Open Classroom Week will offer 46 classes, with 30 participating professors who have volunteered the courses they teach to be informally evaluated by other faculty and staff (Xavier Delcid/photo editor).
The campus community will soon welcome Geneseo’s first Open Classroom Week, to be hosted from Feb. 24 through Feb. 28. Throughout the week, faculty members who have volunteered to participate will open the doors of their classrooms to their colleagues for informal observations.
School of Education assistant professor Thea Yurkewecz and David Parfitt from the Teaching and Learning Center collaborated to bring the Open Classroom Week concept to Geneseo. In the Teaching and Learning Center, Parfitt designs workshops and professional development opportunities to evoke new teaching techniques and address issues that arise in the classroom.
“Observers are not evaluating their colleagues but exchanging ideas and appreciating how colleagues might approach topics differently,” Yurkewecz said.
Yurkewecz said the goal of Open Classroom Week is to make teaching a more public practice on our campus, to foster collaboration and to recognize our faculty and staff’s dedication to teaching and learning.
“It is a small campus, but at the same time I see new people every day who I have never seen,” Yurkewecz said. “I think that is important for us to go into each other’s spaces and learn from each other. What comes of it could be collaboration, or maybe just knowing another faculty member on campus.”
Each participating faculty member has welcomed one to three observers, both faculty and staff, to sit in per class. Faculty members from across the college, representing every division, have volunteered to open classroom doors to their colleagues for informal observations, according to Yurkewecz.
“We have been wanting for a long time to encourage faculty members to open up their classrooms to see what each other is doing,” Parfitt said.
Parfitt said that there is a broad scope of faculty, ranging from first-year to senior members, involved as well as a vast number of departments. Currently, 46 classes will have observers sitting in.
According to Yurkewecz, she and Parfitt were amazed by the response they received and are thrilled about so many members of the faculty and staff showing enthusiasm about this event.
Dean of Academic Planning and Advising and professor of English Celia Easton opened up two sections of her INTD 251 class. She said that the event is a great way for faculty and staff to get some insight on how their colleagues are encouraging critical and creative learning. Easton’s INDT 251 is an interdisciplinary elective course named Leadership, Values and Inclusion.
“I have been teaching mostly English at Geneseo for 35 years,” Easton said in an email statement to The Lamron. “Although this is my third time teaching INTD 251, I am still fascinated by the way the course helps me push boundaries in teaching and learning and I thought other faculty might be interested in that.”
Adjunct professor of philosophy Jonathan Auyer said he agrees that there is a “great deal” to learn from Open Classroom Week. Auyer opened up his Philosophy of the Arts class and three guests have signed up to sit in.
“I was interested for a few reasons: I wanted the chance to sit in on classes with subject matter that interested me, I wanted to see how other instructors teach and I wanted to meet a greater range of Geneseo students,” Auyer said in an email statement to The Lamron.
When planning the event, Yurkewecz said that Parfitt highlighted the idea of involving staff along with faculty.
“We have people who are not in faculty positions who can still go in and sign up to observe because they to work with the student body too. I think that is important for them to gain perspective and collaborate more. I think it is bringing us together,” Yurkewecz said.
At the end of the week on Friday Feb. 28, a conference will be held as a means for participants to share their observations, insight and perhaps things they will be implementing into their own classes. Yurkewecz and Parfitt said they hope to continue the event at least every year, if not every semester.
“I do feel like the departments are very separate from each other,” Communication major freshman Mackenzie Pagano said. “I feel like sometimes people judge each other when they are a part of different majors or departments because they do not really know how each of them work.”