Year in Review: Goodbye, 2021!

It's time once again for my new yearly tradition, the Year in Review! An excuse to look back on what lessons have been spotted in the past twelve months. 

• Flashback Post: My Approach to the Lesson Plan - in preparation for a CITL workshop on Lesson Planning for Discussion Sections (a topic that everyone running a discusion section seems to want help with but which is rarely treated), I revisited an old post about lesson planning. 
  

• Pedagogical Possibilities: Quick Accessibility Tips for Text- After taking several online courses in accessibility in teaching and web design, I realized that that the tips offered tended not to be a part of the curriculum for developing teachers that I knew. This post set out to give some easy, quick pointers about making text a little more accessible, based on what I had most often observed in history courses. 

• Current Project: Portfolio Page- As I geared up job searching in earnest, I wanted to find a way to bring some of my work that was publicly available together in one convenient place, so that I might be able to showcase various pieces without suggesting employers look through the entire history of my blog or click links in my resume. The portfolio page I created here became a standard page on Lesson Spotted that I update periodically.

• Current Project: History SoTL and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion- My final piece of work as a graduate student, this post is a reflection on how scholarship on history teaching and learning treats DEI issues and suggests paths that could be fruitfully explored in the field. Submitted as part of my application for the Teacher Scholar Certificate at CITL.  

• Pedagogical Possibilities: If You're Drawing a Blank on Canvas- Just as my time at UIUC was winding down, the campus announced a switch to Canvas as the predominant LMS for university courses. This post aimed to set out some basics of Canvas for those apprehensive about the switch.   

• Current Project: Life Updates- Perhaps the most dramatic post of 2021, I talked about my new position as a Faculty Engagement Specialist, starting a new phase of my life and career. 

• Enough About Me: Deformalizing and Deformatting- As my interests and my daily activities changed, I have become more and more fascinated by using ways of communicating ideas that change my perspective simply by forcing me to reckon with medium rather than just a message. This post was an experiment in following that idea to a logical end: what if instead of writing a post about doing that, I made a post that was that? 

• Current Project: A Post That Took Seven Years (Kinda)- My dissertation became available for digital reading, a fact I reflected on here. 

• Current Project: Taking, Talking, and Thinking Through Career Development- An invitation to chat with folks in the UIUC History Department about career diversity prompted my to reflect on three mindsets that helped me in my career shift: taking, talking, and thinking. 

Fewer posts this year than last, but decidedly more upheaval; overall, a list of posts I think encapsulates the year gone by. Many posts center on life and career events, with only two posts I would characterize as outside of that dynamic. Looking ahead, I'd love to make an interactive year in review for next year. Here's to seeing what Lessons are there to be Spotted in the year to come!