Welcome back to the Poggle Podcast.
This is episode four of season three.
I'm your host, Wayne Pearson, and with me today is Siobhan Julian.
Hi, Siobhan.
Hello, Wayne.
What do you have for us today?
Oh my goodness.
I am so excited about today's conversation.
Today we are talking about what to do when a Poggle activity on something that you want
a Poggle doesn't exist.
What do you do if there isn't one out there?
And we have with us today two people who have a lot of experience in that particular category.
So we have with us here today, Sydney and Megan.
Sydney Marquez-Bokirin is a music professor.
He teaches music theory and composition at the, at Adelphi University.
And he's the chair of the music department, which is a small liberal arts institution
on Long Island, New York.
He's also the co-chair of the diversity, equity and inclusion council for the college of arts
and sciences there at Adelphi.
We also have with us Megan Morgan Hoffman, who teaches biology at Berea College, which
is a liberal arts school in central Kentucky.
Her primary areas are introductory biology, developmental biology and neurobiology.
And oh man, we have such great people to talk to us today about not having a Poggle activity,
biology and music.
Let's go.
So we'll, we'll open up by saying, you know, just, hey, how did you come across Poggle
in the first place?
Cause I think that's always an interesting place to start.
How did you find out about Poggle?
Well, I'll jump in first.
For me, it was an absolute fluke and I'm so grateful.
I was giving a presentation at a higher education conference in Kentucky.
And the person before my presentation had just been to a Poggle workshop and was just
talking about it.
Here's Poggle.
It's really great.
You need to look at it.
Then I gave my presentation and then I looked into Poggle and there happened to be a workshop
about four hours away from me in the next several weeks.
So I went and fell in love and it was, I don't know if I would have learned about it otherwise.
So it was a wonderful fluke.
That's really similar thing for me.
I heard about it at a conference.
I heard someone mention it.
Sydney.
So similar thing for me, but this was a teaching and learning conference at Adelphi University.
So Adelphi offers an annual teaching and learning conference.
And it was during lunchtime, I was having lunch with colleagues from a variety of disciplines
and we were talking about what we do in the classroom.
And a colleague of mine, Melissa Vanalsen Paris, a chemist said, oh, that sounds like
Poggle.
And I go, Poggle, what's Poggle?
And the rest is history.
I visited her class, observed her class, was involved in a chemistry Poggle activity, a
musician.
And then she visited my class and she gave me suggestions and pointed me in the right
direction in terms of going to Poggle regional workshop.
And that was my first sort of formal foray into Poggle and the rest is history.
Yes, yes.
As they say, I drank the Kool-Aid.
Yeah, they do say that.
It's not a lie.
So this episode is really focused on what happens when you don't have a published Poggle
activity.
Where do you start?
What's helpful when you're crafting your own activities?
And Sydney, I'll have you comment on that first.
Sure, and I just have to say, maybe I was very naive, but I thought everyone had to
write their own Poggle.
So this was like a thing that I thought we just had to do if we did Poggle, write your
own activity.
So I think that sort of naivety made it less of a challenge for me because I felt you just
had to do it.
And maybe part of it too is just being a creative artist and an educator at that and putting
those skills together made the process not as challenging as it might be for others.
I don't know.
But for me, I just took what I learned from the regional workshop in terms of creating
models.
And it didn't really click for me until much later that other people have books with activities
already published.
It's like, oh.
And I guess I'm still in the process of developing such a resource with my collaborator, Josh
Grofman.
So our plan is to actually develop such a book for music theory activities, Poggle music
theory activities.
That would be so awesome.
So awesome.
So Megan, I'll throw it over to you.
Where did you start?
How did you get started on making your own activities?
Yeah.
I was one of the first biologists to join Poggle when it was 100% or mostly chemistry.
And so there weren't activities in biology.
And I remember, well, they invited some of us, some of the biology folks, to come to
a writing workshop and to try and help us get rolling writing around.
So that was a gift.
And I remember driving back six hours from St. Louis and sort of dictating into a, it
probably was a tape recorder at that point, dictating into a tape recorder some ideas
I had for writing some activities.
So that going to the writing workshop was very, very helpful.
You don't have to do that, but it certainly gave me some tools that I could start with.
So when you're looking to create your own activity and it doesn't exist out there, what's
the first thing that you consider?
Sort of walk us through your process.
Like, what's the first thing that you consider and what follows after that?
Megan, go ahead.
Yeah.
One thing that I did that was helpful when I was trying to start out was I sort of tested
out some ideas.
So without getting formal and writing an activity, I would take a particularly good diagram from
a textbook, for instance, and project it for the students to see.
And then I would ask them a couple of questions about it.
What do you think is going, what is going on in this particular point and how does it
relate to that point?
So almost doing a Poggle activity in the air, right?
Here's a picture.
Ask a few questions.
Then you can listen to what the students are saying.
And if they're not going in the direction you intended, you can prompt them, right?
So rather than have something written where it's harder to make changes on the fly, this
was a good way to test things out and see what might be a good model and how to guide
students.
Yeah, that's great.
Sydney, so how do you start?
Tough question.
If I think about where I started, the models, right?
I mean, really trying to figure out, well, what models work.
And in music, our models generally unfold in time because we have to listen to the example.
It can be as short as a clip because it could just be a chord, right?
But it's not just about looking at the thing.
It's also about listening to the thing.
And then it can become longer examples if it's an excerpt from a piece or even a full
piece.
And generally, I kind of have two approaches.
One is a concept that has multiple forms, say, for example, musical texture or different
types of chords, like major, minor, augmented diminished triads, for example, or augmented
six chords, et cetera.
And then I use those as models and I develop questions that gradually get the students
to the concept, right?
And then, as we know in the learning process, eventually get to that term that's associated
with the concept.
That's one process that is having multiple models.
The other is really taking a concept that I've learned myself from someone else and
then developing a set of guiding questions, the process-oriented guided part, right?
That lead to understanding something about the model.
So a singular model that demonstrates a concept multiple times, right?
And it's accepted as a model.
For example, a chorale by Bach.
That's a very standard model for us in music theory.
Yeah, I think that's generally how I approach putting a Pogel activity together.
I will add, though, that I did attend the writers' retreat and that was really, really
helpful because then I went beyond just writing the models and really thought about the kind
of questions I asked, the order of the questions and the way the questions are asked.
And then the Pogel pack, the clearinghouse, because then I got feedback.
Oh, I realized I didn't do this thing that would be really helpful for our students,
such as actually explicitly saying, working in your teams, come to agreement on.
That is tremendously helpful, right?
Because Pogel is all about collaborative processes, right?
And I kind of presumed that that would happen.
And I did realize that stating something explicitly is really, really helpful, right?
Because by saying that, it avoids the problem of students moving forward on their own individually
as opposed to working as a team.
Yeah, I've started in the Pogels that I've written, it always, or Pogel-like activities
that I've written, it really does need to start with the model, you know, and making
sure that that's a good starting place.
But then, yeah, absolutely, the order of the questions you ask, those little phrasing things,
Sydney, absolutely.
Speaking of a model, what does a model look like in your discipline?
So Sydney, obviously, with music, there's that element of an aural model where you're
hearing it.
But is it always that case?
Are you all, and I'll ask you very specifically for music, are you always going to use that?
You mentioned chorale by Bach.
Is it always a full piece?
So sort of what does a model look like in your discipline?
So at least the models that I create and use, not necessarily create, but use, they can
range from single chords and just the model, or they could be excerpts of a longer piece,
or they could be a full piece.
I generally, I haven't used extended pieces because the longer the models are and the
more they are of them, the more time it takes in a 50 minute class, time is precious.
Well, time is precious, period, anyway.
But yes, I would say that we always have to listen.
So we always have to listen to the music that we're analyzing.
We always have to look at the score.
And then we always have to look while listening so that those multiple processes are scaffolded
but also used together.
And I might be a little biased here, but I always tell my students that as musicians,
our ears are very powerful tools.
That is a skill that we have and that we should use in analysis.
Your ear will tell you a lot more, can tell you a lot more than just versus overthinking
something.
And while you're looking at the score and those dots on the page may not always translate
into sound, but especially for our students.
But once you make that association by listening and looking at the score, then you're really
putting everything together.
Yes, I'll leave it there.
So Megan, teaching biology, what makes the models that you work with different than the
classic chemistry Pogel models?
Right, but the classic chemistry Pogel models were the ones I saw anywhere were visuals.
So images of something or equations.
And so I'm still stuck in the visual.
I do have to say that, but I've gone from thinking the model must be an image to using
videos or animations.
Biology is a lot of biology is kinetic and you have to see something unfold to really
understand what's going on.
So having students look at videos or animations and also just text and not a book text, but
I wrote an activity about learning the language of biology.
So much of biology's terms come from Latin and Greek.
So helping students see that you don't have to memorize thousands of terms, you can decipher
them.
So just having words and descriptions as a model worked really well.
Or I have an activity on mindset.
And so having quotations from different people and having them analyze mindset by reading
what people say, so I'm still visual.
I'm still stuck in the visual, but there's more of a variety to them now.
I love that so much.
That's such a fantastic idea.
And what both of you are saying that you're really pulling on, like we're taking the model
from a static image on the page to something that we're engaging other senses in.
We're listening, we're watching.
And just to kind of go off on that, because you are talking about very different types
of models, more active, more engaging models than we have in the published books, because
we're writing our own.
Do you find yourself altering the roles that students have in order to better interpret
those models?
So I'll go to Megan first on this.
Just today we were using something I call the model pointer.
So their requirement, because the models can have a lot of information and their job is
point to the part of the model that your team is talking about right now to make sure everyone's
actually talking about the same thing.
Or the, I don't think this is unique, but the molecule handler, if we're building things,
one person is in charge of moving around the pieces.
So when we're sorting molecules, they're in charge of that.
Or someone to run the computer if they're watching an animation or a model.
And Sydney, I mean, with music, how does that affect your roles?
Oh my gosh.
Shravan, this is like a light bulb moment.
It's like, what?
I can change the roles?
I'll have to think about this now.
I've changed the names.
I used to use manager.
Now it's facilitator.
I really like that term.
But boy, I don't have to think about this.
Oh wow, okay.
Maybe it's something that I should apply in my own classroom.
So thank you.
There is one thing that I would like to add because Shravan, you mentioned we're talking
about experiencing models in a variety of ways.
I neglected to mention that sometimes the chorale that we're analyzing, I have my students
sing it.
So they're really engaging multiple senses.
They're really experiencing the music.
I don't just play it for them.
Yeah.
I love this so much because for someone who teaches chemistry, and that's me, I'm very
fortunate that I have two published Flynn books for high school chemistry.
And I've been working out of those quite a lot.
And as such, it's like that that's what a Poggle activity is.
And of course, we want to go through that vetting process and have these high quality
activities published.
But to see how we can expand this when you don't have the published activities and then
how you can make it much broader, much richer, looking at it a variety of ways.
I love that and having the students actually sing it.
That's fantastic.
So this is a little more specific and feel free to answer in terms of the specifics of
your discipline.
But even in chemistry, not every topic is suitable for a Poggle activity just due to
the nature of the topic.
So what are some topics in your discipline that are just really, really hard to write
a Poggle activity for that don't necessarily go well with this sort of active learning
environment?
And Sydney, go ahead.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this.
And there are two factors that generally keep me from Poggle-izing something, if I can verb
that term, which is time.
Right.
Sometimes it's not actually the concept, but time.
And I think that's one of the challenges that we have to kind of just get over, that we
can invest the time to create the activity because that activity will be of use for us
in the future.
But yes, there are, I feel, certain concepts that I haven't quite figured out, primarily
because it involves sort of more the creativity of the students.
So then they get really invested in wanting to do what they want individually.
And the concept that our creativity, our individual creativity, that's us, right?
Singly.
And so it's hard to put that into a team concept, but I think there's a way.
I mean, I like the idea of composing as a team, for example.
I'm not there yet because when I've tried this, students kind of rebel.
But I don't want to do that.
I mean, I would hear them in their teams.
It was not working.
So that's one, like concepts that involve creativity at the core.
And the other are just more advanced concepts that I haven't yet quite figured out how to
find an effective, or determine an effective model.
I'm sorry that I'm speaking sort of generally, but I hope that that's not...
That that's helpful.
Yeah, I think that is helpful.
And because that's something too that with music, when you talk about music theory, I
can see the more concrete things like you were talking about being very open to an activity.
But like you said, those more creative aspects like composition, yeah, how are you going
to get four people in one team?
That's right.
Yeah.
Chords, scales, musical textures, you know, yeah, that can be done.
And others that's why they're still struggling.
I like that you're not saying it can't be done.
I like that you're just saying, I haven't done it yet.
I haven't done it yet.
That is a perfect attitude to have.
All right, Megan, so what are some things that are just kind of tough to have a Pogol
activity for?
Yeah, I was trying to think of this because I haven't hit anything yet that I don't think
I can do, but you know, my upper level classes, I haven't spent as much time writing activities
for those.
But I had two thoughts.
One with listening to Sydney, the creative part, right, the creative part of science,
one part of that might be designing experiments.
And how do you guide people through that?
Yeah, you can give them some hints, but how do you make them get them there or really
deep analysis of something where there's not a single right answer?
And so that made me think that the Pogol project recognizes two kinds of activities right now,
the learning cycle ones, which I think mostly I've been thinking about while we're talking
here, but also the application activity.
And that's one where students might already have the skills and the background.
So you're not teaching them something new, but you're letting them apply what they know
to some new scenario.
So I think that may be where we need to think about it.
Okay, maybe this topic doesn't lend itself to learning cycle, but maybe it's an application,
right?
Maybe there's a case study in medicine you can use or, you know, there's somewhere where
you're applying what you already learned.
I love that.
Yeah, definitely thinking and thinking about the activities as serving two different functions.
You know, sometimes that you have the learning cycle function versus the application function.
Love this so much.
So how do you respond to people who say, because I'm sure, especially in music, Sydney, say,
this won't work with Pogol.
This won't work with Pogol.
We can't do that.
We can't do music through a Pogol activity or biology.
No, just it's chemistry.
That's where it started.
So how do you respond to someone who says, no, you can't do that through Pogol?
Who wants to speak?
Well, I would probably, if this was a natural conversation, I would pause and really think
about the question, right?
And on the specifics of what this will not work, then this, right?
And I would then gently say, well, let's think about that a bit more.
That's where I would start.
And then eventually I'll get back to them.
And you know, who knows, maybe it is not possible for that particular thing.
And then I would say, okay, I can't come up with anything.
I'm sorry, I can't help you with that one.
But then I'll probably toggle to or pivot to another concept, an associated concept
and suggest, no, I can't think of something for that.
But how about this?
Yeah.
Yeah, I like that.
Megan.
This actually brings up something I was wanting to talk about and hadn't found a good place
for.
Yes, of course, there may be some things that we really just can't put into either the learning
cycle or the application.
But maybe there's a new avenue for Pogol, right?
So maybe there are ways to just stretch what Pogol does now.
But also, I think if you are trying to get students to an understanding, then you can
use Pogol to get there.
There was an article written a while ago by Dan Libby talking about how to turn a lecture
into a guided inquiry activity.
And then in more recent years, Laura Trout has helped develop a scaffold for authors.
So at the writing workshops, we use a scaffold.
And here's how I think you might think about this, how to Pogolize something.
Start with the assessment question.
If you were going to write an exam or a final paper prompt, what is that?
And then you work backwards.
And you say, OK, if I want my students to answer this question, what is the first question
I have to ask myself in order to get at that question?
And then what content did I need to know to ask that question to answer the prompt?
And you kind of break the prompt down into the basic concepts students need to know or
the basic skills they need to have.
They need to be able to parse a sentence or they need to be able to analyze a novel or
they need to be able to code something in computer science.
And you just break it apart and you keep saying, OK, well, what did I need to know to say that?
And then you step back again.
What did I need to know to say that?
And if you can do that, then you can write a guided inquiry activity about it.
Sydney.
In lesson two, scaffold.
Instead of saying no, when someone says, I can't do use Poggle in this con with this
concept, with this activity, with this whatever.
Take it step by step and follow what Megan just said.
Scaffold.
I'm hurting so much today.
You two obviously are working in disciplines where you don't didn't always have a published
activities.
Do you need a full blown published activity to run a Poggle like session?
Do you need that published activity, Megan?
I'm going to say no.
I think.
Part of what makes the guided inquiry is you are helping students along the path to get
to an understanding.
And I think that's possible to do even without a published activity or an activity at all.
I know I'm to counter it to something, another way of learning, I am really awful at running
discussions.
I just don't do it well.
I don't ask the right questions.
I can't get students always engaged in a discussion.
But I found if I structured it in a guided inquiry way, then I can do it and they can
do it.
So I can ask them a few leading questions and then let them talk with each other and
then bring them back.
That I can do.
So I think there are ways to get students to explore something on their own with you
just nudging them in the right direction.
Thank you.
Sydney.
Oh, I have to say no.
Because we don't have any public.
So yeah, that's no, but I want to.
So rephrase the question for you, Sydney, like what if you don't have an activity that
you've even fully written, you just more kind of have an idea.
Are you able to incorporate that into your classroom?
Are you waiting until you have finished writing that and you're like, this is good.
I have revised it five times and now I'm going to run it with my students.
Oh, if I did that, I would not ever have any activities or any Poggle in my classroom.
I think it's really helpful to think about Poggle as a continuum.
What does that mean?
So you have used the word Poggle like, so that's one towards one end of the continuum.
And then the other end are the published activities.
For me, what really is appealing about Poggle, what is really useful with Poggle is that
there are a variety of ways of applying Poggle principles.
The activity is just one concrete example of what Poggle is.
That the soft skills that are learned in the process are valuable as well.
So the idea of teamwork, like sometimes I will have my students work in teams, even
though I don't have a Poggle activity.
But I don't think one has to have a Poggle activity to have students work in teams, because
it's also about building that community in the team.
So that when they do have an activity, they already feel that they're a team working together
to succeed in this activity.
And then there are other variants in between, right?
Because I may have a Poggle activity, but I think if I wait until I'm happy with it,
I would never be able to use it.
And I think the best way to actually figure out how to improve the activity is to just
use it.
And I will say, though, that I usually have designed a full activity that I try out.
I don't tend to, I do not try just a set of questions and not the entire activity.
And I've learned a lot, because then I know, okay, well, this activity actually takes two
days, not one day, 15 minutes, just not enough.
That happens a lot.
And then I either finesse the activity so that it does fit the 15 minute framework of
my class, timeframe of my class, or I accept that, hey, it's two days, or even three days,
and that there's this continual building upon on terms of student learning from one class
to the next.
Yeah, absolutely.
So going right along with what Sydney said about just kind of learning over time and,
you know, okay, this is one day, okay, I'm not going to wait until I've revised it five
times.
What are some of your biggest lessons learned from your experience of writing your own Pogels?
What are the lessons that you've really taken from this?
And I'll start with Megan.
Thanks.
One is just make notes.
I have my activity that I'm, you know, that even if I've used it 10 times, this class
of students will see something else in there that I didn't see or will read something differently.
So make notes.
This was great.
This was horrible.
You know, students read this question to mean this.
And if I don't make the notes during the class, I'm not going to remember it.
And so that's really important.
And another thing I've done, which is incredibly helpful, is if students are not reading a
question the way I intended it, I ask them, how would you rephrase this question?
You know, I explain what I meant, and then I'll say, okay, what's a better way to ask
this question?
And they've been great editors, because once they know what I'm trying to get them to think
about, they know how to say it.
So that's been hugely helpful.
That's fantastic.
So I'm asking the students to contribute to the process.
Yeah.
Sydney, so what are some of your biggest lessons learned?
Okay, so I just learned another lesson today.
Lesson number one was you can change roles.
So can I, I'm just going to jump in there.
And the first time I was at a Pogal workshop, it was NCAP 2017 National Conference to Advanced
Pogal Practice in 2017.
And I went up in like a newbie and introduced myself.
No, he said this in a talk.
It was Rick Moog, and he said something like, there's no right way to do Pogal.
And that was just very freeing for me to hear Rick say that, to say that, you know, you
can interpret it for your own classroom.
So Sydney, passing that message on to you.
So lesson one, Sydney can have different roles.
Yes, yes, yes.
Lesson three, students as editors.
Oh gosh, what a concept.
Thank you, Megan.
That I will certainly, certainly keep in mind.
And something else that I found very helpful is having a collaborator.
And for me, that's Joshua Groffman.
He teaches at Southern Connecticut State University.
He's actually the chairperson there.
And we've worked together on a variety of activities.
We've shared each other's activities.
We've given each other comments.
I've even used his activities in my classroom, although I'm not sure if he's used mine.
I don't know.
I'll ask.
But that's continuing.
We'll continue to work together.
And then there was something else I was going to add.
Well, while you're thinking of that, Megan, you were kind of nodding when he was talking
about collaborators.
And you have collaborative relationships that you've lent on over the years.
Yeah, off and on.
There were a group of some biology professors who were at that first writing workshop.
And we bounced some ideas off each other.
We tried to write together and it turned out we had sort of two camps in terms of how we
should organize things.
But I did have, I have had a colleague who was helpful.
And then I've also met, there are many more biologists now in Prokof.
So we're starting to kind of talk with each other more too.
But I haven't had a one single partner the way that Sydney has found someone to work
with.
Yeah, that's so great.
That's so great.
Yeah, Sydney, did you have something else?
Yes, I remembered.
Okay, good.
Lessons learned.
Yes.
Which is that it's okay if an activity doesn't fly.
If it doesn't work.
And similarly, I think I've mentioned this already, it's okay if the activity you design
isn't at its best form.
And it's also okay if you make adjustments on the activity on the fly.
I have found myself doing this and just adjusting and really just accepting that.
And then deciding after the fact whether that was an adjustment specific to that class or
it's actually an adjustment that like a eureka moment.
Oh, I should do this and make this included as part of the next version of the activity.
Yeah, that's such fantastic advice.
I think in life, not only in writing Poggle activities.
Very much along the same lines.
I love running the virtual fundamentals Poggle workshop introducing new teachers to Poggle.
And sometimes they start to realize through this that they love the idea, but they don't
have the published stuff out there.
So they're in a position where they might have to write their own if they want to use
this pedagogy.
How do we support new practitioners who are looking for these activities and looking to
write their own?
Megan, go ahead.
Yeah, certainly if someone has been to a workshop, they have contacts now in the Poggle project.
So contact one of the people who facilitated your workshop and say, do you know anyone
in this discipline?
And we get introductions all the time by email.
Oh, here's a colleague who is interested in this topic.
Do you guys know anybody?
And that's one way to find someone who either has already drafted some activities and wants
to share them or to brainstorm with.
So that's definitely one thing.
You can also write to the Poggle project, but you've already made contacts personally with
people at these workshops, so I think that's a great place to start.
And another is the PAC, the Poggle Activity Clearinghouse, is really rolling now.
And you can get access to it just by taking a short training session, 90 minutes or something,
and you have access to these activities.
So you might find an activity in your discipline that people have written and are trying to
get feedback on, or you can say, I would love to write an activity on the first Battle of
the Bull Run.
Does anybody have ideas on how to do that?
And that goes out to the community, and you might find someone there who wants to collaborate.
Yeah, the Poggle Activity Clearinghouse, the PAC, they really have a very large spectrum
of different things in terms of getting new activities going.
So if we have newer listeners out there and are they unaware of that, that's definitely
something to check out.
We can go from an activity that's almost ready to one, like Megan said, I just have an idea
and I don't want to jump on this with me.
Sydney, how do we support new practitioners who are looking to write?
I think I'm just going to amplify something that Megan said, which is consultation.
And turn to people who, to your connections that you're developing, right?
Which reminds me, we do have a Facebook group for Poggle practitioners.
And if you want to just ask, oh, I want to do this, but I have no idea where to start,
just post a message there.
And people are so good about responding and helping each other.
That's one.
And if you do have someone in your institution who is a Poggle practitioner, then consulting
with them, because they will know your institution, they hopefully will know you also.
And even though they might not be in your discipline, as educators, and also Poggle
educators, we would be familiar with the learning cycle enough that we might be able to ask
questions about, well, what kinds of models are you looking for?
What's the concept?
And point in the right direction, even if the detail of the activity is not exactly
there yet in that consultation.
Kind of that guiding process, I think, will be helpful.
No, that's a great, great point that you can have people help you out who aren't necessarily
in your same discipline.
And they have that experience more with writing Poggle activities.
Yeah, 100%.
I've helped a English language arts teacher at my high school write a Poggle about film
noir and just introducing film noir.
And it was just, yeah, it was because, but he got it.
He's like, well, you know, Sean is a nation of the ins and outs of it.
It's that learning cycle.
Oh, that's terrific.
That's exactly it, right?
And I'm sure you, by just that conversation, someone new to Poggle can arrive on their
own to how to create the activity or what kinds of models are looking for, et cetera.
And just to reiterate what things that Megan and Sydney have said, number one, if you've
been to a workshop and you're looking to write your own, yes, please do feel free to send
an email to the facilitators, because if we sign up to facilitate a workshop, we love
to talk about Poggle.
We would love to take your email.
We would love to get back to you.
So we are absolutely open to that.
And then, yeah, the plug for the Facebook Poggle practitioners page, everyone in the
Poggle project is just incredibly kind, incredibly nice and wants to help you out.
So don't, you know, absolutely post a question and people will get back to you and help you
out in any way they can.
And something that came up in some of our earlier conversations that I just want to
make sure that we talk about, I think, and I know for me personally, for some activities
that I've written, I get very self-conscious sometimes when I'm thinking about sharing
them with other people, because I'm like, oh my God, no, I wrote this for my classroom.
And to have someone else look at it, just, I just feel like it's not enough.
It's not good enough.
As people who've obviously written their own and then shared it with others, how do you
move past that kind of a mindset?
Megan.
This is really embarrassing.
And I'm saying this to however many people are listening.
This is embarrassing.
I have been working on activities for 16 years and I have been, I've played lots of roles
in the POCO project where I am reviewing people's activities or giving them feedback on their
activities or helping them write their activities.
And I have not had the confidence to put mine into that same process.
And so just this year, I finally got over myself and I'm starting to submit these to
the PAC.
I'm starting to ask other folks for feedback.
And as he said, Siobhan, there's nobody to be afraid of in this project.
No one is judgmental.
No one is going to write back and say, oh my God, Megan, what the heck were you thinking?
That's not going to happen.
So everybody in this project wants to help us be better teachers and better writers.
So the PAC is there.
Colleagues are there.
Just do it.
Yeah, Sidney.
I think for me, it's the experience of being someone who's really interested in POGO practice
without activities.
I feel like I would like to pay it forward.
Is that the right phrase?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
By not worrying about my ego in the process and just letting that go.
I completely agree, Siobhan, in terms of hesitation in sharing and being critiqued.
Oh gosh.
That really can be very challenging.
But for me, I think about, well, if these are available, if these are shared, if others
know that there are folks in music theory who are writing POGO activities, then maybe
they won't say, oh, that's not possible because we know it is possible.
And that can only be known if we put ourselves out there.
You're such a torchbearer, Sidney.
I love it.
I love it so much.
Wait, sorry.
What does that phrase mean, torchbearer?
You're heading the charge.
You're leading the way.
You're representing music teachers out there, but really showing them that this is possible.
Because I know that I'm fairly certain that POGO pedagogy is not widespread amongst the
music educators community.
But you being out there and you having the courage to put your activities out there and
your platform to say, hey, this works.
Now, man, that's going to change so many people's minds and push POGO in such an exciting new
direction.
Well, you know what I've been thinking about are my students.
So I have a lot of music ed majors in my classes.
So they enjoy POGO.
So I'm imagining 10 years down the road, will they be writing their own POGO activities
for their students?
That excites me.
That would be terrific if that happens.
But I also am careful that I don't push them in that direction.
That really it's their personal journey.
But I am hopeful that they seem to be having a very positive experience in that this is
the kind of learning, the kind of learning experience or the kind of learning process
that they would want to have their own students experience in their classrooms.
That's fantastic.
All right.
Thank you both so much for talking with us.
And I just want to give you an opportunity to say, have your last final piece, last little
bit of sign off.
Sydney, what are your final words of wisdom that you want to give to us here today?
I don't know.
And not words of wisdom, but just words of gratitude.
I am so grateful for this opportunity.
Thank you for inviting me.
And shout out to all music theorists there.
I'm here.
Feel free to contact me and we'll chat.
Thank you again.
Love it.
Megan.
Yes.
Also, thank you for including me in this.
It's always a joy to talk with all of you folks.
I could sit and talk POGO forever.
And especially with Sydney and Siobhan and Wayne, it's wonderful.
And I just welcome everyone to the POGO community who's listening to this.
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
If you're new to the community and you have any questions, please just contact someone,
post to Facebook and we'll happily support you in your journey as you start writing some
of your own activities.
Thank you both so much for sharing everything.
This has been such a wonderful conversation.
Thank you everyone for listening and I will hand it back to Wayne.
Well thank you Siobhan and thank you Megan and Sydney for just a fantastic, shall I say,
really active conversation about the POGO classroom and the activities that we use in
the POGO classroom.
Now, of course, this is where we ask our listeners to join the conversation.
Again, if you go to the Facebook page and you use hashtag the POGO podcast, you can
join in this conversation.
Let us know what you do when faced with the lack of an activity in your classroom and
how you can POGO through that situation.
So we'll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode of the POGO podcast.
Bye bye everybody.