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Teachin' It!: Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community College Students
"How can I tailor instruction to redress the wide variety of gaps in student content knowledge and college skills while simultaneously holding all students to high academic standards?" "How can I create inclusive classrooms where the diverse perspectives and approaches of all students—especially those from backgrounds different than my own—are illuminated and valued?" Teachin’ It! is a hands-on guide to cutting-edge research and classroom strategies that redress the graduation gap in community and open-access colleges. Drawing from the author’s 30 years in the education field as a math and college skills instructor, teacher educator, and researcher, this book describes an asset-based model that bolsters the success of all students, especially those underrepresented with 4-year degrees. These include students of color, first-generation college students, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities. Readers will discover new strategies to create equitable, engaging, interactive classroom environments where students from all backgrounds feel safe to take risks, make mistakes, share their unique approaches and perspectives, and develop their own identities as powerful lifelong learners. Topics include inquiry-based learning, implicit bias, growth mindset, stereotype threat, scaffolding, college and career skills, and a community of learners. Book
208 pages, Paperback
Published June 28, 2019
6 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Felicia Darling
2 books8 followersFelicia is a DEIA & Motivational Speaker, Equity Researcher, Illustrator of Professor Funnies, Social Justice Math Educator, Author of Creative Non-fiction, Yoga Instructor (soon), Mindfulness Meditation Leader, and Mental Health Advocate. Currently, she teaches social justice precalculus at UC Berkeley and math and college skills in Spanish and English at SRJC.
We don’t have to wait until we are perfect to make the world a more just and compassionate place. In Empathy Unchained: How imperfect beings create a perfect world, Felicia shares her own and others’ stories about healing past hurts to become more humane beings. Her Empathy Unchained DEIA Conversation Deck helps organizations to engage in constructive conversations to make sustainable diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility changes. In Teachin’ It! Breakout Moves that Break Down Barriers for Community College Students, published by Teachers College Press in 2019, Felicia highlights innovative ideas for facilitating inclusive, equitable, active learning. Felicia illustrates all her books with insightful, unhinged cartoons from her Professor Funnies©.
Felicia has a PhD in Education from Stanford University and a Fulbright Scholarship for her ethnographic study that explored innovative approaches to solving math problems in a Yucatec Maya community in México. Also, Felicia is a first-generation college student who was formerly homeless. Her work has been highlighted in Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, and WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
We don’t have to wait until we are perfect to make the world a more just and compassionate place. In Empathy Unchained: How imperfect beings create a perfect world, Felicia shares her own and others’ stories about healing past hurts to become more humane beings. Her Empathy Unchained DEIA Conversation Deck helps organizations to engage in constructive conversations to make sustainable diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility changes. In Teachin’ It! Breakout Moves that Break Down Barriers for Community College Students, published by Teachers College Press in 2019, Felicia highlights innovative ideas for facilitating inclusive, equitable, active learning. Felicia illustrates all her books with insightful, unhinged cartoons from her Professor Funnies©.
Felicia has a PhD in Education from Stanford University and a Fulbright Scholarship for her ethnographic study that explored innovative approaches to solving math problems in a Yucatec Maya community in México. Also, Felicia is a first-generation college student who was formerly homeless. Her work has been highlighted in Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, and WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
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January 18, 2023
Teachin’ It: Breakout Moves That Break Down Barriers for Community by Felicia Darling c. 2019 (165 pages—Teachers College Press)
Key Quotations
• “Several studies underscore the [impact] of instructor bias. For example, campuses where there is discourse around blaming students for their failure tend to have increased numbers of lower performing students (Diamond, 2008)” (25).
• “Telomere research explains why instructors should not focus primarily on emphasizing grit and effort, but instead should remove barriers for students. A telomere is a protective casing at the end of each strand of our DNA. Telomeres are indicators of aging. As we age, our telomeres naturally shorten, and shortened telomeres predict greater incidences of disease and an earlier death. Exposure to chronic stress can precipitate the shortening of telomeres (Mathur et al., 2016). Recent studies indicate that the telomeres of students who are either Black or have lived in poverty are shorter than those of students who are White or middle class (Geronimus et al., 2015) . . . there are measurable, physical costs for students who navigate a system with built-in barriers to success: shorter telomeres. What is even more disturbing is that Black or poor students who are the high achievers in the families have even shorter telomeres than that of their lower-achieving siblings (Miller et al., 2015). This is not true for affluent and White students. This means that although students who achieve against all odds are to be commended, they do so at a great personal cost. Therefore, teaching marginalized students how to work harder is not a great strategy. However, disrupting systemic inequity at the classroom level is a high-impact strategy . . .” (26).
• “Several studies found that when students possess growth mindsets they perform better in math, science, and English (Boaler, 2016; Good et al., 2003; Aronson et al., 2002). In addition, several studies have found that when growth mindset interventions are used and students shift their mindset toward a growth mindset, then their achievement improves, sometimes for years after the short intervention (Blackwell et al., 2007; Boaler, 2016). The following four messages are communicated in all growth mindset interventions (1) all mathematicians, scientists, physicists, or writers struggle to be good at their crafts; (2) mistakes, revisions, drafts, exploring, taking risks, and experimenting are all a natural part of the learning process and build new neural connections; (3) expanding effort while engaging in challenging, complex tasks forms new neural connections and creates brain plasticity; and (4) we can get better at anything by expanding effort and developing new strategies” (29).
• “Struggling and expending effort are natural parts of learning and create greater neural connections. In general, norms should emphasize the process and not the destination. Growth mindset norms communicate that all experts make a lot of mistakes and struggle on their journey to becoming experts. Norms should communicate that unique approaches are valued. Norms should emphasize that students in the room are practitioners in the field. A community of learners, in terms of growth mindset, could be a community of practitioners” (29).
• Four Everyday Moves that Alleviate Stereotype Threat
o Values Affirmation Exercises: 20 minutes—Write three core values that are important; explain their relationship to learning. “According to Cohen et al., ‘Self-affirmations, by buttressing self-worth, can alleviate the stress arising in threatening performance situations.’ Self-affirmations also can help students enhance their feelings of belonging” (40-41).
o Three-Tiered Feedback: Claude Steele’s wise feedback is a “three-tiered feedback move that alleviates stereotype threat and motivates students to excel (Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999). The three tiers are: (1) providing critical feedback; (2) holding the student to the same high standards as everyone else; (3) and communicating ‘I believe you can do it’” (41).
o Avoid Comfort-Oriented Praise: In this approach instructors “implemented ‘kind’ strategies like assigning less homework or calling on the students less. Students perceived the instructor as having lower expectations for them . . . and thus became demotivated. Examples of comfort-oriented praise are ‘Not everyone is a math person’ or ‘You’re great in other subjects and have other talents’” (42).
o Normalizing Apprehensions: “One study found that Black college students tended to interpret adverse experiences in college as indications that they did not belong in an academic setting (Walton & Cohen, 2007). The Walton and Cohen study found that Blacks, but not Whites, benefitted from a normalizing apprehension intervention, which nurtured social belonging to reduce stereotype threat. In this study, students were told two things: (1) having some tough days at college is normal, and all students, regardless of race, experience it when transitioning to college; and (2) these issues tend to get better over time” (43).
• “In behaviorist classrooms, students sit in straight rows, and the instructor focuses primarily on the lecture style of instruction, known as direct instruction” (52).
• “Based on emerging neuroscience and cognition research, K-16 education is shifting away from the behaviorist approach. Education leaders advocate more constructivist (Piaget, 1952) and socioculturalist (Vygotsky, 1978) approaches. You may already be teaching with both a constructivist and a socioculturalist approach when you use group-work, facilitate classroom discussions, tap into students’ prior knowledge, ask probing questions, assign projects, and provide varied assessments. / Constructivism is a theory that learning is a complex process in which learners construct knowledge by drawing on and building upon their past experiences and prior knowledge” (52-53).
• “A socioculturalist instructional approach interfaces kindly with the constructivist approach. Socioculturalism asserts that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition; learning is social. In addition, it asserts that prior knowledge is not just prior content knowledge, but the sum of all the student’s real-life home and cultural experiences” (54).
• “Another concept key for inquiry-based learning is Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development. ZPD is the gap between where the student’s independent skills are right now in terms of their mastery of the content and where their independent skills will be after their learning has been supported with facilitating and ‘scaffolding’ provided by an instructor. Scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques that instructors implement to stair-step students toward independent mastery of learning” (56-57).
• “The zone of actual development (ZAD) is a student’s comfort zone, where a student can already perform a task independently without the support of an instructor” (57).
• “The zone of eventual development (ZED) is where a student cannot grasp the concepts yet—even with facilitation and support from the instructor” (57).
• “The two important assumptions of Sweller’s cognitive load theory are (1) meaning is personally constructed by the learner and is influenced by prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs; and (2) students are more likely to store information into long-term memory if cognitive load is reduced and the material is connected to their prior knowledge” (61).
• “Well-designed inquiry-based learning uses high-impact, interactive tasks, productive conversations, and group work to help student co-construct new knowledge. Some terms that describe this type of social constructivist learning are active learning, inquiry-based learning, complex instruction collaborative learning, or project-based learning” (71).
• When trying to master course content “Bilingual students build more neural connections than monolingual students as a result of engaging in more cognitively demanding tasks, and it’s no surprise that bilingual students have greater executive functioning in some areas of the brain” (78).
• “Group-worthy, high-leverage tasks have these qualities in common. They:
o invite students to communicate their unique approaches, perspectives, and reasoning
o are open-ended
o have low floors and high ceilings
o have multiple entry points and solutions
o have multiple ways to access success
o involve conversations where students build on one another’s knowledge
o require students to justify their reasoning, approaches, and assumptions
o activate students’ prior knowledge
o have real-life applications” (84).
• “Some open-ended probing questions instructors use are:
o Why do you think this is the case?
o Why did you approach the solution that way?
o Why do you agree or disagree with that approach or way of thinking?
o Could you tell me a little more about what you were thinking here?
o Could you propose an alternative meaning, approach, or solution?
o Could you tell me why this approach would or would not work?
o Can you show me how you arrived at your present conclusion?
o What would you have to change in order for . . . ?
o Where do you think you might be struggling the most?
o How do your assumptions influence your approach?
o How can you justify your reasoning?
o Can you generalize a pattern?
o Can you compare those two points of view?
o What is the muddiest point or the clearest point so far?” (85).
• “Duckworth’s research is commendable, however, its applications may not necessarily be universal. Duckworth’s foundational research was conducted primarily with privileged populations . . . not with truly marginalized populations . . . Based on Duckworth’s grit theory, instead of having educational institutions examine their own practices and policies, or hold themselves accountable for any inadequacies, students who face challenges would be expected to use grit as a means of overcoming the challenges on their own” (109-110).
• “Despite the best of intentions, terms like racism or White privilege often alienate [people] . . . and tend to influence defensive postures that are counterproductive . . .” (111)
• “Color blindness is often disingenuous and may make it much easier for someone to turn a blind eye to racial injustices . . .” (112).
• “Microaggressions are divided into four categories (1) microassault (e.g., name calling), often done consciously; (2) microinsult (e.g., demeaning someone’s racial heritage), which is often unconscious; (3) microinvalidation (e.g., complimenting someone for speaking good English); and (4) environmental macro-micro aggressions (e.g., naming all university buildings after White males)” (113).
• “Stereotype threat is a situational condition that occurs because of self-perception of conforming to negative stereotypes . . . Academics responsible for evaluating the performance of marginalized students on examinations should be aware of social circumstances that influence outcomes of educational assessments and take measures to minimize self-defeating practices” (114).
• “Renowned sociologist W.E.B. DuBois (1903) introduced America to the concept of double consciousness in his seminal publication . . . The Souls of Black Folk. He describes the conflict that Blacks typically experience when coming to terms with two different identities: their Black identity, which is derived from a self-perception, and their identity as an American citizen, shaped mostly by anti-Black sentiments and social stigma. According to DuBois, because the two identities are mutually exclusive, there is always an ongoing struggle to negotiate the conflict that exists between them” (114).
Key Quotations
• “Several studies underscore the [impact] of instructor bias. For example, campuses where there is discourse around blaming students for their failure tend to have increased numbers of lower performing students (Diamond, 2008)” (25).
• “Telomere research explains why instructors should not focus primarily on emphasizing grit and effort, but instead should remove barriers for students. A telomere is a protective casing at the end of each strand of our DNA. Telomeres are indicators of aging. As we age, our telomeres naturally shorten, and shortened telomeres predict greater incidences of disease and an earlier death. Exposure to chronic stress can precipitate the shortening of telomeres (Mathur et al., 2016). Recent studies indicate that the telomeres of students who are either Black or have lived in poverty are shorter than those of students who are White or middle class (Geronimus et al., 2015) . . . there are measurable, physical costs for students who navigate a system with built-in barriers to success: shorter telomeres. What is even more disturbing is that Black or poor students who are the high achievers in the families have even shorter telomeres than that of their lower-achieving siblings (Miller et al., 2015). This is not true for affluent and White students. This means that although students who achieve against all odds are to be commended, they do so at a great personal cost. Therefore, teaching marginalized students how to work harder is not a great strategy. However, disrupting systemic inequity at the classroom level is a high-impact strategy . . .” (26).
• “Several studies found that when students possess growth mindsets they perform better in math, science, and English (Boaler, 2016; Good et al., 2003; Aronson et al., 2002). In addition, several studies have found that when growth mindset interventions are used and students shift their mindset toward a growth mindset, then their achievement improves, sometimes for years after the short intervention (Blackwell et al., 2007; Boaler, 2016). The following four messages are communicated in all growth mindset interventions (1) all mathematicians, scientists, physicists, or writers struggle to be good at their crafts; (2) mistakes, revisions, drafts, exploring, taking risks, and experimenting are all a natural part of the learning process and build new neural connections; (3) expanding effort while engaging in challenging, complex tasks forms new neural connections and creates brain plasticity; and (4) we can get better at anything by expanding effort and developing new strategies” (29).
• “Struggling and expending effort are natural parts of learning and create greater neural connections. In general, norms should emphasize the process and not the destination. Growth mindset norms communicate that all experts make a lot of mistakes and struggle on their journey to becoming experts. Norms should communicate that unique approaches are valued. Norms should emphasize that students in the room are practitioners in the field. A community of learners, in terms of growth mindset, could be a community of practitioners” (29).
• Four Everyday Moves that Alleviate Stereotype Threat
o Values Affirmation Exercises: 20 minutes—Write three core values that are important; explain their relationship to learning. “According to Cohen et al., ‘Self-affirmations, by buttressing self-worth, can alleviate the stress arising in threatening performance situations.’ Self-affirmations also can help students enhance their feelings of belonging” (40-41).
o Three-Tiered Feedback: Claude Steele’s wise feedback is a “three-tiered feedback move that alleviates stereotype threat and motivates students to excel (Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999). The three tiers are: (1) providing critical feedback; (2) holding the student to the same high standards as everyone else; (3) and communicating ‘I believe you can do it’” (41).
o Avoid Comfort-Oriented Praise: In this approach instructors “implemented ‘kind’ strategies like assigning less homework or calling on the students less. Students perceived the instructor as having lower expectations for them . . . and thus became demotivated. Examples of comfort-oriented praise are ‘Not everyone is a math person’ or ‘You’re great in other subjects and have other talents’” (42).
o Normalizing Apprehensions: “One study found that Black college students tended to interpret adverse experiences in college as indications that they did not belong in an academic setting (Walton & Cohen, 2007). The Walton and Cohen study found that Blacks, but not Whites, benefitted from a normalizing apprehension intervention, which nurtured social belonging to reduce stereotype threat. In this study, students were told two things: (1) having some tough days at college is normal, and all students, regardless of race, experience it when transitioning to college; and (2) these issues tend to get better over time” (43).
• “In behaviorist classrooms, students sit in straight rows, and the instructor focuses primarily on the lecture style of instruction, known as direct instruction” (52).
• “Based on emerging neuroscience and cognition research, K-16 education is shifting away from the behaviorist approach. Education leaders advocate more constructivist (Piaget, 1952) and socioculturalist (Vygotsky, 1978) approaches. You may already be teaching with both a constructivist and a socioculturalist approach when you use group-work, facilitate classroom discussions, tap into students’ prior knowledge, ask probing questions, assign projects, and provide varied assessments. / Constructivism is a theory that learning is a complex process in which learners construct knowledge by drawing on and building upon their past experiences and prior knowledge” (52-53).
• “A socioculturalist instructional approach interfaces kindly with the constructivist approach. Socioculturalism asserts that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition; learning is social. In addition, it asserts that prior knowledge is not just prior content knowledge, but the sum of all the student’s real-life home and cultural experiences” (54).
• “Another concept key for inquiry-based learning is Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development. ZPD is the gap between where the student’s independent skills are right now in terms of their mastery of the content and where their independent skills will be after their learning has been supported with facilitating and ‘scaffolding’ provided by an instructor. Scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques that instructors implement to stair-step students toward independent mastery of learning” (56-57).
• “The zone of actual development (ZAD) is a student’s comfort zone, where a student can already perform a task independently without the support of an instructor” (57).
• “The zone of eventual development (ZED) is where a student cannot grasp the concepts yet—even with facilitation and support from the instructor” (57).
• “The two important assumptions of Sweller’s cognitive load theory are (1) meaning is personally constructed by the learner and is influenced by prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs; and (2) students are more likely to store information into long-term memory if cognitive load is reduced and the material is connected to their prior knowledge” (61).
• “Well-designed inquiry-based learning uses high-impact, interactive tasks, productive conversations, and group work to help student co-construct new knowledge. Some terms that describe this type of social constructivist learning are active learning, inquiry-based learning, complex instruction collaborative learning, or project-based learning” (71).
• When trying to master course content “Bilingual students build more neural connections than monolingual students as a result of engaging in more cognitively demanding tasks, and it’s no surprise that bilingual students have greater executive functioning in some areas of the brain” (78).
• “Group-worthy, high-leverage tasks have these qualities in common. They:
o invite students to communicate their unique approaches, perspectives, and reasoning
o are open-ended
o have low floors and high ceilings
o have multiple entry points and solutions
o have multiple ways to access success
o involve conversations where students build on one another’s knowledge
o require students to justify their reasoning, approaches, and assumptions
o activate students’ prior knowledge
o have real-life applications” (84).
• “Some open-ended probing questions instructors use are:
o Why do you think this is the case?
o Why did you approach the solution that way?
o Why do you agree or disagree with that approach or way of thinking?
o Could you tell me a little more about what you were thinking here?
o Could you propose an alternative meaning, approach, or solution?
o Could you tell me why this approach would or would not work?
o Can you show me how you arrived at your present conclusion?
o What would you have to change in order for . . . ?
o Where do you think you might be struggling the most?
o How do your assumptions influence your approach?
o How can you justify your reasoning?
o Can you generalize a pattern?
o Can you compare those two points of view?
o What is the muddiest point or the clearest point so far?” (85).
• “Duckworth’s research is commendable, however, its applications may not necessarily be universal. Duckworth’s foundational research was conducted primarily with privileged populations . . . not with truly marginalized populations . . . Based on Duckworth’s grit theory, instead of having educational institutions examine their own practices and policies, or hold themselves accountable for any inadequacies, students who face challenges would be expected to use grit as a means of overcoming the challenges on their own” (109-110).
• “Despite the best of intentions, terms like racism or White privilege often alienate [people] . . . and tend to influence defensive postures that are counterproductive . . .” (111)
• “Color blindness is often disingenuous and may make it much easier for someone to turn a blind eye to racial injustices . . .” (112).
• “Microaggressions are divided into four categories (1) microassault (e.g., name calling), often done consciously; (2) microinsult (e.g., demeaning someone’s racial heritage), which is often unconscious; (3) microinvalidation (e.g., complimenting someone for speaking good English); and (4) environmental macro-micro aggressions (e.g., naming all university buildings after White males)” (113).
• “Stereotype threat is a situational condition that occurs because of self-perception of conforming to negative stereotypes . . . Academics responsible for evaluating the performance of marginalized students on examinations should be aware of social circumstances that influence outcomes of educational assessments and take measures to minimize self-defeating practices” (114).
• “Renowned sociologist W.E.B. DuBois (1903) introduced America to the concept of double consciousness in his seminal publication . . . The Souls of Black Folk. He describes the conflict that Blacks typically experience when coming to terms with two different identities: their Black identity, which is derived from a self-perception, and their identity as an American citizen, shaped mostly by anti-Black sentiments and social stigma. According to DuBois, because the two identities are mutually exclusive, there is always an ongoing struggle to negotiate the conflict that exists between them” (114).
September 28, 2019
There was a lot I absolutely loved about this book, especially the first half to 2/3. Towards the end it got a little repetitive, though, and I would've liked it to go a little more in depth on some of the strategies only discussed on the website. I recognize that it was written by someone who has the luxury of developing her own strategies for grading, including giving points for participation and other student contributions beyond tests, and that it also focuses on classes that have a smaller number of students and can accommodate a lot of group work, but as someone who teaches 50-60 students in a very prescribed curriculum that bases grades entirely on test scores, I wished the book went into more ways to incorporate some of the overall philosophies in courses like that.
I have been utilizing some of the strategies with my nursing students this fall, especially with my clinical group, and I hope to find more ways to use them in the future.
I have been utilizing some of the strategies with my nursing students this fall, especially with my clinical group, and I hope to find more ways to use them in the future.
November 1, 2019
Great overview of a bunch of different facets of education. I wish there was a section dedicated to further reading for individuals who would like to jump into any of these particular subjects beyond this book.
February 12, 2020
A lot to unpack. But there's a lot our students carry.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews