Book Circles - Winter 2022
The CTLT hosts book circles every academic quarter and during summers. They are open to all Cal Poly educators. Selected books draw from a broad array of thoughtful and inspiring educational literature. These are opportunities to enrich your knowledge about timely and significant topics related to higher education while engaging with colleagues from across campus. Themes for book circle selections include: inclusive educators, mastery teaching, mindful educators, navigating academia, educating for sustainability, and writing instruction. Participants receive a complimentary copy of the selected book with the expectation that they will engage in three or more discussion sessions.
NOTE: Our cumulative Book Circles list of titles is available here.
Register for Winter 2022 Book Circles (CLOSED)
Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms
by Joe Feldman
Of all the tasks essential to our best work as educators, grading is arguably one of the most consequential. Our use of grades shapes students' learning, self-concept and motivation while affecting their possible future paths. Yet for many educators, what grades mean, how they are used, and what are their consequences (positive and negative) remain largely unexamined. It seems fair to assume that all of us strive to use grading practices that are accurate, bias resistant, and motivational. Even better would be practices that minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates and foster stronger student-faculty relationships. This book is an opportunity to examine our assumptions and practices around grading and learn about the ways that traditional approaches can inadvertently promote inequities and demotivate learners. Feldman offers a broad menu of more equitable and more effective approaches for adoption selectively or comprehensively so that our grading practices ultimately better reflect our core values as educators. This article provides a brief overview of Feldman's ideas: "What Traditional Classroom Grading Gets Wrong" (Education Week).
NOTE: Download book (free) from the Kennedy Library website
Meeting Dates & Times:
- Wednesdays (12:10-1 pm) Jan 19, 26 and Feb 2
OR - Tuesdays (12:10-1 pm) Feb 8, 15, 22
Meeting Location: Online in Zoom (link will be sent to registrants)
Facilitators: Dr. Patrick O'Sullivan, CTLT Director, and Dr. Jess Jensen (SOE)
A "Mastery Teaching" selection
An "inclusive educator" selection
Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life
by Susan David
At the end of Winter Quarter 2022 we will be at two years since our professional and personal worlds were turned inside out by the pandemic. In that time, the stresses on our physical and psychological wellbeing have been relentless as we strived to sustain the quality and consistency of our work as educators. Despite the progress with vaccines, we continue to navigate professionally and personally through these difficult circumstances. This book circle is intended to be a restorative retreat, an opportunity to tend to our own wellbeing at a time when our personal capacities may be running low. Dr. Susan David is a noted psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and a highly regarded consultant on leadership, which helps this book carry credibility among others in the self-help genre. The book details "the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change," which is especially appropriate for us at this time. Her TED talk will give you a glimpse into her work and ideas: "The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage" (9.4 million views). Enhancing your own emotional agility can strengthen your capacity to support your students through their parallel set of wellbeing challenges (see the CTLT's Teaching for Wellbeing pages). In addition to well-informed and engaging guidance from Dr. David, this book circle also offers another way to connect with your Cal Poly colleagues for mutual support and rich, caring human contact.
Meeting Dates & Times:
- Tuesdays (12:10-1 pm) Jan 18, 25, Feb 1
OR - Wednesdays (12:10-1 pm); Feb 9, 16, 23
Meeting Location: Online in Zoom (link will be sent to registrants)
Facilitator: Dr. Patrick O'Sullivan, CTLT Director
A "Mindful educator" selection
Cheating Lessons: Learning From Academic Dishonesty
by James M. Lang
Few topics generate as much passionate debate among university educators as student cheating, especially as higher ed instruction has moved online in academic year 2020-2021. Faculty often want to learn effective methods for "catching cheaters" and a sizable software industry has emerged offering high-tech "solutions" in response.
Author James M. Lang takes a different approach: He views instances of cheating as opportunities for student learning as well as instructor reflection about their pedagogical practices. His take-home point is that the most effective strategies that we can use to reduce cheating also happen to be methods that improve both students' learning and instructors' teaching.
Meeting Dates & Times:
- Thursdays, 12:10-11:00pm, January 13, 20, 27, and February 3
Meeting Location: Online in Zoom (link will be sent to registrants)
Facilitator: Dr. Dianna Winslow, CTLT Assistant Director
A "Mastery Teaching" selection
