I find motivation and reward the best part of learning and growing. Students learn best when they actually want to learn the content, go figure. So how do we motivate students to want to learn and grow together? Early Start: EPIC is just an extra thing that freshman have to do because they didn’t “test” well. Their desire to be here isn’t at a high level to begin with, so things like a Facebook group and quests instill intrinsically motivated students who want to learn.

Reading Jane McGonigal I found two concepts that really stuck out to me that relate to my passions of teaching and coaching: fiero and student-led teaching and help. There is no other feeling quite like fiero when competing in sports, playing a game, or accomplishing a difficult task. There is also great satisfaction when you teach someone something and they succeed at it. It affirms that the student knows the subject material and/or task, and gives them a fiero-esque feeling when what they say actually works. It feels like a team effort that is done completely on their own, with no “help” from a teacher. So how do we instill these traits into the incoming freshman at Early Start: EPIC?

From my past four years experience working basketball camps for Point Guard College around the country I have found many leadership and team building techniques that really exemplify what we are trying to do in our class. I have talked a little bit about them in class, but here are some exercises that I found very effective in creating self-motivation and student (athlete)-led growth and learning.

Commitment Statements: a writing exercise that allows students to form their own identity and to commit to a daily practice that will better themselves and others. For example, one student may write “I am committed to rewriting my notes 10 minutes after every Biology class.” Along with the writing of these statements, students are encouraged to share them with other students. It is not forced upon them, but voluntary. With participation, students break out of their shell and share when they otherwise wouldn’t have. They own their commitment and want to share who they are and who they strive to be.

Pods: We split the students into eight pods or groups of 8-10 with their pod leader. On Day 1 each pod leader was very “mom and dad like” and was with each pod for every downtime (breakfast, lunch, breaks, dinner, night). Each day we gave the pods more and more freedom to do what they wanted by themselves, but by giving them rules to abide by (e.g. you could go wander the campus but needed to be in a trio, group of three, and let the group leader know that you were going). This gave them more and more confidence and freedoms while instilling leadership qualities within the groups. This translates to our program in that freshman need to start fending for themselves. Life after high school is not handed to them, they have to go find things out and make things happen on their own. They are adults now.

Lastly, our activity called the Final Countdown. This is the “levels” I have shared in class. It starts with every pod/team completing a level 1 task, seemingly easy. But as they reach each new level and activity they must work together and the tasks become for daunting. Where more team building and learning comes into play is when level 8 is in play. Level 8 cannot begin until 4 total teams have completed levels 1-7 successfully. This allows teams that have reached level 8 to help out and teach the other teams how to beat each level. This is all done without the group leader’s help. Since this is the final challenge for the teams, they are on their own (much like real life) and they must use each other to complete the challenge. This can be adopted into Early Start: EPIC by having teams help each other out on each level as all teams are competing for one final goal. There can be a winner after level 10, but we want every team to complete through level 10 — this is where other teams will help as well.

These are some concepts that I think we can incorporate with the Quest idea. I believe that each team (or however we do it) must help each other out. That is where you meet new people and learn how to go outside your comfort zone to succeed in life. I have seen these concepts succeed with 150-200 middle schooler through seniors in high school and I can see with working with what we are trying to do in some capacity.

Brett Cauchi

http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_book.asp

HI! My name is Brett Cauchi and I am a 22 almost 23 year old 5th year Senior here at Chico State. I am a bit of a journeyman, not by choice. Out of high school I had to make the decision to go to a UC school or play basketball at a JC… I chose the latter. I don’t regret it at all, and am so glad I pursued my passion for the game of basketball. Junior College academics was interesting to say the least, but what I learned most was who I was, and how to interact with people of all walks of life, which if you think about it is way more important than algebra (I can get away with that comment in this class). Anyway, I played two years of JC ball, then transferred to a small Liberal Arts college in McMinnville, Oregon called Linfield College to continue playing basketball. I had a good time there, but not great. Ultimately I fractured my foot midway through the season, and amidst all of the rain, I decided that I did not wan to return there for another two years of college.

So I hopped on the phone and talked to the head coach of the Chico State Women’s Basketball team, a very close family friend of mine, and asked him for advice. He told me to come coach with him at Chico State and to finish my academics here. I said YES.

So here I am, a year and a half later, on my way to finish my bachelor’s degree this Spring in English Studies. I still am coaching with the Women’s basketball team (so come check us out!).

As far as the future, I wish to obtain my teaching credential and masters (most likely from Chico State) and become a high school teacher and basketball coach.

I enjoy basketball (shocker), classic rock and new pop (T-Swift is my #WCE), golf, and reading good books (more specifically life-changing books, self-help types).

Now for the juicy stuff:

In the Wenger intro piece I found these passages compelling enough to pique my interest:

“1) For individuals, it means that learning is an issue of engaging in and

contributing to the practices of their communities.

2) For communities, it means that learning is an issue of refining their

practice and ensuring new generations of members.

3) For organizations, it means that learning is an issue of sustaining the

interconnected communities of practice through which an organization

knows what it knows and thus becomes effective and valuable

as an organization.”

These three ideas make me think that there are three types of learning environments: individual, community, and organizations. I agree with this concept and that each environment has its own way of learning. Each one is linked to one another — you must be able to learn as an individual in order to express ideas to a community or organization, but also, you must be a part of a community or organization to actually benefit from learning as an individual.

“There are also times when society explicitly places us in situations where the issue of learning becomes problematic and requires our focus: we attend classes, memorize, take exam, and receive a diploma. And there are times when learning· gels: an infant utters a first word, we have a sudden insight when someone’s remark provides a missing link, we are finally recognized as a full member of a community.”

I liked this passage because it gives substance to the way of “learning by doing” rather than “learning because I have to.” I believe that learning in an engaging environment leads to the best learning. Take sports for example.

Why do people play sports? They’re fun and challenging. You still have to work really hard, but the incentive is there- it is fun and there is an intrinsic reward to it. School can be the same way, unfortunately, its perception is of we have to do it, rather than we want to.

My fav= learning as participation

“Even though the topic of this book covers mostly things that everybody knows in some ways, having a systematic vocabulary to talk about it does make a difference.”

This I cannot agree more with. In EVERY facet of life, a certain vocabulary pertains to the actions. It may be the exact same action, but for a different environment, different words link to it. This book shows is telling us that all the information is out there, it is common sense, but that this book puts vocabulary words to those actions so that we can understand it.

All in all what I take from this reading is that learning happens by doing, and that for anyone to learn in any aspect of life — school, work, athletics — they must do rather than be talked at.

The second reading from The Forward to Situated Learning was a bit harder to decipher for me. That being said, this passage really stuck out to me:

“The individual learner is not gaining a discrete body of abstract knowledge which (s)he will then transport and reapply in later contexts. Instead, (s)he acquires the skill to perform by actually engaging in the process, under the attenuated conditions of legitimate peripheral participation. This central concept denotes the particular mode of engagement of a learner who participates in the actual practice of an expert, but only to a limited degree and with limited responsibility for the ultimate product as a whole.”

This correlates well with the other reading, “learning by doing.” The term given to it in this context is legitimate peripheral participation. The way that term works in my tiny brian is being immersed with the learning around you by doing and observing (please tell me you caught my little jab at myself with the misspelling of brain). I believe that immersing the “learner” in fire is the best way to learn. This comes from learning from an expert. This is why apprenticeships make great employees, workers, leaders, CEO’s, etc. A perfect example is billionaire-entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. He went to Indiana University, got a degree, but made his billions by immersing himself in the computer industry selling computers and reading manuals. The way he learned and became successful was by doing.

This reading also touches on how we need to learn together, not by ourselves. Learn together? Isn’t this the nightmare of all English majors? (Not me!) I prefer it.

This reading talks about how people learn, not specifically talking about academia at all.

This was a meaty reading, but I can take from it a sense of affirmation in the way I believe people should learn, and that is by doing, and by participating it with others.