Basic Skills Committee Minutes

CCSF Basic Skills Committee
Minutes of 2007 Meetings
10/22/07 and 12/3/07 | 9/17/07 | ESL-Eng Colloquium 2/22/07 | 2/12/07

Minutes of the October 22 and December 3, 2007 Meetings

Mary and I would like to thank you for the great turnout and cooperative, energetic involvement in our last meetings, particularly the 12/3 BSI discussion groups! Here is a short and sweet summary of our last two meetings.

Bonnie Gratch-Lindauer presented on her sabbatical research project on student ease of use of the library and research processes.

The BSI self study was presented and our committee experienced an introduction to the assessment discussion. Most of you are consequently participating in work groups toward the assessment end; your effort and availability are greatly appreciated.

Bruce Smith, Larry Klein and others promoted keeping the energy of Title III going, besides the planning for the self study. our overarching goal as a campus needs to be collaboration, focusing on basic skills issues. Larry prompted us to send proposals for funding for faculty projects, either continuation or startup. He wants proposals that will attract counselors, librarians and other student services as well. BTW, in the past three years, the number of students going on to four-year schools is dramatically up! Good work, everybody involved! (That’s all of us).

As our original BSC fall agenda of orienting staff and faculty to Reading Apprenticeship was postponed due to the timely Nature of BSI, we will be using our spring semester meetings to explore some practices and theory about this approach to textbook use. Most of the English Basic Skills faculty have been trained in this model because of its results in student engagement and comprehension. Please invite your colleagues to these spring BSC meetings; the time will be well spent.

As most of us are involved in the BSI work groups or steering committee, we are very committed at the moment. Therefore, there will not be a February BSC meeting. our semester meetings will be on March 10, April 14 and May 12. The proposed agenda is:

orientation to Reading Apprenticeship (March 10 and April 4)
Update on library changes as a result of Bonnie’s research (May 12)
Update from Larry Klein about professional development projects (May 12 or earlier)
Possible DeAnza math bridge program presentation (TBA)

If you have any updates that you think should be presented at our meetings, please let Mary or myself know.

We hope everyone’s semester has started off with you feeling refreshed and ready to work on behalf of our students! See you soon!

Minutes of the September 17, 2007 Meeting

Nadine gave a brief summary of the Basic Skill Committee’s involvements since its revitalization in 2003 as an outgrowth of the Title III project. The highlights of these projects were the Summary of Best Practices from the literature review, and the Recommendation to the Academic Policies Committee for a Teaching, Learning and Student Success Collaborative, completed in May 2005.
Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Alice Murillo introduced herself and expressed her appreciation of our subcommittee. She also introduced the Statewide Basic Skills Initiative.
Proposals for the subcommittee’s consideration were
1. Bonnie Gratch-Lindauer, Librarian, offered to present on her sabbatical findings on supporting Basic Skills students in using library resources. This presentation will take place at the next meeting.
2. Elizabeth Zarubin’s suggestion to promote and facilitate Reading Apprenticeship campus-wide trainings, starting with math and sciences, and possibly using our December meeting for a short workshop. This proposal was accepted and will be developed.
3. Bruce Smith presented more about the Self Study Institutional plan under the supervision of Dr. Murillo, that needs to be completed in order for CCSF to receive state Basic Skills funding, and wondered how this subcommittee might consider being involved.
Larry announced a funding proposal he is putting together for faculty, counselor, librarian or professional development projects, and would like to hear ideas, including schedules and costs.
Mary Bravewoman and Elizabeth Zarubin were voted in as chairs for this year.
our next meetings are oct. 22 and Dec. 3. We look forward to seeing and working with you then!

Elizabeth Zarubin will be contacting those of you who have expressed interest in supporting the Reading Apprenticeship cross-discipline training. Anyone interested in discussing / working on this before our next meeting should contact her at ezarubin@ccsf.edu or X7033.

Minutes of the Feb 22, 2007 ESL-English Dept. Bridge Colloquium

I'm very pleased to announce that our effort was a definite success. It was heartening to see such eagerness in the colleagues of both our respective departments. We were able to socialize a bit, gobble down some sandwiches, and get down to the beginnings of some business, all within an hour and a half.

Rachel Cohen was kind enough to begin with the review of the ESL sequence of courses. She put together a great handout which I'm attaching into this document. We can see not only the progression of courses, but the path that our students take to get to English and eventually to graduate. It is important to note, in conjunction with this handout, that the 160 to 93 path has now been officially approved by the English Dept.

Erin Denney enlightened us about the English Dept. course sequence, outlined in the second handout attached to this document. Many of us in the ESL Dept. were intrigued by the practice of allowing students to potentially skip ESL 92 if they managed to turn in a successful portfolio in 90 or 91X.

Following these overviews (which also included, it should be noted, a brief discussion of the courses the Speech Dept. offers and how our ESL 79 co-exists with that sequence), we broke into groups and asked each other questions of a more practical nature, to learn about the teaching tools that instructors in the various courses are using.

Toward the end of the meeting, we took down the more relevant bits of information that were gathered and noted them:

Regarding the English Dept.:

corrections are being done the same as in ESL (although others disagreed with this observation)
one instructor showed how she made grammatical corrections on the left side of a student's essay whereas rhetorical comments were made on the right side
there is a different LEVEL of grammatical correction between the two departments, obviously reflecting the needs of the respective students
in 96 and 1A, a grammar reference book is used in place of direct grammar instruction
the Prentice Hall reference guide was particularly helpful
there are many ESL students in these English courses because of the "status" for some of taking English rather than ESL courses
vocabulary is taught mainly through the context of the readings
one instructor stated that she allowed only a certain number of grammatical errors (of any kind) in order for an essay to receive a passing grade

Regarding the ESL Dept.:

a suggestion was offered that we could create a visual for ESL students showing that they aren't losing any TIME in their graduation path by remaining in the ESL track instead of jumping into English too quickly; such a visual could be given to counselors

another suggestion was made to English instructors that if a student in their class is in fact a non-native speaker, that they be encouraged to take the ESL Placement Test (although many English instructors emphasized that they already do this on a regular basis).

there was a suggestion for cross-departmental workshops on serving the Gen. 1.5/1.75 communities in both departments

a website called the Vocabulary Profiler was mentioned as a resource for determining the vocabulary level of any text: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/
the Academic Word List was mentioned; it can be found at: http://language.massey.ac.nz/staff/awl/awlinfo.shtml

At the end of the colloquium, it was agreed that we would hold regular follow-ups, with a more specific focus, starting in the Fall semester. We could have easily gone on discussing these issues for another hour, given the time and the proper chocolate. It was an excellent step in the direction of smooth cooperation, and I thank everyone heartily for their attendance and participation (on which you will not be graded this time!).

For those who were unable to attend this time around, keep your eyes and ears open; we'll get you in here next semester!
Nicki Harlow

Minutes of the February 12, 2007 Meeting

2:10 – 4 in Arts 303

Dr. Brock Klein, co-director of Pasadena City College's (PCC) Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), was a guest of the committee to discuss the work they are doing at PCC. Below is a summary of the main points from his opening remarks and the questions and answers that followed.

At PCC, they struggle with many of the same issues that we do here at CCSF.
The CTL supports a variety of innovative practices involving around 30 PCC faculty.
Klein presented an overall view of their work as a triangle with Faculty Development, Classroom Practices, and Student Support Services at the vertices. Evaluation surrounds this triangle and is integral to all that they do.
They see classroom practices as the most important issue in student success and, therefore, see professional development the most crucial piece of their work.
They are seeing both under-prepared students and under-prepared faculty; that is, they see faculty who are content experts, but have not been trained to teach and have not studied how students learn. For both groups?students and faculty?they have discovered that "dosage" matters. As a result, they are moving toward intensive, accelerated programs for their students. Klein mentioned several examples, including programs in the Summer to jumpstart students for he Fall and immersion programs that teach two semesters of math in one semester. Similarly, they try to meet with faculty frequently for at least a year to effect the most change in their practices. Klein stressed the power of an inquiry process in which faculty and their students identify issues, experiment with solutions, evaluate the results, and cycle back through the process repeatedly. He also advocates putting faculty in the student role, because he feels that often faculty don't think of themselves as students anymore.
They are working with several different models which integrate counseling and the classroom. Klein called the most effective counseling "holistic and intrusive."
When asked about the most important things we need to know as we work to improve student success at CCSF, Klein mentioned:
1. The need to be persistent; there is no silver bullet that will solve all the issues;
2. The need for a physical space for the CTL; it was a crucial step in their evolution;
3. The need to be open and flexible, to foster conversations and to collaborate within and across departmental and divisional lines.