Faculty and Staff Voices

The Pericles project helped me to revise student reflection and assessment in my existing course, Political Ecology, and learn from other faculty about how they are incorporating civic engagement into their syllabus and their coursework. (I was a mentor for another faculty member at another participating institution.) It also allowed me to share my experiences at two conferences, and to engage in fruitful conversations with other faculty at Skidmore. 我协助了一个由火博体育公民参与组织的研讨会 中心和领导，教学和学习中心火博体育如何建立公民 engagement designation for courses. The conversations we had with Civic Engagement 负责任的公民小组委员会也制定了共同的 评估所有在学院教授的公民参与课程. These were collected for the first time in the spring 2018 semester. Broader conversations on campus about 上学期对公民参与课程的评估特别有用 for my class.

我已经对教授学术公民参与(ACE)课程感兴趣了. My goal was to connect with other faculty teaching ACE courses, learn more about assessment/reflection methods, and share my experiences with junior faculty.

The service-learning project in the Political Ecology class changes every year depending on the community organization’s needs. The readings also change every year according to the service-learning project students pursue. Over the years, we worked with Sustainable Saratoga several times. 他们信任我们的学生和他们一起工作，解决他们的问题 needs. 虽然一些项目成果并没有立即显现出来，但学生们 learned a lot, and Sustainable Saratoga used the outcomes/findings of some projects to create momentum for their projects. For example, students in my Political Ecology 最后，班级向市政官员做了一个火博体育市区垃圾回收的报告 of the semester. 他们还被邀请在下面做第二次演讲 semester. 虽然学生们已经完成了他们的成绩，但有三个学生陪同 萨拉托加可持续发展中心第二次向市政官员做报告. They were very responsible and proud of their work! We also invited Sustainable Saratoga 和我们地区七所高等教育机构的教师一起参加一个研讨会. Sustainable Saratoga volunteers shared their experiences with faculty interested in teaching academic civic engagement courses, discussing how they interacted with students and faculty and providing guidelines for establishing and maintaining relationships with community partners.

A group of students prepared a poster on their service-learning project, urban forests. 一名学生获得了学院的旅行资助，并在一次会议上发表了演讲 in Canada. 在COVID之前，学生们将在 the Surrey-Williamson Inn to the board members of the community organization we work with. 演讲是用饼干和图片来庆祝的. It would 让社区组织和学生都感到骄傲.

I continue to teach an academic civic engagement course. There are more Project Pericles faculty on campus, and I’m glad more junior faculty are interested in teaching academic civic engagement courses and getting recognized for their work (by Project Pericles). I am happy that there are also more conversations on campus among faculty about implementing ACE and bridge courses. CLTL可以继续这些对话，帮助教师制作 their work visible, and coordinate workshops to transform their civic engagement work into publications. 这些对话可能有助于公民参与得到更多认可 in tenure-promotion decisions.

We developed a course called Dancing Towards Success, which is an offshoot of my program Dance to Success. 在这个项目中，我们制作了3到5分钟的舞蹈视频，然后我们 put out in conjunction with PBS Learning Media. We put these out nationally for teachers to utilize in the daily classroom as brain breaks or as an activity that helps students focus before moving on to their academics. Sort of like a “movement break.” 

We created a partnership with the Gloversville enlarged school district in New York 我们做了跨学科的艺术驻留，学生们会去参加. 他们和一名老师一起开发了实习项目，我们称之为 一个特殊的老师，比如美术老师，体育老师，在学校教书的老师 another area of the school.

We incorporated themes of social justice into our residencies, which wasn’t initially part of our plan. 但自从我提出这个建议以来，我们的文化发生了很大的变化 in, which was pre-COVID, to the time that we implemented them, and it just felt like we were working in a rural community that needed some discussions to start happening.

Educational access for arts in a public school is oftentimes underfunded, and though 当然不是每个学校，很多学校，尤其是那些有 社会经济地位低——不总是有同样的机会接触艺术 same way affluent schools do. 在这个过程中，学生们学会了识别 their roles/potential roles in helping solve issues that we as a society have, which is extremely important and valuable. 

I appreciate seeing that connection between the student-teacher and the children when 他们能够用舞蹈的通用语言进行交流和参与. Dance is for everyone, right? 我认为这是人们仍在起步的事情 to learn to this day. 舞蹈不只是为那些研究了几十年的人准备的，它就是 for all of us. 它不必是完美的，它可以带来真正深刻的变化 in people’s lives. 

During the first class, a third-grader did not want to dance, did not want to be there, and was just nervous about the whole process. However, by the end of the experience 这个小家伙走过来，和其他人一样参与进来. I watched him go up to a student, one of our student-teachers, and say, “I just need to tell you this,” 那天和我们的学生兼老师分享了很多信息. That day, he 与学生建立了联系，分享他的想法也很安全. This just 告诉我，在这个空间里，信任和安全感正在发生变化， 这不仅对我，而且对我的学生兼老师都是非常有益的. 

I try to let people know that doing work in civic engagement, like incorporating civic engagement into our classrooms, always adds to the classroom and value to what we're doing. 我知道有额外的步骤和未知，因为当我们工作的时候 with community members, things change that we can’t always control as professors or instructors. 然而，我相信好处总是大于额外的步骤 that have to go into it, and in the end it’s just essential to the student’s learning.

A question that I love to think about is: “What is the difference between dance and movement?“我认为这个问题仍在研究中，尚未得到答案. 

Mack: 作为一名专业的钢琴家和作曲家，我教得越多，学得越多. Teaching has allowed me to reflect deeper on my own pedagogies, my own learning, and has ultimately made me a better performer and composer.

Howson: I became a teacher because I had great teachers, and I remember how impactful those 老师们对我的影响，以及我如何影响他人.

Mack: For me it's the constant discovery and rediscovery of either the smallest little thing, or frankly, the space to create some new ideas and use it as a larger platform for the professional career.

Howson: I love learning through teaching my students. Every year is different so you're constantly reinventing yourself, your pedagogy, your classes, and your syllabus to meet the demands of today's students. I like that evolution, and this constant reinvention.

Mack: I find it challenging keeping up with how students communicate with each other, and 如何适应他们目前的沟通模式. I find that conversations 我和我的一些学生之间的关系与我和我十几岁的儿子之间的关系相似. This has helped me connect on one level, but has also created a distance, because I'm living at a further distance from when they were born.

Howson: It is challenging keeping up with the students and having to constantly reinvent classes to keep it interesting and engaged; it's me then pivoting to ensure that the ultimate goal is to learn and reflect. And just when you think you've nailed it like—"yes, 上学期太棒了，我要再说一遍" -不，不是这样的， 你必须不断调整，因为每个教室都不一样.

Mack: Bringing in guest artists doesn't require this massive logistic overhaul…I find it 有趣的是，我们有这项技术已经有一段时间了，本来可以使用的 但在某种程度上，Covid给了我们一点推动，提醒我们， “Oh, right, we have access to this technology.” I used to bring guest speakers up from the city as well as local folks to the classroom; however, now that you have the ability to zoom somebody in from LA, Chicago, or Indiana, you can accomplish so much more breadth in a way while also bringing diverse perspectives without dealing 有了两天的旅行和大量的旅行费用，这最终更容易 the speaker.

Howson: 学生们所经历的也是老师们所经历的. The old tricks we knew that worked in the physical classroom, mostly did not work or translate directly into the virtual classroom. So, the biggest challenge for me was understanding that I could not just replicate what I had done in the physical classroom and expect it to flow right into a zoom class, but instead reinvent activities, learning, and discussions to fit the students' needs.

Mack: 我做了一些事情，我设置了两个摄像头，这样他们就能看到我并排 then switch my camera so they could have an overhead view. I actually found that students 对双重视觉的反应非常好，所以现在，回到房间里，我经常会问 让他们站起来，在我演示的时候从我身后看过去. Also, I would ask students to send me a video of their playing, and then use those five minutes to weigh in. This doesn't diminish the quality of the lesson, but actually enhances their overall learning experience in the process.