{"id":53803,"date":"2019-02-20T11:18:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T16:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=53803"},"modified":"2025-08-19T10:03:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T14:03:22","slug":"chalkboard-chats-teaching-and-learning","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/chalkboard-chats-teaching-and-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Chalkboard Chats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Chalkboard Chats\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

For the past 16 years, working in various capacities in Teaching and Learning Services<\/a> (TLS) at Carleton, Patrick Lyons<\/a> \u2014 the office\u2019s current director \u2014 has seen how much people are drawn to stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On campus, stories abound. \u201cWe tune in to and have strong emotional responses to narratives about student success and faculty doing amazing things,\u201d says Lyons, \u201cbut we don\u2019t necessarily see what\u2019s happening inside our classrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This disconnect spawned an idea, and on February 14, 2019, the result of about three years of side-of-the-desk labour by TLS staff was launched \u2014 Courage, Curiosity, Teapots and Snakes: Stories of Teaching at Carleton University<\/em><\/a>, a collection of 67 short stories about teaching and learning from the perspective of Carleton\u2019s faculty members, contract instructors and teaching staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton's
Patrick Lyons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The stories vary widely and wildly, from finding out the university president\u2019s wife was one of your students or that you dated a student\u2019s father 30 years ago, to reflections on foreign travel, personal loss, and watching students excel in a class or in their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the launch, Systems and Computer Engineering<\/a> Prof. John Chinneck<\/a> read from his piece, \u201cThe Giant Plane,\u201d in which he recalls using a surprise attack as a teaching moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt takes a while to learn how to control a large class,\u201d Chinneck opens the story. \u201cAs a fresh young professor, I was teaching a huge engineering class in one of the big, bowl-shaped lecture halls. One day, as I was writing on the board with my back turned to the class, a paper airplane sailed out of the upper reaches, smacked into the board and fell to the floor. A challenge!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI picked it up and looked it over. It was a standard paper airplane made from a piece of 8.5 x 11-inch paper. I turned to the class and said: `You call THIS a paper airplane? You can do better than that!\u2019 They were engineering students, after all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Carleton's<\/figure>\n\n\n

Deeply Personal Stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lyons, who wrote the foreword to the book, had initially hoped to publish it to coincide with Carleton\u2019s 75th<\/sup> anniversary. But the project grew in scope, as did its editorial team, and he realized more time was required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe like telling stories and listening to stories,\u201d says Lyons, \u201cbut publishing stories is a lot of work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, contributions were solicited from faculty who had won teaching awards. But then the net was cast as widely as possible, through email and word of mouth, with support from the provost\u2019s office and Human Resources Department, to reach out to current professors and contract instructors, as well as retired faculty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn many ways, these are deeply personal stories,\u201d says Lyons. \u201cStories about a transformation. I was stunned by the variety and breadth of topics. I thought we\u2019d get a lot of humorous stories and a few that were heavy, but we got a lot of everything in between.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories came from teachers in all disciplines, not only English and the humanities but also areas such as engineering and business, which told Lyons that the care people put into teaching at Carleton is universal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"David
David Hornsby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a real culture of caring and being passionate about teaching here,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s really embedded at Carleton \u2014 that\u2019s what this book shows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And although the university is very good at recognizing teaching excellence and is home to a number of provincial, national and international teaching award winners, every single person who steps to the front a classroom \u2014 or leads an online course \u2014 is doing their best to ignite a spark in the next generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOften, we don\u2019t take time to recognize the quiet excellence that takes place in our classrooms,\u201d says Lyons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That notion gave birth two and a half years ago to the Raving Ravens<\/a> initiative, which calls upon students to send digital or hard-copy postcards to educators to thank them for their work. More than 400 have been sent so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTeaching is the most critical thing we do at the university,\u201d said David Hornsby<\/a>, Carleton\u2019s associate vice-president (Teaching and Learning). \u201cWe need many opportunities to recognize good teachers and what they do to foster student success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Carleton's<\/figure>\n\n\n

Fueling a Growing Interest Through Teaching and Learning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the Feb. 14 event, a pair of students who sent Raving Ravens postcards shared their stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sociology master\u2019s student Elle Reid talked about initially enrolling in university to humour her parents and check off an educational milestone. But then, in instructor Ariel Fuenzalida\u2019s social theory class, Reid was able to submit a rap video for her final project instead of writing a report, which helped fuel her growing interest in the subject and propelled her into graduate studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton's
Zeinab Fashwal tells her story.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Biology undergraduate Zeinab Fashwal talked about overcoming her fear of bugs and realizing that her degree could lead to many more options than medical school when a lab co-ordinator encouraged her to touch one of her \u201cpets\u201d \u2014 a cockroach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know the impact of that moment,\u201d said Fashwal, \u201cuntil I realized that there\u2019s a whole different world out there and I never knew how to look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearing these student stories and reading the Raving Raven postcards has given Lyons another idea and another potential book project: a collection of student and alumni stories about those hidden classroom moments and the positive impact that instructors had on them \u2014 \u201cthose little things,\u201d he says, \u201cthat really transformed their experiences at Carleton.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proceeds from the sale of Courage, Curiosity, Teapots and Snakes <\/em>(about $7 per book, after the cost of printing is subtracted) will be donated to the Campus Community Campaign Bursary<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t think of a better way,\u201d says Lyons, \u201cto tie everything together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past 16 years, working in various capacities in Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) at Carleton, Patrick Lyons \u2014 the office\u2019s current director \u2014 has seen how much people are drawn to stories. On campus, stories abound. \u201cWe tune in to and have strong emotional responses to narratives about student success and faculty doing amazing things,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":53813,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-53803","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53825,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53803\/revisions\/53825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=53803"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=53803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}