Attitude of Gratitude

“No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.” – Alfred North Whitehead 

Last weekend, I read a post on Faculty Focus that talked about thank you notes.  As the writer, Stacy Greathouse, PhD states “Thank you notes make people happy” and after I read that first sentence of her post, I knew that my final post of this year would be a “Thank You Note” blog.  

First and foremost, I am thankful to the woman who is brilliantly able to take a concept that is floating around my head in the most ambiguous form and translate that concept into something tangible, specific, and meaningful.  Mary Ann Mengel, our illustrious Instructional Multimedia Designer here at PSU Berks gets me.  She listens, gently asks questions and “Voila,” something I couldn’t quite put my finger on has magically appeared.  I am grateful to Mary Ann for working her magic on my idea to help birth this Faculty Learning Community. 

Next, I am thankful to my two partners in crime from PSU Teaching and Learning with Technology Instructional Design and Development group – Amy Kuntz and Stephanie Edel-Malizia.  Amy and Steph adeptly worked alongside of me throughout this year providing support, encouragement, feedback and guidance on the FLC as well as our group’s presentation at the TLT Symposium in March. My primary role is as a faculty member with lots of responsibilities for my classroom and students, and the support of Amy and Steph aided in keeping me on track with tasks throughout the year. Each of these women generously shared their time throughout the process and graciously assisted me with every single request I had for information and assistance. 

Third, I am thankful to the community membership that said “YES” to my crazy idea for this book club.  Jenifer Shannon, Tara Beecham, Michael Briggs, Catherine Catanach, Jennifer Dareneau, Bryan Wang, Donna Chambers, and Chrystine Mitchell heeded my call for “likeminded” folks interested in incorporating innovation through technology in their teaching.  Each of these faculty members dedicated at least an hour to this group, roughly every three weeks, for the entire 2018-19 academic year. They came prepared, having done their required readings and brought thoughtful, sound discussion to the meetings. I am forever grateful to them for their interest, trust, time and dedication. 

Finally, I am thankful to Jennie Magiera, author of our book from this year, Courageous Edventures:  Navigating Obstacles to Discover Classroom Innovation.  While Ms. Magiera’s book was an exploration of technology in the K-12 classroom and didn’t easily translate to our higher education experience, it served as the foundation of our FLC and provided our greatest take away – the concept of “The Critical Friend.”  Magiera states that the critical friend is a colleague or colleagues that understand your situation and can provide feedback on your process and journey.   The members of this Faculty Learning Community beautifully came together in support of each other, working seamlessly to provide input and feedback to each other on the various projects we were undertaking.   

As I close this blog post, I also close the inaugural year of the TLT Faculty Learning Community called Innovative Instructional Technologies in the Classroom.  I went into this experience hoping to get to know a few other faculty members from across campus and have some interesting conversations about technology in the classroom.  I am leaving this year with a group of critical friends who inspire me to be a better teacher and member of the campus community.  Job well done, my Critical Friends! 

“Gratitude, Tulum”by duncan is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

 

3 thoughts on “Attitude of Gratitude

  1. What a lovely note! Thank you, Dawn, for leading us through a year of neat ideas, friendly support, and stimulating discussion!

  2. Thank you Dawn for so adeptly summarizing the achievements of our community over the past year. And more importantly, thank you for doing what you do so well – “sprinkling” the FLC with “Dawn” — which was such an important aspect of the group’s success. I look forward to further exploration of innovative technology in the classroom as our community enters a second year.

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