Transforming Teachers

Poet, teacher and UNCSA Professor of Humanities Dr. Joseph R Mills conceived and curated Step into this Class as way to build an innovative teaching and learning community. This experiential and conversation series allows faculty members and the entire community to experience together the great courses of beloved professors from 5 schools in Winston-Salem. This series, featuring faculty members from five Winston-Salem Universities, was valuable for all those interested in teaching, learning and ideas, and was attended by a diverse mix of faculty and community members each month.

Janna Levin, UNCSA Division of Liberal Arts, led a session from her course, “The Science of Food and Cooking,” where participants learned about heat, heat transfer, phases of matter, and then learn to apply the lesson as we make ice cream with liquid nitrogen.

Chris Brown, WFU English Department, shared a timely lesson from his course “Slavery, Freedom, and the Archive.” Chris led us in thinking about the Star-Spangled Banner and how we arrive at meanings in this day and age for an anthem that is more than 200 years old.

Salem College Design Associate Professor of Design Rosa Otero drew on the Secret Salem Chairs series as participants learned about two iconic chairs designed by two influential architects of the 1920s – the Barcelona Chair designed by Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe and the Bibendum Chair by Eileen Gray. Rosa shows how understanding of design builds understanding of the world.

Tony Brown’s “First Day of Database Driven Websites” took the audience through the first day of teaching an 8 week upper level intensive, with a lot of information to cover. Students work step by step with the instructor to create a simple form that connects to a database and displays their information.

UNCSA School of Dance’s Abby Yager gave participants an experience from her contemporary dance studio, where we engaged in her approach to teaching and learning, which relies on the body as textbook, and on diverse, metaphor-rich discussion as route to understanding. Through detailed imagery and vivid examples, Abby helped us see how the study of dance builds understanding of the world, and how the tools of composition translate across disciplines.

Steven Giles, WFU Department of Communications led us through a session of his Communication Class to consider how conflict is an inevitable part of our personal relationships. This class session introduces participants to definitional qualities of conflict and promotes reflection and self-awareness about how conflict styles and interaction patterns can affect our experience of conflict in personal relationships. The session ends with a discussion of ways to fight fair when confronting relational conflict.

WSSU Department of Biological Sciences’ Dr. Stephanie Dance-Barnes‘ biology discovery lab, to learn about, discuss, and think with us about her approach to teaching and learning. Using the Daphnia or “Water-Flea” as an example of a model for hands-on experiments, this session will introduce participants to a course re-design at WSSU. Participants tried their hands at microscopy activities from the new Investigation & Research course, which provided a major starting point in the scaffolded integration of the high impact practice of undergraduate research across the biology curriculum.