The Evening Weekend News

The Evening Weekend News A Newsletter for Montgomery College Part-Time Faculty Produced by the Rockville Campus Evening-Weekend Office Charlotte Jacobsen, Editor March 2012, volume 2, Issue 10 Katie Torkashvan, Layout Allyson Lima, Cookie Researcher Spanish - Rockville When Spanish professor, Allyson Lima, is not at Montgom- ery College you can often find her in a large, sunny kitchen in Sil- ver Spring, baking hundreds of cookies. Allyson is the co-owner of CookieLand, a start-up business that caters and does special orders of handcrafted cookies. The idea for the business started by making cookies for holiday gifts and it took off from there. Friends and relatives loved the cookies and asked if they could get more. CookieLand now does corporate and private events and bakes large or small, personal special orders for pickup, or to mail. Allyson loves the smells as the vanilla, eggs, butter, cinna- Allyson Lima mon, and nuts mix together in the bowl. Growing up, Allyson was the cookie specialist in her family while her mother was the pastry maker and they worked side by side in the family kitchen. Prior to such holidays as Easter, Purim or Christmas, Allyson and her business part- ner, Martha Steinbock, are very busy. But during school breaks they often close up shop for several weeks to travel and do cookie re- search. So far they have visited Nicaragua, Argentina, France and Spain, and Martha will return to Paris to take a French macaroon class at the Cordon Bleu this spring. In addition to specialty cookies, the team also pro- duces good old classics like chocolate chip and frosted cake brownies. What makes their cookies so special? They are all hand made, 1 and baked in small batches. The business is expanding and CookieLand hopes to move into a larger space later this year. The team is also working on a website, but in the meantime if you would like to learn more or make an order, e-mail Allyson at [email protected] and she will send you their list of cookies. Allyson is happy out of doors. She is originally from northern California and enjoys long walks and short jogs. However, now that she lives in Maryland, she pre- Recently Allyson has started tutoring. When fers indoor lap swimming in the winter. students first come for tutoring, “I’m lost!” is usually Allyson earned a master’s degree in Romance Lan- what she hears. Her approach is to demonstrate guages at the University of Oregon and taught at Oregon ways to organize the new material and sort it into State for 5 years. Teaching at MC for 3 years, she keeps parts. She finds it is much like making cookies, it’s students involved actively in the classroom. She creates important to organize the linguistic “ingredients” in group activities that incorporate learned skills with new order to produce the product (speech or essay). Pa- structures. As the students interact, they practice and tience is a huge part of the tutoring process. In or- perform real-life situations in Spanish. Working in pairs der for the student to overcome language-learning and groups creates a community of learners, is fun, and anxiety and absorb new material, she strives to cre- helps relieve the stress that some students feel about ate a relationship of trust and calm. Unlike baking temporarily losing their own language. cookies, she can’t set the timer on learning. Allyson thinks, whether making cookies or speaking When asked if she has learned anything in Spanish, motivation and practice are the keys to learning. baking cookies that she has incorporated into teach- These activities share the same methods: they require ing Allyson replied, I think the most important thing patience and practice -- burned cookies or botched gram- in life is passion. Whether it is baking, teaching, or mar, you WILL make mistakes. But production of cookies tutoring, I put my whole self into it. When I bake, I or learning a foreign language creates an opportunity to am completely focused on the project. When I teach share something you love and to connect with others or tutor, I don't think about anything else. When I around the world. plan to travel, I am immersed in the map. It is all about being totally in the moment. Editor’s note: I can personally attest to Allyson’s and Martha’s delicious cookies! She brought me a small white box tied with a red grosgrain ribbon filled with Mexican Wedding Cookies (also known as Pecan Puffs or Russian Tea Cakes), and I have to say they were the lightest I have ever eaten! Allyson worked for years un- til she found the secret for the perfect texture. ¡Buen provecho!” 2 Reflections from the Rockville Vice President and Provost Judy E. Ackerman Each spring when we return from winter break there is a certain ex- citement since it is still early in the new calendar year, our New Year’s resolu- tions are still fresh, and of course there is the anticipation of the new semester. This year is no exception, and I look forward to continuing to work with students in the Rockville MA 94 lab. I have long believed that good teachers periodically need to experience what it is like to be a student.. It really doesn’t matter whether you en- roll in a course in your discipline or take a recreational class. In fact, it may be even more informative if you are studying something that does not come easily to you. An “aha” moment that I had regarding learning came when I took an introduction to cross country ski class with my family. After a couple Dr. Ackerman of hours, the rest of the family had mastered the basics and headed out to the trails, but I wasn’t ready to do so. My instructor kept asking me to try the same thing over and over again in the same way even though I wasn’t making any progress. Finally, I suggested a different, more incremental approach to what he was trying to teach me and eventually, I mastered enough so that I could join the rest of my family. In order to do this I had to take responsi- bility for my learning and get the instructor to try a different approach. One of the online blogs from The Chronicle of Higher Education that I enjoy reading is “Casting Out Nines” by Robert Talbert, a mathematics professor at Grand Valley University in Michigan. Although he often writes about mathematics and mathematics teaching, his topics go well beyond these two topics. On January 3, 2012 he wrote about his experience taking a short intensive course on discrete and computational geometry at a professional con- ference. In the blog1 he talks about re-learning three things about being a student based on his experience in this short course. First, he addresses the “physical component to learning.” He describes the change in his energy level after a full day of the course and points out that he revived a bit when there was more activity. That leads to his second observation, “Learning works best when it is active.” From this he concludes that the learning experience needs to be structured so that it is active. Finally, he observes that “The fear of looking like an idiot is real, and it prevents learning.” From my experience, it certainly was a lot easier to work with the ski instructor when the rest of the family was not there. I hope that each of you can look to your own challenging learning situations and derive some takeaways that you can use to help your students. Now that the Maryland General Assembly has convened and the governor has released his budget, budget advocacy moves into high gear. The capital budget priorities for FY 2013 are funding the design of a new Rockville Student Services Center and the renovation of and addition to the Sciences and Applied Studies building at the Germantown Campus. There is also a request to the County for a parking garage for the Rockville campus. Students from all three campuses get involved in advocacy when they go to Annapolis for Student Advocacy Day which this year is on February 9. They will have the opportunity to meet with our state senators and delegates and tell them about the impact that Montgomery College makes in their lives. During the Rockville Campus opening meeting this semester we gained a better understanding of the issues that our student veterans face after we viewed the excellent video produced by Dr. Esther Schwartz-McKinzie, In Their Own Words – Montgomery College Student Veterans. If you missed it, you can view it at http://youtu.be/bXIeI20tpSA. We were also fortunate to have Mr. Chris Buser, Clinical Director for Post Deploy- ment Reintegration Programs for the Veterans Administration, speak briefly about his experience working with re- turning veterans and answer questions. Following each war or conflict, veterans have faced challenges as they 3 return from war and go to school. Some of the issues that confront today’s student veterans include adjusting to the removal of absolute structures, dealing with life after injuries, learning to trust, PTSD, and the loss of friends. Veterans at Montgomery College have benefited from our Combat2College program, a program that provides aca- demic and social opportunities as well as support services for veterans and active/reserve service members. For additional information about Combat2College, please contact Jason Franklin, Joanna Starling, or Professor Rose Sachs. Although we all hope that it is never necessary to implement the College’s Emergency Plan and procedures, it is important that each of us reviews them at least once a semester so that in the event of an emergency we are better prepared to respond appropriately.

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