Whitney Clay: Welcome to the West Valley College TEACH Center podcast.
Michelle Francis: TEACH stands for training educators advocating change.
Whitney Clay: I'm Whitney Clay, Instructional designer.
Michelle Francis And I'm Michelle Francis, Professional Development Coordinator and Instructor in Child Studies.
Whitney Clay: At the TEACH Center, we support faculty as they cultivate excellence in teaching and learning and welcome their students with engaging pedagogies.
Michelle Francis: In this podcast, we discuss hot topics in teaching and learning. We interview educators about what they are doing in their fields, and we talk to learners about what inspires them.
Michelle Francis: Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Kristen Cornelius, a faculty member at Delta College in University Center, Michigan. Delta College serves around 8500 students in the Great Lakes Bay region, and they've been engaged in Caring Campus work since 2018. So, Kristen, welcome.
Kristen Cornelius: Thank you so much for having me today.
Michelle Francis: Can you tell us a little bit about your work with Caring Campus?
Kristen Cornelius: Sure. Our work with Caring Campus began our fall 2018 semester. Dr. Brad Phillips was our ATD coach, one of our coaches. For our All College Day, we brought in Dr. Phillips to talk to us about what he had seen Odessa doing. We took this conversation that we had with Dr. Phillips, formed a steering committee on it, and just walking the seeds that were planted that fall learning days in 2018, walking that into existence and growing it up to first a movement, and then a fall out initiative on campus. This coming fall, learning days we're relaunching with the with the new name that's fully inclusive and really just hitting the ground running with some of the things that we've been doing and scaling those up to be campus wide.
Michelle Francis: The work that Delta College is doing really serves as a model for other colleges who are doing this work as well. A lot of the work that you're doing really is also wanting to be done here at West Valley. We have five behavioral commitments and the number five behavioral commitment is really one that I wanted to talk to a faculty member about, because I think it's the work that we're doing in the classroom. And that's the idea of situational fairness. What exactly is situational awareness?
Kristen Cornelius: I guess just as huge of a topic as it is, you know, nailing it down to something succinct is always hard to do. But essentially when we were working with Dr. Phillips with the grant work, it was called a couple of different things. And Brian Aldrich, one of my colleagues, fantastic person wordsmith, but a scientist who's a very great wordsmith, he's like, "Really, it's situational fairness that we're talking about." And we're like, "Yes, that's it." And the phrase really suggests that every student's life, every student situation is going to be different than the student who comes before them, comes after them, or sits in the classroom with them. And so it's about really adopting this philosophy that you are dealing with your students and what's happening with them on an individual basis. And it sort of frees up, at least among myself and my colleagues, our previous frame of mind was always, "Well, if I give you an extension on the test, then I need to give everyone an extension on the test, because that's fair." And really, truly it's not fair, right? Not everyone needs an extension on the test in this little scenario. Really, situational fairness says just deal with the student who's in front of you while they're in front of you. What issue do they need you to help them tackle? And situational fairness starts to free us up from having to be judge and jury over our students' lives. Because sometimes our students are in these lives that some would say are idyllic, right? They live at home, and their parents are supportive, and they don't have to have a job; they don't have to have these things. So what might derail them in the classroom and be a really big deal for them might not faze someone who doesn't live at home and has to provide their own financial security. And maybe they have children, and maybe they have a job that they report to. You know, those two things are different, but for each one of those students, it's the same for them in terms of being crisis, right. So situational awareness says you don't have to judge anymore. Take the student who's in front of you and work with the situation that they have as best as you can based on your your own philosophies, restrictions you might have based on what you're teaching, if you report to a governing board or something of that matter. But it allows you a whole lot of freedom to figure out how to help the student in front of you at the moment, in order to give them the best chance of succeeding in your class that semester.
Michelle Francis: Wow. So what I two things I love hearing in your explanation of situational fairness is one is again, which keeps coming up with Care campus and it keeps coming up multiple times is this idea of seeing students as individuals that each single one of them is an individual student and we need to give them what they individually need. And I think that's that's a pretty powerful message, that it's a relationship that we are having with students, that individual student. So taking the student who is right in front of you right then. I love that. Thank you. And also the idea that it gives us some freedom, it frees us up as faculty members from kind of all the other stigmas that we have about making changes or being fair. So there are kind of three common pushbacks that I keep hearing from faculty when we talk about this idea situational fairness and just the lightning round. I'd love hear your reaction to each of these pushbacks that I think are common among faculty. So you kind of touched on this a little bit in the first one, which is how can you be fair to everyone when one person gets an extension and the rest of the students don't?
Kristen Cornelius: One of the things that I talk about a lot is the idea of being proactive and reactive. And one of the thing that things that freed me up the most is when I started looking at things as once I developed that sense of community with my students, of getting them to trust that if they come to me with their issues as their issue is happening or just after that, there are all sorts of things we can do to be proactive. It's harder to be reactive. Reactive does get into the whole like who missed out and who could have also benefited. But proactive lets me say, "You have the same opportunity, Michelle, to come to me to tell me that this thing's going on – and we can be flexible, we can make changes if need be, as does Daquan." If he comes to me and says, "Hey, I've got these issues going on and I need some flexibility." It allows each student to use it as they need it. And if every student has that opportunity to come to you to be flexible, to ask you to help them out in the moment that they need it, then I don't have to worry about it. But do I need to go chase down Abigail and say, "Abigail, I'm doing this extension – could it help you, too?" So that frees up that idea of practicing proaction versus reaction really helps me a lot when it comes to the pushback of fairness. And it really a lot of what it is, it's that old idea of equality. Everyone has to have the same thing because that's equality. And it is. But it's still not equity because you know, the image of the kids in the outfield watching the baseball game with a fence line, right. The tall one doesn't need anything because they can already see over the fence line. The middle-heighted child needs a box because they, you know, that will help them see over the fence line. But if you give a box to the shortest child, even one box isn't enough, right. So the idea of reaction versus proaction is what I talk about the most when I get that pushback. But if I do for one, I must do for all. Not all students need the same thing at the exact same moment in time. So if I can practice reaction, then what that allows me to do is say, "Oh, this is your moment. So right now, in this moment, I can work with you." And if someone else's moment is two weeks from now, I can work with them in their moment. I don't have to steal their moment from them because I need to be equitable or practice equality and give everyone the same thing at the exact same time in the class.
Michelle Francis: It's really a timing thing. But how do you tell them? I mean, how do you – because I hear you, I like this proactive versus reactive – but how do you express to students, "Hey, I'm here and this is available?" I mean, do you just, you know, announce it the first day, like, "If you have a problem, come talk to me." I mean, how do you create that space?
Kristen Cornelius: Yeah, so actually I do. The very first day of class – we spend almost every first day of class just on my icebreaker, which is I ask for their name, what are you studying here at Delta, you know, tell me something about you, anything about you that you want. And then each one of my students has to ask me a question, and I answer just about anything, including some really embarrassing – usually the one that is asked is, "What's your most embarrassing high school moment?" And I have to tell them about the time that I had my nose broken and peed my pants simultaneously. So, you know, nothing is off limits. Almost nothing is off limits. And really, it gets the students truly – I've used this icebreaker now for well, I'm almost 11 years now at Delta, so for almost 11 years, because just opening myself up to them seems to open them up to me. And then before we leave class, I talk about these life happens, right? That we have these life happens moments in classes where, you know, whether it's simply car breaks down, pipe bursts, childcare falls through, everything is happening or it's just a really bad day, and you need to tell me, "Mentally, I'm not here today. I can't be here today. I need to take a break." And I just tell them, "Yeah. So from the get go, we practice proactivity in this classroom. So let me know what it is." And sometimes what I tend to do upfront is a lot of reminders – this first assignment is coming due or this thing is coming due, and I know some trouble spots just from previous semesters. So around week four, we seem to get into a lot of trouble because the grind is really started for the semester. So reminding students, "Hey, if this is not going to work for you, remember we can be proactive. Let me know if something's going on that you're not going to nail this deadline. So, you know, let me know if there's something happening," or if I see a student or just sort of hear from their own conversations with me, there's the struggle, I offer it. I can, you know, I will say to them, "What happens if we move the deadline for you? I'm not going to grade until Wednesday. The deadline's Monday. What if you give it to me Wednesday when I start grading?" And what I really find to be wonderful about that is they have this moment of relief that it's like, "Wow, yes, that is exactly what I need." But very infrequently, do I ever have students not get that deadline. They set it for themselves, and they want to nail it because you've given this extension and they want to make sure that they fulfill it for you. And so I find it to be just a very upfront first day reminders after that. I don't hide it away as though it's sort of that golden nugget that you – that secret level that you find and you get to in a video game, it's just put out there as part of "This is our class, and this is how we operate."
Michelle Francis: So I love that. And I have another pushback that I think you address a little bit in what you were just saying, which is about faculty workload. And really, faculty work very hard, and they have specific grading times. So how do we balance? Let's say I say, "Yeah, I want to be situational fairness. I'm going to do it." But how do we balance that desire to help students and our own need to get our own tasks accomplished and graded on time?
Kristen Cornelius: Yeah. So, you know, this is definitely going to be – so if you're a faculty member out there listening to this, and this is sort of – you're in the moment of wrestling with whether or not this sounds like something you're going to be able to get on board with. I definitely, I want to be honest to say, there's definitely a transition period, right? There's a period where when you invest in this, it does take you outside of your old comfort zone. And I went through it, too, and there where times I'm like, "I'm not doing this anymore." And then the student comes to me, and I'm like, "Okay, I can do it one more time." But really, truly, what I have found overall is, for me, I do set, like I do tell them sort of the logistical thing, right? So if your work is done by the deadline or by the due date, it's going to be returned to you within – my usual policy is a week. I'll have your grade back to you in a week. If you get an extension, you know, it won't be returned within a week of the original due date. I try to get it back within a week to two weeks of the extension date. And all of that depends on things like does this assignment build for the next one and things of that nature. But what I have found is that I don't typically have a rush of students who are demanding extra time. If they are, that's telling me I'm pacing my class too fast. If I have half of my students saying, "I need an extension," that's already telling me, "Okay, so I'm trying to make this go too fast for them. I've got to slow it down anyway." But usually I might have one or two, two or three, that do ask for the extension. But what I find is – so when I sit down to do the grading, I give myself time back initially, because I'm not grading 25, I'm grading 22. And then as my week goes on, I just have gotten into the habit of here's my extra, you know, here's the hour where I check back in. Do I have those late assignments in, and then I'll grade in that hour. So it was just kind of redesigning the way that I spend my time so that I have those check-in dates to go back or check-in times to go back in my schedule and say, "Yeah, this is my catch up time and I'm going to catch up right here with this student." So it just was a little bit of redesigning in terms of that going back to catch work to re-grade.
Michelle Francis: So it sounds like the time's the same, it's just where it is. Whereas you might save yourself four hours one time. If you have several students with the extension, you might give yourself a little bit more time later on in the week, or you might say, "Hey, it seems like this time in the semester is really hard for students to be giving me this paper. Maybe I need to scaffold it differently."
Kristen Cornelius: Mm hmm. Exactly.
Michelle Francis: So the last question I have for you in our lightning round really has to do with particularly a pushback I hear from our our Professional Studies faculty members, which are training people for the job market – how can engaging in situational fairness teach students that important skill of turning work in on time? Because we all know that we have, you know, if a judge asks for a deposition, I need to turn it in on the due date or my client's going to go to jail. Or if I'm an officer, if I don't show up to the day when they're in court, that person's going to get off on their ticket, right? So how do we teach that important skill of turning work in time while still honoring that situational fairness?
Kristen Cornelius: So you're bringing up a really good pushback. And a lot of times what I say is when we look at our students, like when we look at this situational awareness through that prism, we're looking at our students as though they don't have a personal life, a human life outside of college. Most of our students have jobs. They could be parents, they could be caretakers. They've got all these other things happening. They are well aware of deadlines. They are well aware that there are times in their life that if they don't show up to work, they might get fired. They are well aware that there are these deadlines out there that could have severe consequences to them. So I push back – I have my own pushback a little bit on the idea that our college classroom is the only thing teaching them the value of a deadline and the fact that it exists, right? Sometimes you're going to hit a deadline and if you don't make it with what you need to do that, you know, you're not going to get it. We all have lives full of those stories. The other thing that I often talk about, too, is this idea that, yes, all of our jobs have these hard deadlines. Being a college professor, ours is 2:00 PM the Tuesday after the semester ends. At Delta College, the Tuesday at 2:00 PM after the semester ends, your grades must be in to the registrar's office, right? Like that is it. We've heard the horror stories of people being pulled back from vacation planes; you're going to be hunted down if they're not there, right. So that's our deadline. So we all do have those with our jobs. But the deposition one is a good example. Even lawyers can apply to the judge to get extensions on deadlines, right. So judge might say no, and then you've got to go with it. But a lot of our jobs do give us grace. They do give us the ability to have these things happen – sick days, you know, vacation days, these sorts of things. These are these things that allow us in our professional world to have extensions. Or, for example, if I'm out sick, no, I'm not going to get in this deadline today, it'll come in tomorrow when I return. And so we get a lot of grace in our professional lives that when we think as faculty members of preparing our students for the profession, it's coming from a good and loving place. I want to make sure I see that, this desire to make sure we're preparing them to be the best that they can and adhere to all these things is coming from this great, deeply rooted, loving place for our students to succeed. But I think we have more ability to be flexible with these things than we've allowed ourselves to explore.
Michelle Francis: Wow. I am so taken aback by your argument for this because as I think about it, I really have never had an argument for this pushback. You know, I've also felt that, oh, the deadline is important, but your argument really spoke to me about my assumptions that exist around that argument of I need to teach them deadlines. So the assumption that I'm making is that I am the sole holder of their responsibility to the to the profession, and that they have no experience following deadlines, any other place in their lives. And now, I'm thinking to myself, well, that is not an equitable belonging, universal design assumption. For me, our discussion today has really opened my eyes. You've shifted my lens to saying, "Wow, I am not engaging in an anti-racist pedagogy if I'm doing that."
Kristen Cornelius: That's awesome to hear. Everything that I have learned with this process has been sort of because you're in there, you're in the battle, and you're engaging in it. And most of my hard-won knowledge comes because of some experience I've had with with a student or with students that as I look back, I'm like, "Oh, wait a minute." And I start to see this pattern emerge, right? So, thank you. And I wish it were something that I just magically had this great epiphany on, but it really does – my students, like so many of us, they're who teach me, right? They're the ones that kind of keep driving me back to the reflection of "How can you be better? I'm spending money on you being in my life right now, so how can you better serve me?" And I use the word "serve" not in the like, you know, you're at a store and receiving service that way. I use it in the humanitarian way, the human way, right. How can I better serve this human who's in front of me if they're coming to me in this in this capacity of learner, and I in this capacity as educator – where is my obligation of service to them? And so, I found myself more and more going back to that, you know, the basis of humanity, my obligation is to serve them as the human that they are standing in front of me with the life that they have, that they have to fulfill multiple obligations of, and understanding that this course is important to them or they wouldn't be here; but it might not be, in that moment, the most important thing that they have to do, and how can I help make the class fit in so that they can do all those things? And sometimes there are hard deadlines, right? So, you know, the semester just ended for us and, you know, we got to the end, and here's the final. And I said, "Here's the final. The final's due, you know, this date week before the the the class ends, if you want feedback and you want the opportunity to resubmit. If you don't want that or can't make that deadline, no problem. The last time that you can turn it in is this last minute that the class, like the last minute that this thing is open, and you can turn it in then." And then I leave that just like a two-hour window for myself that I'm like – and I say to my students, "This window right here is for you to make your last, like, this is why I need it," I said, "But ultimately, at 11:25 AM on this Tuesday, our class ends, and you must have it in." And, you know, students do pretty well understanding, "Okay, listen, I've had three shots at it. I think this is it. Like, I don't have any extra time." So sometimes there are hard deadlines.
Michelle Francis: I really appreciate you talking with us today because I'm thinking as I'm listening to you talk about several things that you mentioned. One is expressing early and often to students that you want to be proactive versus reactive. And part of this process is having those conversations – let's be proactive about this rather than reactive, and really clearly communicating, "This is my deadline," and I love to how you talked about, "I'm going to give it back to you by this and this day," and then making sure that you have the time frame for your own self to grade those within the deadline you've set for your own self. And then also, underline all of this, Kristen, is this idea of having a relationship with students – because if they don't have a relationship with you, they're not going to come and tell you that they're having a problem, they're just going to drop out or they're going to not turn things in or they're going to kind of let things snowball. So having a relationship with them that allows them to come and talk to you and then also allows you to express to them, "Hey, this is what I need," so that they can then deliver that for you as well. So it just really underlines all those Caring Campus things that we've been talking about, the situational fairness, which is why I think we labeled it number five, because it really is the culmination of all the things that we put together. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for taking time to join us today on the TEACH podcast. We appreciate all your observations on situational fairness to someone who is teaching another part of the country, but it sounds like very similar students to those that are at West Valley College. So thank you so much.
Kristen Cornelius: Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun talking about it. I am an imperfect messenger who's always learning for sure, but I do appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk about situational fairness and students.