In this TLC Spotlight Series podcast, Assistant Professor Erica King-Toler, Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Department; Associate Professor Schevaletta Alford, Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Department; and Assistant Professor Wendy Johnny, Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice share their expertise with teaching students experiencing drama, trauma, and mayhem both inside and outside the classroom. Speaking from three distinct pedagogical perspectives, these professors illustrate these terms with theory and anecdotes to provide rich definitions and examples of engaging students with capacity and time in multiple contexts.

TLC Spotlights interview one or more faculty and staff members to focus on a particular teaching and learning issue. This spotlight interview with Dr. Crystal Leigh Endsley, Assistant Professor of African Studies; Dr. Beata Potocki, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English; and Dr. Lisa Tsuei, Adjunct Professor of Psychology, focuses on the processes that help online educators establish and maintain more resilient student communities in their courses. Interviewed by Dr. Gina Rae Foster, Director of John Jay College’s Teaching and Learning Center, Drs. Endsley, Potocki, and Tsuei share strategies and experiences that have helped them create effective learning communities while teaching online.

Associate Professor of History, Matthew Perry, discusses winning the Distinguished Teaching Prize 2019, having students write one-minute papers at the end of class, group work, engaging students in active learning, using self-reflection to prompt student growth versus teaching students to think like historians, and the importance of providing a variety of learning modalities in each class period.

Eloísa Monteoliva-García, Assistant Professor of Translation and Interpreting (Spanish), discusses winning the 2019 Distinguished Teaching Prize after less than two years at John Jay College. She talks about the importance of structure, clarity and rules in her courses, creating coursework that enhances students' sense of belonging in class and at John Jay, learning from the HSI seminar to listen to students' talk about their experiences and the support they need, thinking through students' schedules to determine which assignments can realistically be done at home, and finally diversifying the voices presented in the class and being mindful of how students can connect those voices to their own experiences. Finally, Professor Monteoliva-García discusses the many things she does to show students that they matter.

Neurophysiologist and Associate Professor of Psychology Jill Grose-Fifer is the only professor at John Jay to have won the Distinguished Teaching Prize twice, first in 2009 and then again in 2019. In this interview Professor Grose-Fifer discusses fostering student growth in large classes using interactive clicker technology, using Mayer's 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning to improve her Powerpoints, how she has reshaped the curriculum of her classes to feature more diverse scholars as agents of transformation and drawn attention to the ethnocentric biases of her field after participating in the TLC's HSI seminar for faculty, using Vodcasts to reduce student reading and flip the classroom, and supporting students' personal transformations.

TLC Spotlights interview one or more faculty and staff members to focus on a particular teaching and learning issue. This spotlight interview with Dr. Gina Rae Foster, Director of John Jay College's Teaching and Learning Center, focuses on how understanding trauma and resilience can make us better teachers. Dr. Foster discusses how trauma affects our capacities to learn and how we can work with our students to make our classrooms places of stability and community that allow for resilient learning.

Winner of the Distinguished Teaching Prize 2011 Andrea Balis, Lecturer in History, discusses backwards design, reflective teaching practice, helping students learn how to learn, and question what they know.

Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Teaching Prize, Professor Amanda Harris, discusses motivating students in their own learning, teaching about privilege, sharing one's humanity and failures with students as a way of modeling success, and anti-racist writing instruction for more just outcomes.

Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Teaching Prize, Professor Aída Martínez-Gómez, discusses experiential learning, role-playing, serving Hispanic students, extra-curricular engagement, mentoring of students, and the Student Interpreter Service Program.

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Crystal Leigh Endsley, discusses winning the Distinguished Teaching Prize in 2016, why spoken word helps students develop agency, how she creates community in her classrooms, inspiring students to have courage in themselves, in-class writing and much more.