Part 3

A short bird walk onto my Cal-PASS groups - where it all began!

It continues to be a happy surprise to me when I bring inter-segmental faculty together - no matter the reason. When I was heading up the Regional Cal-PASS effort in Sonoma and Marin, we gathered to analyze student transition data: where are our students succeeding and where are they failing when they transition from high school to college? The data was revealing at times, but must of those in the room knew, without looking at data, where students needed help. What concerned us most was the huge number of students who had to take remedial (basic skills) English and math classes in high ed upon graduating with fairly decent grades from high school. We pinpointed where we thought were the biggest disconnects and went to work on solutions.

The goals of these Cal-PASS groups were fairly open-ended. We were gathering in same-subject groups once per month to talk about expectations, pedagogy, broader issues of education and what the data was telling us. We put or heads together to come up with many, many interventions, both for students and faculty. We created a "Jump Start to Math" course that helped an identified group of high school seniors test out of basic skills math courses, we coordinated a "Science A-Go-Go" field experience for high school students to increase their interest in science. (This was an especially exciting initiative because it involved SSU professors, lab experiments, site digs and a visit to the tide pools of Bodega Bay).  After participating in several different types of essay paper norming sessions and other good work, the English group started a campaign along the lines of the poster below.

In the fifth year of these intersegmental meetings, we got to a point in all the groups that we felt like we had to widen our circle of faculty involved in intersegmental discussions. We organized several very successful campaigns involving a poster that (we hope) is hanging in every single high school classroom in Sonoma and Marin. We also began our two years of "un-conferences," 2 per year for STEM and two per year for English. More about the un-conferences in my next post!