Category: Roles and Trends Blog

I had a wonderful conversation with my learning partner. We seem to have some of the same excitable personality traits so that was neat to find out.

My partner works as a teacher for dental hygienists. She teaches in classrooms and then also teaches in practicum type settings. As a side note, she naturally draws towards being a Humanist in her teaching theories, and I could get the warmth off of her during our inaugural conversation discussing Trends in our Fields, as university instructors.

Adults are not looking to get big bills to go to school. They want school to be affordable and not something they need to take out a student loan for. Paying for classes by the individual class and not the whole program in one pop is helpful for recruiting more students.

Buying books, for minimal reading and gain is another thing adults don’t want to waste their money on when considering school.

We noticed that students like game based learning. Sitting all day in a classroom with a pen and paper is not the ideal way adult learners choose to spend their time. Playing jeopardy or making them stand up and walk to different sides of the classrooms to vote are examples of a style of teaching that we see as more sought after for adult scholars.

Students are happy to live in Alberta and do school in BC and vice versa. Students want to know that they can read their instructors bio and see that the instructor is who they want teaching them. If it’s not a match there are many places they can take the course and students are happy to do that. Because so many classes are online now. Adults want the flexibility to be able to do their schooling online, in their own time. They want the teachers engagement to be one that they can click on when they are ready, and not at a specific time of class to meet them virtually.

Students want instructors who understand the current times and are able to accommodate many different sexualities and ethics in their class. 

Adults who learn also want to know that there is a good reason for going to school. There will be a pay raise, or a better work opportunity for them once they are done this. They are not in school to think about Socrate’s because he’s interesting. There needs to be a pay off afterwards besides just a boost to your brain of interests.

Are the teachers doing Continuing Education? Are you learning your lessons from a dinosaur who is still getting their information from old technology, thus leaving you behind from other scholars when you’re done your class. You want to know when you pay for a class that it’s current ideology and practice.

Lastly of course is Covid. Is the university you’re going to go to gonna discriminate on your vaccine status? Are you going to even get to fully enjoy the course or will you have to sit things out because of your status while other students are able to fully attend? Is the university going to police your body and tell you what you should do with it or even out your private medical status?

Even on the flip to that, do you want to work in certain fields totally gowned up head to toe because it’s required now. All important things to think about.

Janessa Boomhour

Objective

One of the trends I notice in adult education, especially in the way that I teach is that there are so many passwords to remember.

Reflective

This is very interesting to me because I have struggled through two semesters of students who just weren’t sure of what their passwords ever were. Insert mind on fire and stressed. It felt as if each day I had a few students going to the IT department for help on how to reset passwords, day after day and week after week. The passwords could not be saved on the computers because after they log out for the night, all data was wiped off the console. It made lesson plans hard, because you’re teaching time got cut down, by the many minutes taken up to just trying to get the students all on their emails or Moodle site.

Interpretive

I think the only way around this fiasco is to have some open conversations with the students about passwords, and what passwords are considered private and should be held tightly (like your banking password) and what passwords aren’t as important (your safety course your doing online). If we can separate out the very private ones, with the less private ones, we would be off to a great start. Now with all of our less worrisome passwords, we could use an app to save them. There are many apps that save your passwords so that you can pull them up whenever you need them by only remembering one ultimate password.

Decisional

Although these password managers seem really cool, there is still so much to learn. It this actually going to be easier for my students? Is having them written and locked in my office just as secure? Will the students even use these programs when they are done school? Will it work on a computer without an app in a browser instead? I do think the only way to learn something new is to try different things, so perhaps next year will be the pilot program for trying this.

https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-password-manager-security.html

Van Der Kleut , Jennifer. (n.d.). Are Password Managers Secure. Norton. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-password-manager-security.html#

I work in the field of adult continuing education. Getting students prepared for the world, in a formal setting. My students are all amazing, inspiring, funny, interesting and kind. There are not too many courses in a college setting that they would be able to take, and excel at, except mine. They are have one thing in common. All of them have different learning abilities, or should I say diverse learning abilities. Or would it be better to say barriers to employment. Because of learning difficulties, writing difficulties and other learning barriers.

Having just started in this field, I feel I am playing catch up. Trying to catch up on the proper, politically correct and most formal way to talk about these varied abilities. But I am realizing I am not far behind. It seems to be something all educators are trying to constantly get a handle on, to speak about in the kindest most complimentary way.

To think that “diverse abilities” was the preferred term to use when I started a year ago, and now it’s students with barriers to employment (which is more central to what our course is). I have talked with students who did not like the term “diverse abilities”. I asked them what they preferred and they said adaptive better. I am not quite sure how it’s used in a sentence, perhaps I would say “I teach an adaptive group of students”. I would say that sounds really positive. The key here is that we honour the students for their abilities, not DIS-abilities. They are so very capable in many different ways as you and me reading this. They aren’t – The deaf. They are “People who are blind”. They are not “wheelchair bound” but “use a wheel chair”.

It makes me think about the many names we use for indigenous. We started with natives, it moved to aboriginal and now we are onto indigenous. Talking with friends I learned they didn’t like the aboriginal usage (what I grew up saying) because nobody wants to be Ab-normal, which is so similar. So we now use the correct term indigenous. 

It’s so important to give words and meaning some thought. Think, in England if you call somebody a C*unt. It’s an endearing, friendly, joking term. Here in Canada if you say that to somebody in the same way as the English, you’re in big big trouble. So yes context is extremely important to get right. Just to clarify that the video above is an example of how not to talk with students or anybody!

https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/accessibility-services/resources-teaching-students-disabilities/appropriate-terminology

Brown University. (n.d.). Appropriate Terminology, retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/accessibility-services/resources-teaching-students-disabilities/appropriate-terminology

Here’s a brief autobiography about me.

This blog can go all sorts of ways. I could talk about my journey of joy in life, talk about my childhood, talk about high school, talk about my adult life, talk about goals I have achieved in life.

I think for the case of the course, I will do what I believe is “on topic” and talk about what led me to the PIDP.

As a before hand, I will state, that as soon as I took English 12 in high school, I realized I never wanted to do a paper ever again in my life. I actually still feel this way however I find a blog less terrible. No topic statement, hook line etc… Just spewing out words…. No novelist here.

I was smart enough to know that I should go to college, and found myself debating either electrical or welding. I always took trades in high school so all I had to do was decide between the two. Electrical won because I didn’t want to get even worse skin so…. it was decided.

I took my Electrical ticket in Kamloops BC. It was wonderful. Trades school is super affordable, a nice balance between work and school, raises every year and you get to stay fit at work.

Throughout my electrical career (Im only 35) I worked at many places. Thats the way of the trades. I worked in Vancouver when I started, then moved back to Kamloops and worked at a mine. I spent time working up north, bopping around Kamloops doing solar, and doing side jobs in my own time. It’s been an amazing career that has opened many doors.

I ended up have two little girls and staying home with them. I was still always “working”, but by that it was side jobs I could do at night, or woodworking projects I could sell in my spare time. No actual on the books jobs or need to sign up for childcare.

Fast forward to a couple years ago, and I was given an amazing offer to work at TRU. I signed my youngest up for daycare, and began down the path to my new career.

It’s been rewarding. I teach a great group of students yearly. There’s only room for growth for them. I also love that I get to still use tools some days. I still do have a passion for the trades and will always be looking for ways to add them more into my course.

Thanks for reading

This work by Janessa Boomhour is marked with CC0 1.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0