What if the system needs fixing instead of the students?

Y- that is just so beautifully said.

I had a, an instructor when I was in grad school who was so patient, and I was like, "How do you...

How are you so patient [laughs] with us," you know, and, "How do you provide all these opportunities?" And she said, "You know, in my whole time of teaching," she primarily taught graduate students.

She was like, "I almost never had students who were m- you know, not doing material or stuff like that because they just didn't want to.

They weren't just like, 'Screw this, I don't care.' It was usually because they had something else going on." And when I learned that, it gave me the ability to be a lot more patient.

And I think in undergrads, sometimes there are students who don't really wanna be there, or they're learning, like, oh, this probably isn't the field for me.

But-

Um

... not the majority of them.

The majority of students really wanna be there, and oftentimes, yeah, it's not like they're not turning in homework or something, you know, because they just don't care.

There's usually, if I reach out to try to figure out what's going on, something else at play where they signed up for the class 'cause they wanted to be there, and now th- What can I do to help them-

Mm-hmm

... reach those goals, you know? So that has really been my experience, is that if I can make an environment where they're able to thrive and give them the opportunity to meet their full potential, they'll be able to see, like, "Do I really wanna be here?" And often the answer is yes, and they're able to rise to the high standards still that we set, you know, and they're able to participate in the field.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

So I love that.

I think that's awesome.

Um, okay, and then I think something that I'm wondering about, so I know we'll talk about this probably more at the community conversation, but we do have listeners who aren't gonna be able to be at BCCE, which is part of why we wanted to do this series, you know, to bring in people into these major conversations even if they don't have the opportunity to go to BCCE this year.

So could you give some practical approaches that you've seen of how to be success-oriented, how to build these classroom environments that really will be, um, allowing our students to grow and thrive?

Sure.

There's a mindset, if you will, that, um, a person has to take on if they're going to be focused on the success of the student versus the deficit, right? Um, this individual, or this mindset rather, allows the individual to focus on students' potential versus critiquing their capabilities, and we are very well trained on critiquing capabilities.

We know how to write tests.

We know how to, you know, um, assess some of the things you even mentioned earlier, um, indi- individuals not coming to class meaning one thing versus it could possibly mean life is happening.

And how do I then reach out to that student to help them through that in the ways that I can with what's at my, um, what's at my disposal to address that, to make sure we have, um, focus, we have strategies that focus on showing them that they belong.

So for instance, if a student isn't coming to class, you know, often the easy answer is they're irresponsible.