WELCOME and THANK YOU for reading! This newsletter covers what happened in May and will give you a heads up on what to look for in June and the months following.

In this issue (please note the links below will only work when viewing this newsletter in a browser):

Upcoming Events

Board Meetings are the First Wednesday of the month
at 6:30 – 8:00 pm Eastern: July 3, August 7

Zoom information is available on the Member’s site

(Psst! You can visit the Academy Calendar on the Member's site and click to add the board meetings to your personal calendar!)

As the current Academy President, I have been reflecting about our Academy. As our team of dedicated volunteers has worked diligently for many months to design and plan our annual conference, I’ve realized that Academy members are among the most dedicated colleagues I have had the good fortune to work with. The dedication and knowledge of these Academy members awes me. I continue to learn more from them each time we meet. I have often paused to reflect on what the Academy means to me personally. At last year’s Conference I mentioned that I would work with our Board members to grow the engagement and participation of Academy members.

To reach that goal I have also been pondering what the Academy means to you, our members. Whether you are a long-time or first-time member, I wonder what the Academy of Process Educators means to you.

What would you like membership to provide?

Consider this question as we lead up to the Conference next month. Also...

• In what ways would you like your membership in the Academy to be useful for you?
• Are the principles of Process Education useful for you?
• Would you like the relationships you have with colleagues in the Academy to enhance your understanding of those principles?
  

One thing keeps passing through my mind as I reflect on these questions. I wonder why we don’t enjoy an even more involved and active community? We offer Professional Development sessions, the Faculty Guidebook, the International Journal of Process Education, the Self Growth community, summer AoPE Conference and many other experiences and relationships with like-minded folks. And yet our membership often seems disengaged and silent. Mind you, this is not a complaint, just an observation. I know first-hand that the work most of us do (or have done) is all consuming. I know we all have personal lives, relationships, and responsibilities which demand our time and energy. My life is often overfull and I am supposedly retired! And yet something keeps pulling me back to our Academy, to the idea of Unlimited Potential, to the synergy between our work as educators and the principles of Process Education.

Maybe you feel this same pull but are simply too busy to become more actively involved. I get that! Through reflection I have started to form some ideas about how the Academy can provide additional ways to encourage growth, fellowship and participation among our members. At the Conference this month we will have an opportunity to share ideas about how, together, we might enhance those experiences and chart the future direction of the Academy. You can still register and join us!

NOW THAT WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION...

Have you registered for the 2024 PE Conference?
You know, the one that starts on June 11th?
Because you STILL can.
You don't even have to be there in person!
You can stay home in your pajamas with
[insert your cat's name here]
and participate virtually!!

Now that you've registered...

Do you still have questions?

Are you new to Process Education?

We are hosting a pre-conference orientation Wednesday June 4 from 4:00-5:00 PM (ET). Here is the Zoom link for the orientation:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89673810618?pwd=UW0ydlJQcWJweCswVFVCWkpKM2hwQT09

The purpose of the orientation is to prepare attendees for the conference. We will be giving a brief overview of Process Education, showing you how to access and navigate the conference support site, and answering any questions you may have. If this is your first PE conference, then attendance is recommended. If you are unable to attend, then look for a follow up email to all registered attendees with a link to the recording. If you have any questions before the orientation, feel free to email matthew.watts@rrcc.edu.

Will Ofstad has offered members of the Academy five free certification workshops in team-based learning (TBL). If you are interested in this opportunity, please respond to this survey. We will use the results to determine the logistical details that will best fit our members.

Value

Over $500 for similar workshops offered through the Team-Based Learning Collaborative (TBLC). Offered collegially to the PE community for the cost of the certificate itself ($25).

Why TBL?

TBL outlines a structured method to active learning and a flipped classroom, compatible will large and small classes with only one facilitator.  The method offers insights into teaming, pre-class preparation, in-class readiness testing, and team applications that elevate questions to problem-solving and deepening discussions. It has been shown to increase attendance, improve daily preparation, drive critical thinking, and exercise teamwork and communication skills.  Process education and team-based learning are synergistic approaches to elevating teaching and learning... 

The next issue of IJPE will be published and available a bit later in June. But for now, here's a sneak peek at what it will contain:

• Advancing the Transformation of Education Through Team-Based Learning (Yuqin Hu and William Ofstad)
  
  
• Growth Potential of Learning Skills in the Cognitive, Social, Affective, and Assessment & Evaluation Domains (Kathleen Burke, Steven Beyerlein, and Daniel Apple)
  
  
• Addressing Impediments to Building Self-Growth Capabilities (Yolanda Watson Spiva, Wade Ellis, Cy Leise, Daniel Apple, and Kathleen Burke)
  
  
• Self-Growth Meta-Behaviors (Cy Leise Dan Apple, Kathleen Burke, Wade Ellis, and Cynthia M. Woodbridge)
  
  
• Using Five Roles to Support Growth Action Planning (Kathleen Burke, Dan Apple, Cy Leise, Wade Ellis, and Mohamed El-Sayed)

Food for Thought is shared from the Pacific Crest blog (www.pcrest.com/blog)

If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. —Anonymous

That’s worth keeping in mind, but let’s back up a little bit and not judge the goldfish (who happens to be named Duffin).

Duffin has absolutely no desire to climb trees, but he IS interested in receiving our assessment-based feedback on a performance HE selects.

One of the first questions we should ask is, “What performance do you want us to assess?”

Duffin says, “I want to work on blowing bubbles, so give me feedback about that.”

That’s important information but what, specifically, will we focus on as we watch him perform bubble blowing? Just knowing the performance in general terms isn’t enough. We need to know more; we need enough detail so we can determine criteria that will best isolate the areas of quality he wants to improve. Does he want to improve how many bubbles he can blow (one possible criterion) or does he want to increase the size of the bubbles he blows (another possible criterion)?

“I want to blow lots of bubbles because it annoys the cat,” says Duffin.

OK, we can work with that! A good measure for that criterion is bubbles per minute. We get our stopwatch ready and can measure how many bubbles he blows in a minute. That data will then inform the feedback we give.

Having criteria determined and agreed upon prior to starting the assessment process allows both the performer and assessor to focus on quality in this area—the performer by producing it and the assessor by observing, measuring, and basing feedback on it.

Go, Duffin!

Present: Patrick Barlow, Colleen Taylor, Matt Watts, Peter Smith, Chaya Jain, Tris Utschig, Steve Spicklemire

Carol Holmes Memorial

• Proposal: Carol Holmes Memorial Award (Patrick will investigate and follow up next time)

Conference Planning

1. Purpose: Final Updates
   • Need a separate vote for each office
   • Since many folks are online, need an electronic ballot.
   • Testing a google form
2. 37 registrants so far. 12 remote, 25 in person
3. Please contact folks and remind them about the conference

Board priorities for the next year

1. Review Strategic Plan Goals; narrow priorities for next year
   • Need very focused priorities for next year rather than a broad agenda
   • Need to go outside the bounds of the US
   • Suggest an online institute, with group discounts
   • Desire to diversify presentations, not just process education
2. But there needs to be coherency
3. There might be an “easy entry level track” for teaching and learning. It doesn’t have to be Process Education
4. We’re not turning away presenters so long as they related to teaching and learning in a systematic way
5. Good potential for expanding marketing
6. Need to continue this discussion

Announcements

• Board meetings days and times will for Fall 2024 will be determined via a survey conducted in June.
• We need to get more participants for Will’s workshop. We need a minimum number of people to make it work.

• The DRAFT minutes from the May Meeting are available HERE.
• The DRAFT minutes from the April Meeting are available HERE.
• The DRAFT minutes from the March Meeting are available HERE.

Practices for Reinforcing Performance Criteria 

From 3.1.9 Creating Meaningful Assessment and Documentation Systems

• Provide written and oral clarification of the expected level of performance in the early stages of a learning experience.
• Model the level of performance and integrity you expect in participants/learners; invite students to assess the performance you model.
• Deepen understanding of performance criteria by having learners assess each other’s work using these criteria.
• Do not accept sub-standard performance by lowering the bar if participants fail to meet the performance criteria; this de-energizes performances and leads to grade inflation.
• Demand that learners come to class prepared for learning activities; do not lecture on material that students can easily grasp from reading assignments.
• Do not spend time solving problems that students can solve for themselves.

The point is that performance criteria are only effective when they're transparent, shared, understood, modeled, applied, and allowed to stand. If any of those processes fail, the result is confusion and frustration on the part of learners.

Including (BUT NOT LIMITED TO)
workshops you'd like to attend!