Wyoming Community College, University and High School Educators Gather in Cheyenne to Share Across Learning Communities
On May 13th, 2024, educators from our current and future inclusive excellence learning communities came together for a symposium held in Cheyenne, WY! With a goal of further nurturing relationships between our communities, we kicked off the event with dinner and Ice-Breaker Bingo at Little America! Learning community members traveled for as long as 7 hours to get to Cheyenne and represented every one of the five community colleges in our network: Northwest College (NWC), Laramie County Community College (LCCC), Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC), Eastern Wyoming College (EWC) and Casper College! Partner educators from UW and Rock Springs High School also joined!
We had a full day of learning on May 14th with the goal of showcasing the many ways in which educators have integrated inclusive practices into their teaching and leadership. The day kicked off with Rachel sharing her narrative entitled The Wyoming Inclusive Excellence Initiative: A Tale of Building Relationships. She was followed by NWC Biology Professor Eric Atkinson who melded poetry and pedagogy in a session (entitled Eric's GYE Clock) that epitomized inclusive teaching practices recommended by Sarah Bunnell, Sheila Jaswal and Megan Lyster in their book Being Human in STEM [HSTEM]: Partnering With Students to Shape Inclusive Practices and Communities. Deepthi Amarasuriya (NWC Physics) then shared her “Layered Approach”, a pedagogy that showcases Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The NWC educators’ oral presentations were rounded out by Lisa Smith (NWC Institutional Analysis) who made us all notice and wonder about nuances in retention data across diverse NWC courses.
The NWC presentations were followed by reflective dialogue during which all attendees made connections between the morning presentations and together synthesized themes. The dialogues centered around the importance of authenticity, vulnerability and storytelling in inclusive teaching as well as the power of relationships and community in fighting feelings of isolation for both faculty and students.
Pior to lunch hour, Heather Talbott (LCCC) gave everyone a lens into her integration of inclusive pedagogies in her biology courses. Amongst many things, Heather spoke about the power of Place-based, experiential approaches to enable students who focus on agriculture to realize that their lived experiences are a source of and foundation for building biology knowledge! After Heather’s session, attendees took time to write reflectively in their journals, further enforcing their own iterative learning.
The lunch keynote was delivered by Norberto Orellana who reminded us of the difference a single educator can make by simply noticing the potential that a student has and by contrast, how a mentor can deter a dedicated student by failing to appreciate that students’ work. He encouraged us to become meteoric through persistence and grit!
Pior to lunch hour, Heather Talbott (LCCC) gave everyone a lens into her integration of inclusive pedagogies in her biology courses. Amongst many things, Heather spoke about the power of Place-based, experiential approaches to enable students who focus on agriculture to realize that their lived experiences are a source of and foundation for building biology knowledge! After Heather’s session, attendees took time to write reflectively in their journals, further enforcing their own iterative learning.
The lunch keynote was delivered by Norberto Orellana who reminded us of the difference a single educator can make by simply noticing the potential that a student has and by contrast, how a mentor can deter a dedicated student by failing to appreciate that students’ work. He encouraged us to become meteoric through persistence and grit!
Our post-lunch digestion was aided by Vicky Mayfield who inspired us to consider a proposal for a community college summer institute in her presentation entitled Can You Imagine?. At this proposed weeklong institute, community college students would learn the science of learning and engage in authentic interdisciplinary problem solving. This problem solving would involve real research and be mentored by UW students who had transferred from community colleges. Vicky’s session was met with high support from her fellow educators who committed to assist with recruiting, planning & implementation and even finding funding sources.
In the afternoon, Erin Nitschke, Austin Conklin, Eric Atkinson, Sunnie Lew, Dacia DeBock, Tim Glatzer, Allan Childs, Jasmine Varos, Sherri Warren and Aubrey Edwards shared posters or multimodal exhibits and the glorious purr of conversation filled the room. Each exhibit shared a story of implementing inclusive pedagogies into teaching and leadership across diverse contexts, from gateway Information Technology (Jasmine Varos) to UW Foundation media work (Sunnie Lew). Please consider visiting this virtual showcase of the posters.
The newest learning community in our Wyoming network is the WWCC, Rock Springs High School and UW community. As the second to last event of the day, these educators Sarah Pauley, Josh Holmes, Peggy Cheney, Sabrina White, Katrina Marcos, Christi Boggs and Deb Jensen engaged in a Fish Bowl in which Rachel asked questions about their dreams for inclusive excellence work and they discussed these while members of other learning communities listened and considered how best to share back what they were hearing. These educators spoke about their dreams to support minoritized Rock Springs High School students in endeavors such as Wyoming Science Fair and how to reach a goal of demography in upper division math and science courses that looks more like that which we see in the high school.
Our day ended with a beautifully summarizing session led by Sandy Goheen-Smith (UW’s Division of Kinesiology and Health and NWC/UW LC member) who helped us to recognize how our implementation of evidence-based practices in our classrooms would form and shape the futures our students!
Our day ended with a beautifully summarizing session led by Sandy Goheen-Smith (UW’s Division of Kinesiology and Health and NWC/UW LC member) who helped us to recognize how our implementation of evidence-based practices in our classrooms would form and shape the futures our students!