Many faculty do not have the structure or time to create a formal appreciative teaching square. Even if the entire process is out of reach, there are aspects of the process that you can pursue that can support reflective practice to help support building on your teaching strengths.
Activity 1: Appreciative Interview
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Maybe it isn’t realistic to participate in the full process of appreciative teaching squares on your campus, but there are elements of appreciative teaching squares that can be adaptable to any context. One of those strategies is an appreciative interview. In an appreciative interview, you either get together with a colleague in your department, or maybe a colleague you want to get to know across campus with the aim of interviewing them about some of their best teaching experiences and also their values and how they show up in their teaching. In this interview, you either get together in person, or virtually, and you ask them a series of questions, and I’ll give you some examples of what those questions are. But again, the aim is to develop or strengthen a relationship, have a shared teaching conversation, and appreciate the teaching, the great teaching that’s already occurring on your campus.
Now, in an interview, you don’t, it’s not a conversation, you don’t interject with your own experiences. You’re interviewing the other person about their experience, so you’re asking for specifics, you’re asking for them to expand on the experience, and while they’re speaking, you write down some maybe quotable quotes, or things that are coming out through the interview, because at the end of the interview, you can have a conversation about some of the things that you noticed from their interview. Now, a couple of examples of interview questions you can use, and again, these are adaptable to your context are, number one, you can ask, what is an example of a teaching experience where you felt really alive? What was involved in that experience? Who is involved? What made it so exciting? And provide as many specifics as possible.
Another example of a question that you can use either as a follow-up question or instead of that question is, what are your teaching values, and how are those teaching values showing up in your teaching? What are some examples of things that you do that display those teaching values? Again, then you switch, the other person will ask you those same questions, and after the two interviews, you can look back at your notes, and have a conversation about what you noticed in each of those interviews, and I bet what will happen is that you’ll, one, it’ll be joyous, it’ll be fun to get to know your colleague that much better, and you’ll have an appreciation of the amazing teaching that’s already going on in your campus.
This activity could be completed as part of a faculty meeting, retreat, or over lunch with a colleague. The aim is to unearth the strengths of your colleague. The process is grounded in story, and stories connect us to each other. The goal is to help you feel more connected to your colleague and learn about a design or implementation strategy they use in their course that they are proud of.
This process is an interview, not a conversation. Your goal is to ask the question and then to pretend you are a journalist. You can ask the interviewee to expand and clarify, but it is not your role to interject with your own experiences. Jot down notes while they are talking and extract themes. After the interview is complete, switch roles, now you become the interviewee.
The suggested prompts are the following but can be modified as you see fit.
- Tell me a story about the best times that you have had teaching? Looking at your entire experience, recall a time when you felt most alive, most involved, or most excited. What made it an exciting experience? Who was involved? Describe the experience in detail.
- Let’s talk for a moment about some things you value deeply in teaching. What is a concrete example of how you align your teaching practice with your values?
In the appreciative teaching squares process, the appreciative interview allows the group to find an appropriate focus and class time or module of an asynchronous course for the appreciative visit to occur.
Activity 2: Appreciative Course Visit
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Another aspect of appreciative teaching squares that can be implemented for your context is appreciative course visits. Now, in appreciative course visits, instead of visiting another colleague’s course from a lens of evaluation, we are visiting a colleague’s course from a lens of reflection on our own teaching and appreciation. Now, this is a mindset shift. So when we reach out to a colleague to ask if we can visit their course, we need to be very intentional and clear that we are visiting their course with that lens of self-reflection and appreciation.
Now, we’ve provided a template for you in order to start that conversation and provide some information from that colleague to provide more context about their course. It also provides you a space in order to take down some observations and some reflections and some questions to prompt you to think about how you could implement some of the teaching strategies or design of the course into your own courses.
Now, if time allows, for the colleagues, you can meet with your colleague and talk about all of those things that you appreciate in their courses. From the feedback from the faculty that have implemented appreciative course visits, they talked about how this was a really freeing experience. Usually, they are visiting their colleagues courses with that lens of evaluation. But instead, it was so freeing for them to look at these courses from that lens of, “Wow, look at all of the amazing things that my colleagues are doing in their courses.” So if you take a look at that template, again, it will provide you a structure to have this conversation with a colleague and structure that appreciative course visit.
Many faculty have been observed by a colleague while teaching for evaluative purposes. But what if instead we asked a colleague if we could attend their class with the lens of appreciation, not evaluation? Challenge yourself to find a colleague and ask them if you could attend on a day that is representative of when they feel most proud of their teaching. Download the Appreciative course visit template (Word Doc, 16 KB) and print out or share an electronic version with the colleague before the visit. Ask the colleague to fill out the top part of the form with a short description of the course and class session. If the class is asynchronous online ask them if there is an aspect of the course, you could observe. Attend the class and record observations, either record reflections in the moment or after the class session. If time allows ask your colleague to meet and share with them what you appreciated about the opportunity, and how the visit will help you grow as an educator.
Discussions
In what ways can you appreciate the teaching strengths within your department or university?
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.