with me, that no one can overhear a conversation. For some of my colleagues who have families, ensuring that confidentiality was more of a challenge, so we did try to find places on campus where students could call in. I also think I had more conversations with people sitting in their trucks and cars, and some students would tell me that they had roommates or parents or families which made it difficult for them.”

One other challenge moving to this virtual model was losing the in-person resources of other employees at Camosun.  “We were not able to accompany a student over to the ombudsperson or have an instructor walk a student over to us. That transfer of trust is best done person to person.  So, we had to find new ways to do the same thing.   We added more check-ins and follow-ups, but it was harder to contact people to have them available when we did not know their schedules or where they were.”  Something Nancy noted as one of those little things you don’t think about it until it’s not there.

For herself, Nancy found some good things coming out of the past couple of years.  “I am less reliant on paper, and I think my tech skills have increased. In addition, I think the opportunity to reflect about what we’ve lost and gained, about what’s important to us, has been one of the biggest benefits.  It’s given us a chance to really look at what we value and what we want to keep and what we don’t want to keep for the future.”

All in all, while Nancy finds many benefits to working virtually with students and giving them that choice of how they want to meet with her, she told me “I think overall students prefer a traditional in-person learning environment because they miss the interaction and making new connections.”  She asked me “what do you remember about what you learned in your first year of university?”  After I thought about it, I said what I remember the most is being happy not to be in high school anymore.  She then told me “I ask that question often of people and no one ever says something that they learned in the classroom. It’s always, I learned how to socialize, how to drink beer, how to struggle with values. There’s so much learning that happens outside of the classroom.  And for students learning remotely, are they getting the same opportunities to learn who they are as a person? Post-secondary time is a really precious experience. It’s when young people are learning independence and what they learn during this time shapes them into adulthood.”

Interestingly enough, when I wondered if these past few years were the most challenging time for her in her years at Camosun, Nancy said no, the most challenging time she had at Camosun was when there was a fire in the Dawson building right before Labour Day, “and for an entire year, all of the registration people, advisors, counsellors, physical plant folks, International had to relocate and work elsewhere, and do their work in different ways (remembering that students were expected on campus right away to begin the fall semester), which became a great bonding experience.”  A more challenging time, but as she said to me, good training for the similar challenges that came via COVID.

Finally, if Nancy had any advice to give someone experiencing the kind of change we all faced over the past few years, she says “embrace it and learn from it. Learn about your resilience – we’ve all learned about resilience in a way that we hadn’t experienced before. And take the time to reflect on what’s important and what isn’t. And finally, trust the capacity of human beings to do the right thing.”