Showcasing the expertise of
Board of Trustees Awards Educators of the Year
Minnesota State is filled with incredible faculty who are doing amazing work focused on their teaching craft. The purpose of the Network for Educational Development (NED) Excellence in Teaching Series is to continue honoring and showcasing the experience and expertise of the Board of Trustees (BOT) Awards for Excellence Educators of the Year through the opportunity to present, share, or teach about teaching and learning topics that have contributed to their recognition as excellent educators.
Agency in Action: Inside and Outside the Classroom
This fifth installment of the NED Excellence in Teaching Series, “Agency in Action: Inside and Outside the Classroom” is facilitated by:
Adam Marcotte
2016 Educator of the Year
Central Lakes College
This NED Excellence in Teaching Series installment will investigate the core elements of agency for us and for our students, and it will look for ways to bring capacity-building into our spaces more often. The first session will focus on defining and identifying the various elements of agency, and the second session will be about brainstorming and refining practical ideas for educators, administrators, and staff. Participants will want to attend both days.
Workshop experiences will be participatory and rely on our collective experiences and knowledge. Additionally, we’ll use writing, art, show and share exercises, and breakout rooms to ensure everyone gets a voice and we can—together—develop activities and actions to take home with us. All educators are invited.
Session One
During the first session we will begin by exploring the concepts behind “agency” and craft a working definition together for this workshop. Of course, we could always look up the word in our favorite dictionaries (which we may do), but fully understanding a term requires more than that. For example, how is “agency” different from the other educational concepts we know, such as “voice,” “empowerment,” and even “capacity building.”
For these 90 minutes, we will lean on each other, our personal and professional experiences, and our observations of how humans grow best to dig into the role “agency” has played in our lives. For both days, participants will need a working microphone and camera, paper, writing utensils, and a sense of humor as we will use various methods to think, reflect, and share. There will also be a small assignment for the following session.
February 11 @ 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Session Two
During the second session, we will start our discussion with the assignment from the first day. Then, we will translate “agency” from a concept to a possible educational standard. We’ll need to address questions like:
- How do we create lessons focused on developing “agency?”
- How do we assess it?
- How will it manifest in discipline-specific classrooms, especially when we have so many other things to accomplish?
- What role can it play in institutional documents (e.g. mission statements, department reviews, budget allocations, strategic plans) in order to support our work in the classroom?
Ultimately, if we decide that “agency” matters, then it requires that we tap into our professional skills and find ways to imbed it into our students’ experiences. This final session will end with tangible outcomes for our classrooms and, hopefully, a better experience for our students.
February 18 @ 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
The Board of Trustees Awards for Excellence acknowledge and provide systemwide recognition for consistently superior commitment to student learning of our college and university teaching and service faculty.
View videos and programs from previous Board of Trustees Awards at MinnState.edu/BOTawards.
