May 26; Looking to May 31

Looking at Angela's stenography of our May 26 class--http://castilans2011.blogspot.com/2011/05/may-26-2011-notes.html--it seems that much of what I could say here is moot. I'll keep it short.

We're handily combining theory and practice. I saw this expressed poignantly in your Reading Studio group discussions, when facilitators asked elicitive questions as "students" put together a reading of the chapter; and, in turn, encouraged students to consider what their self-theories were, how they've changed, how they act on those theories, and what actions aid self-regulation and learning. Of course, this was usually done comfortably, informally, and without specialized language. That is, though goals were discussed, I rarely heard the word "goal." This seems to be one of those choices we ask facilitators to make to increase candor and safety in Studio groups. I also saw that facilitators had recourse to "protocols" as a last resort when dealing with difficult students. This came up in our discussion, and it was reiterated that we should revise protocols; yet, more importantly, we want part of Facilitator Training to include facilitators writing their own scripts and protocols, devising solutions for what to do when the facilitator "gets stuck." This is great studio work because--rather than imposing our own experience, "accurate" though it may be--it allows the facilitators to utilize and pool their own experience and knowledge about how incoming freshmen will work in groups. This should allow them to apply what they learn in training while serving to empower them as facilitators, as well as improve those protocols.

We reviewed our assigned elements of the Program, identifying points for revision. From these suggestions, a few principles emerged that will guide the actual revision that will be assigned as we head into the next week.
1) Emphasizing critical awareness and pedagogy. This should be emphasized in our revisions of facilitator training and echoed in our "Objective."
2) Student focus of Studio. Ditto above.
3) Emphasizing "safety" and candor thereby in Studio groups. In keeping with Thirdspace theory, we're outside the classroom, helping students become aware.

We finished by signing up to revise the Language Strategies. Please do this with your ideal in mind: revise it to be exactly what you want it to be, considering all that you know and feel about studio so far. Revising this language is for you to gain ownership of the space, to figure out and enact what you really care about. On Tuesday, we'll bring our revisions to the group to engage a conceptual discussion about these revisions to determine our agreed-upon principles before we can revise the actual language.

For Tuesday, May 31:
Language Strategy revisions (see above)
Schunk and Zimmerman: Ch. 14 & 15, 4, and 5