Rethink. Relearn. Repeat. R3

Wade and Mary have a conversation with Emily Koehler about her experiences as a high school chemistry teacher and how those moments guided and transformed her pedagogy as a college instructor at a two-year technical and community college. Emily, in high spirits, talks about the strategies she used to engage her high school students but temporarily abandoned them when making the switch to teaching at Ridgewater College. Shortly after that, Emily comes full circle back to using her tried-and-true methods for successful teaching.

In this installment, Wade and Mary sit down with Amy Jo Maher, an instructor of MMDT (Multimedia Design and Technology). Amy openly shared with Wade and Mary her first foray into teaching online... and the bomb that it was. She was convinced that she would never step foot in that delivery mode again. Fast forward a few years, and Amy is a premier online instructor, and she shared with Wade and Mary how she builds community and engagement in her online classes.

Episode five opens with a discussion regarding John Benson (Professor of Chemistry) and his desire to “fill the gap” in Kahn Academy's delivery of chemistry education. Not really filling the gap for Kahn Academy, but John saw a way that he could design the delivery of material in his Chem classes in much the same way as Kahn Academy. In our discussion, we also learned about a mentor in John's life that helped him to learn that “to tinker” is to also learn and teach. Join us for a wonderful conversation with John.

Our fourth episode finds Mary and Wade having a conversation with Mike Sieve, a Math faculty member. What began, for Mike, as a traditional teaching of the college-level progression of math courses, has progressed to teaching more developmental math courses and a rethinking of what math can look like. We were super excited to talk with him about his new math courses (Quantway) and how they have reshaped his classes and re-visioned his teaching altogether.

In the third installment of the R3 podcast, Wade and Mary asked new graduate, Bryce Thompson to join them and talk about his experiences with Ridgewater and his learning styles. The discussion focuses mainly on Bryce's experience in his Ag classes, but he discusses learning during COVID and how his instructors adjusted. He also shares his learning style and how that impacts the way he comes at his classes, whether on the technical side of the college or in his liberal arts courses.

Mindy Rannow-Kurkowsky sits down with Wade and Mary to talk about how her graduate classes, her students, and her coworkers pushed her to start thinking about equity in her classes. Mindy has been an NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) Instructor for years, so she is used to teaching with a multi-faceted approach, but now she is giving students the opportunity to come at their assignments with options.

Lyndsay Ampe joins Wade and Mary to talk about the successes and challenges of being a new instructor at Ridgewater College.  She talks about the challenges during those first few years, and she also addresses the opportunities for growth and change.  She shares some of the ways that teaching during COVID has impacted her classrooms as we come back to teaching in person.

In this first episode, Wade and Mary chat about what drew them to this project of a podcast, well… a video/podcast… and their hopes and dreams for said pod/vid/cast. They introduce themselves for the audience and talk a bit about upcoming episodes. Tune in…. before they become famous…