EarthDance Apprenticeship Day 1 - April 14, 2015

My first day as an apprentice at EarthDay Farms impacted me in unexpected ways.  I had forgotten how much I loved being on a farm.  Walking through the fields, hula-hoeing weeds from radish seedlings (yes, as hard as it sounds), transplanting leeks and planting arugula...all of these were delightful.  Intersperse these tasks with learning from our fartners (farm partners - gotta love that name) about water management, contours of the land (key line?) and tool usage helped me realize how much I love learning.  The fartner (how often can I use this moniker?) candor put all of fresh farmies at ease and allowed for easy conversation.  It was a delightful day, I'm yearning to be back there right now!

Monica explaining the functionality of the Yang seeder.

Happy Farmie

Seedling leeks getting ready for their next home.

Dropped leeks ready to be planted.

Prepared homes

Beauties...

Learning about Sustainable Agriculture

My definition for Sustainable Agriculture - "Farming/gardening that returns the land to it's original state in the long term, profits the farmer and creates a locally based, self-reliant food community."  Fresh after completing my first online course from SARE (Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education), I realize how very little I know about sustainable agriculture.   Great place to start.

Speaking of starting...I had my first in-person conversation with Sara and Jamie, the curly-headed sisters who started Fair Shares 8 seasons ago last week. It was delightful to learn their history, joys and pains and entry barriers.  We walked away with new insights, creative ideas but no answers...yet!

Great Discoveries!

In my continued search to actualize my lifelong dream of feeding the hungry, I was connected to a gentleman in Memphis, by a friend in St Louis.  Noah Campbell of Memphis Center for Food and Faith, Bring it Food Hub and Grow Memphis, and a Food Missionary, showed me a new approach to providing access to good food.  In a conversation this week with Noah, he explained the different levels or "bases" of hunger relief.

Connecting local congregations to their immediate neighborhoods is the beginning.  Teaching interested congregations how to make good food choices allows for grafting in of local farmers, sourcing food to your congregants, church kitchen, etc and keeping profit in the local economy is the home run.  

I'm excited for a couple of reasons.  First, Noah is a great teacher (and hopefully a soon to be mentor) and he has successfully launched this idea in Memphis.  Secondly, it brings together two things very dear to me...my faith and food.

Noah also shared work from Rev. Nurya Love Parish (great name, isn't it?).  She drafted a composite of the Christian Food Movement through her blog, Churchwork.  Her guide is the beginning of identifying the disciples living their faith through action for a sustainable food system.  

Noah encouraged me to find online education about sustainable agriculture and economics, as well as food production ethics.  EXCITED! 

Feeding 5,000 every day...DC Central Kitchen

While in Washington, DC a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I visited DC Central Kitchen.  Listening to the Food Tank seminar several weeks earlier, I'd heard Mike Curtain explain DCCK and I wanted to learn more.  Visiting the kitchen on Friday, February 6, we saw food recovery in action.  Here is how it works: DCCK gathers food donations from local sources:  farmers, wholesale grocers, anyone who has good food to share.  They employ graduates of their Culinary Job Training program to guide the fleet of volunteers to prepare 5, 000 meals a day that are sent out to food pantries in the area.  

DCCK also purchases food for to create Healthy School Food which is distributed to schools. We heard about how they supply fresh fruits and vegs to corner markets, as part of their Healthy Corners initiative and saw several the next day as we were walking.  The key to making this work, incenting business owners of the corner markets with $250 credit to try out the program.

DCCK has so much figured out...I hope to add similar features to the programs I support here in St Louis.

Farmworkers Feed Us

Farm workers harvesting tomatoes in Florida make $42 a day on average and work a 16 hour day, this is about $2.60 an hour.  My dad, owns his own farm and works 14 hour days, and makes about double that an hour, alowoing for his farm expenses.  

Why the comparison?  Last night, we saw the film, Food Chains.  Learning about the disparity for the farmworkers was revolting.  In Napa Valley, farmworkers sleep outside in self-constructed makeshift dwellings due to high rent in the valley.  They do this if they cannot find suitable housing which involves driving for 2 hours to work.  Suitable is 15 people per building with few bedrooms.  These homeless, hard workers pluck grapes for vineyards that sell wine for hundreds of dollars each.  Rather than summarize the film here, I encourage you to see it.

Viewing this film allowed Glen and I (both farm kids whose parents still work/live on farms) to see similarities of these farmworkers and our parents.  Both work hard outside everyday, not meandering around to see what needs to be done, but rather moving fast from one job to the next and running into problems along the way.  They sacrifice their comfort to the elements depending on the sason - heat and humidity, wind and rain, snow and dampness.  Neither control how much they are paid for their hard work.  Yet the industry their toil supports makes billions of dollars and nourishes our nation.

Dad going for a different tool as he and Grandpa fix the corn planters.  Circa 1965.

Why?  For the farmworkers in California and Florida, Food Chains explains that there are four mighty Supermarkets who control the wages of the farm workers.

For our parents, the Chicago Board of Trade decides the price of corn or soybeans, dependant upon the crop yields and market needs.  In the end, its investors who are making money from the hard work of our parents.  Investors that never face the dark mornings of frigid cold or the intense humidity midday midfield.

What can I do in my own power to fight this?  For the Farmworker, I can begin by supporting Fair Food, a campaign to create Fair Food agreements with food retailers as a first step.   At almost 80, my dad works like a man 1/3 his age and loves his work.  He doesn't need to fight for him, but I can embrace farming in my own urban setting.  

Food Clusters...for our U Hills community?

Reading about the Northern Colorado Food Clusters today piqued my curiousity...would this make a difference in my neighborhood?  Does my neighborhood need one? In my quest to help/teach others to grow/cook and eat good food, does a cluster make sense?  Further research deemed.

Scaffolding the Learner

My June and early July were spent modifying an Instructor led class on Financial Acumen I’d written two years ago.  While others may yawn or roll their eyes at this topic, I find numbers and any way of looking at them intriguing.  Weaving concepts together to create understanding for new managers and supervisors was revealing to me.  I realized that there were foundational elements that needed to be solid before going on.  Since our goal was to teach them how to manage their costs, they had to have a solid understanding of how Labor per Stat was generated before learning how to analyze what a Labor per Stat variance to budget meant to their department.  These learners were not hired for their financial prowess, but because they were good nurses and clinician who know how to care for patients.   

Creating a solid grounding to scaffold upon was key.  Ever since I began teaching, scaffolding has been a part of my methodology.  It slipped away when I began designing learning for adults, especially on topics like Intravenous catheters and helipad safety because I was so unfamiliar with the context and content.  The stellar experts who supported the project explained the material well, which allowed me to build the content structure solid. 

After seeing the different results in these learners compared to the previous audiences, I realized how the scaffolding methodology had proven to be successful.  I also found two related blog posts on the importance of understanding one topic thoroughly before going on to the next one.  The author of “Alice in Wonderland”, Lewis Carroll wrote another book that didn’t get circulated as well as Alice.  It was titled a “Random Walk in Science” as he was actually a mathematician and logician.  In this book, Lewis explains how to learn, using the scaffolding methodology without calling it out.  Here he is speaking about reading a book and not going forward until you understand everything so far.

Don’t begin any fresh Chapter, or Section, until you are certain that you thoroughly understand the whole book up to that point, and that you have worked, correctly, most if not all of the examples which have been set. So long as you are conscious that all the land you have passed through is absolutely conquered, and that you are leaving no unsolved difficulties behind you, which will be sure to turn up again later on, your triumphal progress will be easy and delightful. Otherwise, you will find your state of puzzlement get worse and worse as you proceed, till you give up the whole thing in utter disgust.

Click on this link to read more from How to Learn by Lewis Carroll. 

Salmon Khan's Academy is founded on mastery-learning.  He believes strongly that you should not advance until you understand the current concept 100%.  Going on before you have 100% understanding creates gaps in your knowledge, that will cause failure going forward.  Click here to learn more about Salmon Khan’s ideas on mastery learning.

My next project is to take the Financial Acumen concepts and “Khan-academize” them into separate 5-7” chunks that break up the content in small sections for online delivery.  Stay tuned but before that, a little vacation time on the east coast!

Culturally competent ... what?

Cultural competency has been consuming most of my thinking capacity and I find it captivating. When I first heard of my new project, I wondered how I would develop an online course to teach how to be competent in culture.  What exactly does that look like?  After learning of the expectations, it was clear that no one is expected to become competent.  No, we are trying to change sensitivity towards others.  That's BIG!  

I met a gentleman, David Livermore, several summers ago during a seminar he held at our church.  His book, Leading with Cultural Intelligence helped me learn how sensitivity is changed in small degrees.  Inspiring.

Learning about world view, health literacy and medical interpreters has opened my eyes to new ideas.  One of the concepts a colleague shared with me was the idea of an "invisible backpack" and how being born into privilege (no matter what kind) keeps you from seeing it as a privilege and it becomes a right.

In addition to the rich teaching material, I'm able to experiment with another idea from my favorite learning blogger, Cathy Moore.   In her article titled "Throw them in the deep end" She explains that the common approach to online learning is to carefully show learners how to do something and only then they can be allowed to practice doing it.  She believes if you just throw them in the deep end, frustration and cognitive overload and squashed self-esteem will supposedly inhibit their learning.

However, several studies suggest that when we first challenge learners and then give them instruction, we can improve their ability to apply and extend their new knowledge. They could more effectively apply what they've learning to their job and to new situations.

So, this is my goal...use productive failure to teach people how to apply cultural competency sensitivity at work.

Narrating my Work - October 22, 2013

I taught a class today titled, "Conversations that Count"with a dear colleague, Cindy.  The two sections I managed were Feedback and Coaching, and Listening.  The learners were a great group, open to sharing and willing to listen to others. 

One of the articles I quoted was on the misconception of multitasking.  Patrick Gray wrote the article, The Lie of Multitasking, which Tech Republic published in mid August, 2013.

Gray explains that we used to think our brains operated like a computer processor. While a computer processor can give 50% of processing power to two tasks and manage both well, research is proving just the opposite about our brains. Unlike our computers, the human brain's capacity to process degrades significantly the more tasks it's trying to manage. 

Rather than a 50% reduction in performance when trying to do similar tasks at once, the reduction tends to be more in the area of 80-95%.

So, how to multitasking mavens seems to do it?  Gray found that people who can get a lot done well, are not multitasking.  Instead, they prioritize tasks by sequencing them logically and then focus with laser-like intensity on a single activity.

These are the people who are not mesmerized by their smartphones or stopping to open their email application every time the new email beep occurs.  Rather than performing several activities at once, they're able to focus on a single activity, then rapidly shift to the next activity.

So, this is my goal for the week - use laser-like focus on sequenced tasks, and throw multi-tasking to the wind!

Narrating My Work - October 8, 2013

Deep in Design Details

Cathy Moore has been inspiring me for months, now. It began with Action Mapping, a way to design eLearning with business goals in mind and job behaviors to change. 

It revolutionized how I approach instructional design. I discontinued beginning a course with an information dump (interesting, yet a glut of info) and moving towards comprehension checks.

Her next influence was on learner feedback.  Instead of "Yes, you are correct." or "No, did you consider...", Cathy encourages designers to make learners think. 

I created scenarios posing a situation to the learners which forced them to make a decision and then showed results of their decisions.  This technique worked well in an online course I developed for beginning Interns, teaching them troubleshooting with Central Venous Line Insertions.  Below, you can see the scenario and results. 

Now, I'm working on a cultural competency online course and will continue to use Cathy's fresh approach to allowing learners to think.

Whew!  First blog article in months!

Narrating My Work - April 19, 2013

Let me tell you a story...

I suffer from a disease.  I knew the hazards of letting it go undiagnosed.  I refused to believe my symptoms.

Walking into work, I'd have an idea of the work I needed to get done that day.  I'd log onto my computer, spend a few minutes taking care of loose ends and 35 minutes later, I'd be ready to go.  This was a mild symptom.

Waking up on the weekends, I'd conjure up a list long enough to keep 5 able-bodied people busy for 12 hours, expecting to work in a hike later on.

I have the multi-tasking syndrome, MTS.  This past week, I decided, ENOUGH! That, and I had a project with an extremely tight deadline as well as multiple other projects popping up, and a vacation day thrown in the mix.

Searching for help, I found two great assets.  Checklist:  Are you doing these five things to be more effective at work?  Eric Barker's first thing I tried this week, Establishing a Daily Ritual. The first step is:  My Morning Minutes. When I got to work, I made of list to to-do's for work and personal, I gave myself 15 minutes to prioritize emails and then shut down my email.  Bold, but it worked.  Next week, I'll try his 2nd step:  1 minute every hour: Refocus.

The other item I found on Slideshare, 26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20.   This beauty spoke clearly to me.  I choose two hacks to try this week.  I began writing down anything that distracts me from my work.  This was HUGE.  From google searches, new ideas, random thoughts.  I was amazed at the difference it made to write instead of do.

As Eric Barker and Etienne Garbugli both highlighted in their writing, making decisions is exhausting.  Being aware of my tendency to get off track and deciding not to go with it and stay on track, took determination. 

I don't want to multi-task like a big shot.  I want to be a single-treader leaving work on time with tasks completed.

Narrating My Work - New Beginnings

I believe I have successfully moved my "Narrating My Work" posts to this blog.  And now I need a new title...Narrating My Work with a date is boring.  Going forward the blog title will  reflect the subject.  

It was informative to scan the older posts as I pasted them in here to see the evolution of my posting.  Different stages included journaling my day, opining on favorite blogs, neglecting to post at all, and documenting theories I'd learned.

As I return to my keyboard, purposefully to share what I"m learning in my work currently, it could be summed up as: storytelling and feedback that shows results.  

Storytelling

If I asked you, "Who tells a good story?" you could provide a quick answer.  We remember effective storytellers because they tell good stories.  Good learning involves not just stories, but meaningful connections to stories.

As I was writing this, I was *pinged* by my Learnist account that someone had followed my Cooking for Storytelling board.

Feedback

"Yes, you are correct" or "No, not quite", are answers but not feedback. Cathy Moore states that feedback must show the result of the question, not a yes or no answer.  Her article on feedback explains an effective redirect or response to a question.  She explains how telling feedback isn't as memorable as showing feedback.

Storytelling and feedback are going to directly affect my next project, explaining to interns how to trouble shoot a central line catheter.  More to follow!

Narrating My Work - Donna Sunshine - January 1, 2013

My grandmother, Donna Sunshine, had a memorable New Year's Day tradition.  She encouraged us to a do a little something of everything you want to do all year on the first day of the year.  Her idea was a little laughing, a little sewing, a little sweeping, a little cooking, etc.  My day so far, a little coffee, a little reading by the fire, a little work, a little gardening...and next, a little blogging followed by a little walk outside.

When I started narrating my work last fall, it began as a documentation effort of the sites and blogs I visit.  It quickly became an easy way to save and access ideas or discussions I'd found, read and wanted to reread.  

Making myself write about what I've read has stirred up dreams of what path I could create for the next phase of my life.  

Narrating My Work - January 1, 2013

Today, I listened to a webinar by Daniel Pink, who latest book, To Sell is Human, is topping my stack of books to read.  He shared his favorite books, blogs and ideas.  Two of his ideas:  Mobile is bigger than we realize and What is college really for? are fodder for budding dreams of what's next for me.  

But before I go there, I want to share some of Daniel's insights.  He believes that subscription services will gain traction for busy, budding enthusiasts of almost lifestyle, sport or habit. He explained a subscription service for shavers, Dollar Shave Club.  You select the razor you like, pay a nominal monthly fee ($1 for the cheapest blade) and they send you one razor a month.  Here are some of the other sites he shared that interest me:
Farm to Baby  Grape Crate and Bark Box.  

Here are some of Mr Pink's favorite blogs, that I plan to investigate:
Farman Street - The blogger reads constantly and posts highlights.  An online Cliffnotes?
Barking Up the Wrong Tree - His latest post explains 3 ways to train your brain to be happy.
Springwise - The essential fix of entrepreneurial ideas
Arts Journal -  Daily arts in the news
Findings  - A daily round up of academic studies 

He also shared some of his favorite tools:  Dropbox, Jambone, Everyman headphones, Idonethis.com and Restickable Tabletop Easel Pads.  My favorite was Instapaper, a simple tool to save web pages for reading later.

Thank you, Daniel Pink, for sharing your insights.  Now, onto your book!

Narrating a Teacher's Work - Problem Based Learning - December 12, 2012

One recent (within the last five years) type of learning has been gaining attention.  Flipped Learning trades lectures (usually classroom-based) with homework.  Learners watch videos or lectures at home and then work through problems (do their homework) in class.  As a former classroom teacher, I never found homework valuable and assigned it only because it was a requirement from the Board of Education.  When I learned about Flipped Learning, I thought, aha!  Here it is!  A way to interact with learners when they were actually learning, this allowed for questions, explanations and immediate application of knowledge.

One of the classes I developed this year, Financial Acumen: Cost Management Tool used flipped learning to share our leaders' perspectives on Healthcare as a Business with individuals.  

Last week, I read this article by Shelley Wright, a high school teacher in Saskatchewan, Canada.  Ms Wright feels that juggling the traditional lecture around wasn't really creating any ownership for the learner. She found the power of learning is when students take responsibility for their own learning.  "New knowledge should be actively constructed", according to Shelley.

Just a few days before I found Ms Wright's article, I spoke with two med school students who were prepping for finals.  They explained how they were using Problem Based Learning in their classes instead of lecture-based instruction.  Students were owning their learning by devising their own plans to meet course objectives. Unfortunately, the tests were based on the older lecture-based model.  Not a model for success in this case, but hopefully the tests will be updated to reflect the learning.

I'm reworking the class I developed earlier this year on Financial Acumen. I'm planning to use a problem-based learning approach to see what I can do with managers who are learning how to manage their budgets.  

Narrating My Work - November 6, 2012

Still formulating my design approach for the Windows 7 course.  I'm enjoying the time I have to muddle through the course conceptually so by the time development starts, I've had time to become familiar with the topic from multiple angels. 

Armed with the intent to design for the affective domain, I incorporated a new type of design technique coined Action Mapping by it's creator, Cathy Moore.  The premise is to alleviate the grueling ADDIE process of analyzing needs, moving from design to development, then implementation and onto evaluation.  Action Mapping starts by identifying What business change do we want to create?  Once a measurable goal is determined, you map what actions people need to take in order to meet this goal.  Then for each action the learner needs to take, a practice activity is designed.  Lastly, you identify what information the learners must have to complete each practice activity.

Here's where I am with Action Mapping on the Windows 7 course.  The green triangles are the actions, the purple shapes - practice, and the blue rectangles, the information.

I met with the development team to share this model, and they were open to giving it a go. I've designed my first topic, using Favorites in Windows Explorer and we're meeting this afternoon to look at it together.

Next time, I'll look at another new methodology, SAM (Successive Approximation Model) which uses iterative, short work cycles to provide the best possible product.  Best get cracking at the book first!

Narrating My Work - October 17, 2012 - Affective Context

I've done more exploration of Nick Shackleford Jones' theory of Affective Context Theory after uncovering an earlier blog post from a couple of years ago.  This one, Towards a Working Theory of learning: The Affective Context Model provided support for my research as I plan out the ever ambiguous Windows 7 course.  

My highlights from this article include Nick's decision to leave teaching psychology because he found himself writing "Piaget believed learning should be exploratory" onto a board while students copied it down.  After I read the name, Piaget, I immediately began googling him to see if there were any current blogs about him. 

Jean Claude Piaget is responsible for my lifelong love of learning.  It was in college when I first heard about him watching his children learn from their play.  Learning about him testing his theory of object permanence ignited my quest to live in the land of learning.  Thank you, Jean! 

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) 

Other highlights on Affective Context from Nick S-J includes these points:

• Context rather than content determines learning efficiency.
• Learning is the process by which people attach emotional sense to information.
• Sometimes it really matters to people to learn, other times someone else makes it matter.

Shackleford-Jones' Affective Context Model defines the difference between 'pull' - type and 'push' - type learning.  In Pull - type learning, the content format doesn't matter. It already means something important to the learner because the learner is desperate to figure something out.  In Push - type learning, the importance is unclear. Learning is usually presented at the time when the importance is not imminent to the learner.

So, how does this affective context affect my current development plan for the Windows 7 course?  I put together these questions after I asked myself: What are the reasons why this audience would care?  

Back to development of the Windows 7 course!

Narrating My Work - July 26, 2012

This week brought completion to the Train the Trainer presentation Patti and I had working on for a couple of months.  

Along with our colleagues in the Center for LifeLong Learning, we developed 30 minutes of Communication training.  

I relied heavily on David Livermore's work on Cultural Intelligence to create my section on NonVerbal communication.  

Narrating My Work - October 4, 2012

While the thought of a PHD looms in the distance, my current work allows me another angle of learning. How do I create learning that goes beyond fulfilling an imposed requirement from management?   As I pick up my next project, transitioning employees to the new Windows 7 Operating System, how do I belie their fears of losing a system they knew well and use daily to complete tasks?  Simply explaining how this new system is better isn't helpful.  Comparing what they have with what they will now have can benefit the learner, but it seems to overlook the fear associated with new anything.   

One of my favorite blogger, Nick Shackleton-Jones suggests consideration of a Care Curve in this September post.  He looks beyond the traditional approach and performance consulting view to improve learner understanding, and looks toward a new (at least to me) approach.  His approach examines the affective context and maps patterns of concern. I understand his Care Curve to have two foundational aspects when designing learning. In addition to the tasks learners need to perform, the care curve will:
1. explain why the tasks matter to the individual and 
2. highlight challenges that may be overlooked when focusing on tasks.  

Mr. Shackleton-Jones uses the first day of school as an example.  How do you provide learning for this?  The history of the school, the pedigree of the principal, the length of the school year don't seem to matter to a new student on the first day of school.  The key is fitting in, not making a fool of oneself.  

So, my next step is how do I weave the Care Curve into the Windows 7 Transition?  Personally, I know how excruciating it is to search for a file when someone is waiting for it or watching me.  Equally high on my affective scale, is not knowing how to do something I used to do routinely and not being able to figure it out, like saving to My Documents (non-existent in Windows 7).

I think I'll play the piano when I return home tonight. The Care Curve was a large part of my learning this instrument.  I remember my mother explaining the importance of practice because some day I could play in church.  This was very motivational for me. And to Nick's second point, I still look for pieces with the least number of sharps and flats!

Narrating My Work - September 12, 2012

As I've been exploring the online learning available to all at no cost, I am considering the potential.  It seems limitless.  Anyone who wants to learn, can.  Living at a time when learning is available for everyone is my kind of magic.  I see open windows, avenues and worlds for learners.  Yet, I am reminded of the many people  who will never actualize this benefit. Those who do not believe they are learners.  

I remember my first teaching experience.  

As a beginning early childhood education teacher in Los Angeles, California, I realized quickly that not everyone believes they are a learner.  I began at Hillcrest Drive Elementary School in the SRLDP program, a School Readiness Lanauage Devleopment Program.  It is an oral language program intended to prepare students for kindergarten.

My students from Monday through Thursday were 4 years old, on Friday, their parents or guardians came to school instead.  I realized the learning impact with these moms, aunties and grandmothers of the children I taught.  They subtly revealed their unbelief in themselves as learners. Why would they be interested in something they believed they could not do?  Tossing the approved curriculum aside, our Friday mornings together became a time for me to listen.  If I could summarize their disinterest in learning, the curiosity fire had been snuffed out so early in their lives that they lost any recognition of it.  

How does the profusion of free learning affect these disbelievers of their own learning potential?