13 minute read
Intellect | Student Connection, Engagement
By Molly Shea
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A DSHA education is more than facts, concepts, coursework, and a rigorous college-prep curriculum. It is about young women finding a place that affirms they are created in the image and likeness of God. It is about being known by teachers, counselors, pastoral staff, administration, and the sisterhood that is only possible in an all-girls environment. It is about finding passion and purpose in the company of a supportive, Catholic community. Over the course of the spring semester of 2020, DSHA learned that while better together, this unique education — at its true core — is still possible when required to be physically apart because of a dedicated faculty and staff, unwilling to settle in order to meet students in their evolving needs.
PART I: THE STATE OF THE STUDENTS
On Thursday afternoon, March 12, the entire TSC (all faculty and staff) gathered in the Robert and Marie Hansen Family Fine Arts Theatre to discuss what had quickly become a national news story. COVID-19 felt foreign to most the week prior, but was now very likely going to affect the day to day of how students, faculty, and staff would interact and move forward in the coming weeks.
FOCUS ON STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
“Here is what we know,” shared Academic Dean Dr. Heather Mansfield to the group. “If — and likely when — we move into online instruction in the coming days or weeks, we are going to focus on student learning outcomes. These will not change. How we accomplish this is going to change and that is okay.”
Mansfield went on to share the vision that she and the academic administration had been discussing earlier in the week while monitoring the fluidity of circumstances: these pre-determined goals for each department, each class, would require a shift in terms of how they would be accomplished, but students should complete the semester with the same general knowledge and understanding of concepts as previously planned. “These outcomes will drive all of our choices around content and materials,” she shared. “We may not be able to cover everything that would have been covered. Decisions will be made by prioritizing intentional, focused-learning experiences versus work for the sake of keeping students occupied.”
But this would only happen if all decisions were filtered through the established theme set for the balance of the semester: Student Connection, Engagement, and Support.
The following day, Friday, March 13, was the last day of classes on campus for students across Wisconsin; after four days
of planning, online learning began at DSHA on Wednesday, March 18.
CONNECTION MATTERS
The verbiage assigned to the theme of Student Connection, Engagement, and Support was new with the move to online learning. However, the concept was naturally at play during business-as-usual school due to the constant collaboration between the academic, student services, campus ministry, and applied wellness departments — each interacting with students in a consistent, dependable, and daily rhythm.
This ongoing connectivity encourages student engagement across the landscape of DSHA offerings — both with one another and the TSC. It also allows faculty and staff the ability to inherently and proactively understand and address student needs. The goal being this: no students will fall through the cracks; and if a need is known, DSHA will do everything in its power to meet that need.
During a typical semester, it might look like this: a usually engaged student has been noticeably quiet and seemingly tired in her English class for the past couple of weeks, nor has she turned in her latest assigned paper. Her teacher asks if everything is okay and if there is anything she/he can do to help. The student says she is fine, yet this does not sit well with the concerned teacher. The teacher then reaches out to a dean who might then either meet with the student directly, or contact a counselor or pastoral staff to help gain a better understanding of how to best serve this girl and re-establish her connectivity to her coursework and the community.
These types of conversations inherently occur throughout the year when operating in business-as-usual mode. However, leading into a season of online learning — coupled with the stress and uncertainty of COVID-19 at the time — Mansfield was proactively aware that being physically serparated would change the natural protections that had become a systemized, intentional rhythm.
Because these natural protections were no longer present, faculty and staff moved quickly to create new frameworks based on the anticipated and evolving needs of students.
ABOVE AND BEYOND
Applied Wellness Faculty Joanna McQuide, DSHA ’93, and Rachel Uihlein, spent the first part of the year working out a new and evolving structure to the applied wellness experiences that had become a part of each student’s course requirements beginning in the fall. These in-school experiences gave students structured choice to meet their individual needs across the following areas: social, emotional, spiritual, contextual, diversity, and physical.
In adapting their programming to the online setting, with the goal of student connection, engagement, and support at the forefront, McQuide and Uihlein quickly realized the needs they had been used to meeting had drastically changed in a matter of days.
“We found ourselves wanting feedback from students, but also from our collaborators — what do they feel students might need right now that is different from a few weeks ago,” McQuide shared.
To attain this feedback, McQuide and Uihlein sent a weekly survey to students requesting insight specific to the circumstances surrounding online learning, with a particular emphasis on connectivity and overall wellness. This data — thanks to a statistically high student participation rate — allowed for a plan to address student needs at both an individual and school-wide level. Thus, the State of the Students (SOS) team was born.
A CALL FOR SOS
“The team began because we knew we needed a larger group to steer the wellness ship during this season; we wanted to bring everyone to the table
— Academic Dean Dr. Heather Mansfield
at the same time,” McQuide said of the team that consisted of herself, Uihlein, Mansfield, Dean of Student Affairs Ruby Brock, DSHA ’92; Director of Campus Ministry Kathleen Cullen Ritter, DSHA ’05; Director of Student Services, Equity, and Engagement Lisette Rodriguez-Reed; along with all school counselors.
Mansfield adds, “This was completely initiated by Joanna (McQuide) and Rachel (Uihlein). They saw the need, have put in the extra time, and built the system to address it. It speaks to the creativity and dedication of our faculty and staff as a whole right now.”
The SOS team met virtually each week, diligently discussing information from the surveys as well as other student needs that surfaced throughout the previous week. If an individual student had a unique need, a plan was discussed and action steps were set into motion. If connectivity data was trending a certain direction for the overall student body, this was shared with faculty and addressed at a community-wide level.
“Having an element from every area and collaborating in this way — all together in one place on a regular basis is new, but we see the long-term benefit. We hope to continue with SOS once school resumes in the normal setting,” McQuide shares of her post-COVID-19 vision for this team and the purpose it serves.
(cont.)
PART II: REDEFINING NECESSITY
It is common phrase, first shared by Plato, that necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps the SOS team and the theme of Student Connection, Engagement, and Support have been the inventions in this case. But what defines the necessity, particularly as it shifts in a time of crisis?
For the DSHA faculty, necessity moved beyond job requirements and into the space of deeply caring for girls outside of a predefined and contractually agreed upon structure. In a time of separation and uncertainty, needs shift — for both students and faculty. And teachers selflessly stretched the bounds of both creativity and expectation in order to keep students motivated and connected to both coursework and community.
One such example of a redefined necessity lies in the DSHA mathematics department.
TELL ME MORE
Mathematics Faculty Libby Wissing, DSHA ’10, currently teaches AP Statistics, Intro to Statistics, Calculus, and Honors Trigonometry/Pre-Calculus. On the surface, math is cut and dry; right or wrong. But to observe Wissing teach is anything but. She’ll pose a question, a student responds, and rather than saying “yes, great job” or “not quite, give it another shot” one might hear her prompt: “tell me more about that.” As she digs into the student’s thought process, both she and the student learn about the student’s understanding of concepts. The result is student growth in knowledge and confidence in the safety of an all-girls classroom.
So how has this translated into a virtual environment?
Wissing has brought it back to “tell me more.” The weekend prior to online learning, she sent an email to her students as she was processing her own thoughts and emotions surrounding the uncertainty.
“It felt important to let them into my world — the weird and scary and unknown,” she said. “I wanted to tell them
Kiley Robbins, DSHA ’20, and Mathematics Faculty Libby Wissing, DSHA ’10, connect on a Teams call prior to Robbins’ AP Statistics test in mid-May.
we are feeling this as adults, too.” She went on to share suggestions about getting outside and getting creative in reaching out to friends.
Thus, girls started to “tell her more”; to share their gratitude for her words and their thought processes on the unknowns; their questions about class, but also their general fears surrounding COVID-19 and the loss that especially seniors were facing.
A TONE OF CONNECTION
It began as a letter to herself to assist in processing her own uncertainties, but it set the tone for the balance of the semester. Because of the student response following her first email, and the lines of communication that it opened, Wissing took to writing a weekly communication aside from any curricular instruction. She also began to incorporate some non-academic Zoom meetings for each specific class — things like “show and tell” or “bring something you have owned for half of your life.”
“Teachers and students are missing the little interactions before and after class. These (virtual non-curriculum) interactions help fill that gap,” Wissing shares. “If I can connect with students on a human level, I know they will be more likely to stay engaged in their work,” she shares. “If they feel disconnected to me as their teacher, they won’t connect to the classroom.”
DELIBERATE COLLEGE-PREP
Because an intentional student connection had been established, Wissing was able concurrently focus on the job at hand — teaching college-prep mathematics: same concepts; new structure.
“We put a deliberate focus on understanding concepts versus homework,”
Wissing shares. “For the seniors, we also focused on preparing the girls for the type of calculus they would see in college.”
In an effort to yield the pre-established student learning outcomes (set at the beginning of the year), the amount of problems per assignment were reduced, and students were encouraged to dig into truly understanding the material through concentrated work focused on conceptual comprehension vs. quantity of homework.
“I let them know I was cutting the amount of homework to keep things manageable, so ‘please make sure you are putting in the effort to understand what you have been given,’” she shares.
To guide her students, Wissing created video lessons and was available for group or individual discussions with students each day. Another change was the move to open note quizzes and tests, which she argues have helped aid students’ preparation and understanding of material.
AP IN THE TIME OF COVID
Wissing’s AP Statistics class required some special attention in an effort to assist students in preparation for their upcoming exam. Due to the worldwide nature of the coronavirus, the AP College Board made some swift and deliberate changes to how testing would occur globally. And while this was necessary and best for students, it required in a shift in preparation.
“AP decided they were going to cut content assessed on the exam to reflect material likely covered by most teachers prior to March,” Wissing shares. Being ahead of the game, her class would only have one new chapter to cover. “Because of this, I was able to spread out that final chapter over some additional time during the initial transition to online learning and get it in before spring break.”
Following spring break, she mapped out a five-week content study plan for students including goals and expectations based on new information shared by the AP College Board. Wissing also created an optional study guide with the intention of providing resources without overwhelm.
THE STUDENT RESPONSE
Kiley Robbins, DSHA ’20, is a student in Wissing’s AP Statistics class and also a member of the DSHA Track & Field Team that Wissing helps coach. Robbins will attend UW-Madison in the fall on a track scholarship and feels prepared thanks to not only the teaching and coaching of Wissing, but the connection they have as well.
“Ms. Wissing has been one of my favorite teachers during this time. She is always checking on us; she is willing to FaceTime or text — it’s not even just classwork. She has been so encouraging,” Robbins shared as she was three days away from taking her AP Statistics exam in mid-May. “In her class you want to learn. She makes hard work fun. If I’m struggling I can easily go to her. She makes sure I’m on track, and that makes me work harder.”
“She has been willing to accommodate my learning style and pace during this time and it has helped me grasp concepts,” she says. “I feel so prepared for the (AP Statistics) test because of the way she has helped us review — together and individually. I’m actually excited to take the test.”
— Mathematics Faculty Libby Wissing, DSHA ’10
ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
Wissing is one example from a teaching faculty that has evolved the way it is connecting with students. They do this because it matters — the girls matter; not because it is a job.
“Living through a pandemic requires flexibility, but math is the reverse of that,” Wissing shares. “Math isn’t changing — maybe that is a comfort. But it’s the opposite of this world we live in now. I don’t have opportunities to incorporate the current happenings into my lessons (in the way a social studies, English, or science class might be able to.)” Wissing concludes, “If I’m not connecting with students on what we are all experiencing together, they aren’t going to want to watch a video lesson of me talking about sequences and series.”
So that is what they do — connect, support, and engage with students. Because this necessity, though redefined, is still a necessity to each teacher. And the willingness to redefine beyond obligation is simply because their students matter.
