Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 204 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Sarah Rose Cavanagh shares about her book, The Spark of Learning and more.

Production Credit: [00:00:13] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:22] Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:50] Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I am excited to be welcoming back to the show Sarah Rose Cavanagh. Sarah is currently on the faculty at Assumption College where she directs the Laboratory for cognitive and affective science and serves as Associate Director for Grants and Research in the Center for Teaching Excellence. Her teaching focuses on emotion, motivation, and neuroscience and her research considers whether those strategies people choose to regulate their emotions and the degree to which they successfully accomplish this regulation can predict trajectories of psychological functioning over time.

Bonni: [00:01:34] Sarah’s coming back on the show she was here all the way back when Episode 135, today is 204, it’s been a while and she is going to share some new discoveries that she’s had as she’s been touring around talking about her book The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion.

Bonni: [00:01:54] And that book is part of James layings series on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. And that might ring a bell because you may remember they provided, and are still providing, the financial support for the transcripts for the first 200 episodes really got us going all the way back from zero to 200.

Bonni: [00:02:15] And the transcript of this episode’s been made possible through a financial contribution by the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series. That’s from West Virginia University Press. And as I mentioned, it’s edited by James M. Lang and the series offers compact books from great writers who provide you with the practical guidance you need to help students learn and succeed.

Bonni: [00:02:39] Before I get to my interview with Sarah, I wanted to say thank you to today’s episode sponsor and that is Screencast-O-Matic. You’ve heard me share about them in past episodes and also I’ve written a couple of blog posts about how I make use of screen casting and my teaching and specifically Screencast-O-Matic. They have a great free version which I’ll get you up and running. Just what is it like to film your screen. What’s happening on your screen or film your face or even go back and forth. But I do recommend their pro version because you can then draw and zoom. You can mix in video you can record on your computer, if you’re on a Windows computer. You can have scripted recordings and even add some overlays and video effects and background music. So it really just takes it to the next level.

Bonni: [00:03:31] And they have a special offer for us, for 50 percent off of that pro annual membership and you can see that at screencast-o-matic.com/highered50 and there also is a link to that promotional opportunity at teachinginhighered.com/204.

Bonni: [00:03:57] We thank Screencast-O-Matic for your support of the show. And also just thanks for making a great product that I get to make a lot of use of in my own teaching and also it’s wonderful for showing students and faculty alike how to do something in a very fast way. Thanks again Screencast-O-Matic.

Bonni: [00:04:15] And now back to my interview with Sarah and welcoming her to the show. Sarah, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Sarah: [00:04:24] Oh, thanks for having me. It’s lovely to talk with you again.

Bonni: [00:04:27] I’m excited to catch up with you today. And in particular, I know that you have been doing quite a bit of travel. And travel specifically around your book. But can we, even before we get to the book itself, have you learned any lessons just on travel and being on the road so much that come to mind or had any have any big surprises with all of that?

Sarah: [00:04:48] Not really. I think I’ve learned to pack really light. I used to be someone who, I really like being prepared. So I would always check bags and have lots of different things, books and outfits. And traveling a lot had led me to have a little suitcase that I can to fit under the seat. So packing light has been interesting.

Bonni: [00:05:08] I went up to Sacramento went to teach class as a part of a cohort that was up there and talk about packing light. It wasn’t even so much me, but the person I was traveling was like, “Don’t you dare check a bag.”

Bonni: [00:05:22] And I actually think, I guess he left early, so that’s why I was on my own. It was like 35 degrees and there’s ice on the windshield of my rental car and I have no jacket, nothing. I mean me and my teeth are chattering and I can’t remember the last time my teeth were chattering. So you do want to pack light, just not so light that you’re freezing. I’m sure some of in colder parts are like “35? That’s what I put my shorts on.” But for me it was pretty cold.

Bonni: [00:05:55] Well what have been some of the surprises that you have had are interesting interactions with people’s reaction to the book itself?

Sarah: [00:06:03] One thing I like to tell people because it’s true when I do talks and workshops is I feel like I have learned so much since writing the book because I came to the writing of the book as a research psychologist. And my background is in emotion science and so that whole part was my expertise, but then I was relatively new to the whole world of the academic literature on pedagogy. And so I obviously did a lot of research in writing the book, but then traveling to all these different campuses talking to people and hearing the ideas that they’re using, hearing their book recommendations- I really wish I could write the book all over again because there’s just so many ideas that I have encountered that I think would fit really well that I discovered afterward.

Bonni: [00:06:48] I can completely relate to that. I know that it’s one of those when once you allow it to feel done in your mind, that these things really never are done. And it is fun to think about, because it’s not just a book, but it really does then almost create a community of people around the book that are interacting with it and experimenting with it. What are some of the memories you have of the ways that people have put various aspects of it into use in their classrooms?

Sarah: [00:07:15] That’s great. I think, this is not so much a practical point but my favorite thing that anyone ever said to me was sort of recently at a workshop and she said that she just wanted to thank me for writing the book because it provided a scientific validation for all the fun, goofy things she likes to do in the classroom.

Bonni: [00:07:34] Yeah.

Sarah: [00:07:36] That was so gratifying to hear. And I really loved that because I think we do all do these things in the classroom to engage our students and to relate to them and to get them curious and sometimes they can feel sort of frivolous. And I think we wonder why are we doing this. But then when you see that students aren’t going to learn if they’re not engaged, if they’re not curious, if they’re not wanting to kind of dive into the material and the activities and then that provides that sort of justification and we realize why we’ve been doing this all along. So I kind of related to that comment as well because that was my process of writing that book. You know, “I do all these things in the classroom and look there’s there’s a study on this,” and that was really neat to see.

Bonni: [00:08:21] That’s really true because so much of the time we think of it as I know one of the words that you’ve used to describe this again not you you’re reflecting other people’s perceptions is just this idea of coddling or edutainment or that we’re just doing it for not valid reasons and so yeah to give people the science behind it and help see that, “no actually this can contribute to people’s learning,” that’s really that’s really powerful. It must have been fun to hear someone talk about that.

Sarah: [00:08:52] Yes, yes. And I think in response to those criticisms that you hear sometimes. Another thing I ran into that probably is the thing that I most wish I had read before I wrote the book is a blog post by Kentina Smith. She’s an educational psychologist. And I had, in writing the book, I feel like I did a decent job of providing a kind of framework, an organizing framework for why emotions should benefit leaning.

Sarah: [00:09:20] But I don’t think I did as good a job providing a framework for the practical tips. And so I have a lot of practical tips in there. But I don’t think that there’s so much organized in a framework and Kentina Smith provides that framework in a blog post that she wrote, that I will send you. It’s one of my recommendations for the end of our talk.

Sarah: [00:09:40] And she calls, what she uses is emotional hooks.And there are all the sorts of things that I was recommending as well were using movie clips or provocative questions or debates or all of these sorts of things that will engage inital interest.

Sarah: [00:09:56] And what I like about that is I love the metaphor of hooking our students, getting them interested, getting them focused on the learning materials but then it also answers some of these edutainment criticisms in that what she’s arguing and what I’m arguing isn’t that every moment needs to be super fun, right. But you can’t aviod getting initial excitement, right. You can’t avoid the initial curiosity. The students are not going to be able to change their knowledge structures, to grapple with the material, to see the world in a new light, to develop skills unless they want to do so, unless they’re motivated to do so.

Sarah: [00:10:35] And so some of these things that can feel fun are just generating initial excitement and then some of the work is going to be less entertaining. But students I think will remain engaged, remain motivated if we initially generate excitement.

Bonni: [00:10:53] When Derek Bruff was on the podcast this is back on episode 71, so we’re going back in time. He introduced me to this term, “times for telling” and he actually cited it was Daniel Schwartz and John Bransford in 1998, “a time for telling” and I’ll link to that in the show notes as well so we’ll have a couple of different examples.

Bonni: [00:11:16] But when you’re describing that, that sounds so much like just creating this fertile soil for learning and really grabbing people’s attention because we know how hard that can be to grab attention and I was working on the transcripts recently and the first anyone who actually there’s a few people who go all the way back to Episode 1 and the first five episodes I think are just my husband Dave and I and they’re like, “oh I thought the whole show was going to be and Dave,” and you know that changed after a bit.

Bonni: [00:11:47] But Dave tells this story about his chemistry teacher when he was in high school and how he set this up in the very beginning of a class that chemistry isn’t what it seems and it’s all around you. Things are always different than you think they are. And Dave says so he finished up with lighting a candle and putting the on his desk and the story was somehow tied to the candle but Dave can’t remember how.

Bonni: [00:12:11] And so the teacher picks up the candle. It was lit. And threw it in his mouth and started chewing it.

Sarah: [00:12:20] Oh my gosh.

Bonni: [00:12:21] And he chews this candle and swallows it and then says, “so remember chemistry isn’t always what you see, what it looks like, or what it seems,” and then he walked out. And Dave says that like the class was actually at times boring and like it wasn’t like the guy was that engaged in the entire time. But boy every class they sat up in their chairs were just like, “what’s going to happen next?”

Bonni: [00:12:46] And just think of that emotion that you know we can remember all those years later. And I mean, I just heard the story and I’m still fascinated by like, “how did he do that? How was that possible? What was it that he meant by things aren’t always what they seem?” You know I wish I would have had someone that just able to tap into emotions for some of my science classes.

Sarah: [00:13:10] Yeah that’s wild.

Bonni: [00:13:13] What have been other stories that you’ve gathered that you think, “gosh if I were to do the second edition,” you know what’s going to come into the book that maybe you wish you would have emphasized more?

Sarah: [00:13:23] I think another work is Christopher Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Y’all Too. He wrote it I think geared at secondary ed, but is just rich with lessons I think for higher ed as well. And I’ve been kind of following him on Twitter and watching his videos and I actually bring in, he has this five minute TED talk that I bring in to some of my workshops.

Sarah: [00:13:47] And he, I think a two things. I mean there’s multiple things that I think are wonderful about his work but one regarding, one thing I talk about is Spark and kind of being the spark, right. And that teacher enthusiasm and passion is one of the things that is most important that we have to convey that to our students because that gets them excited as well.

Sarah: [00:14:10] And he has what he calls Pentecostal pedagogy and argues that you need to go into the spaces where people are good performers, where people are capable of grabbing the attention, motivating people and he talks about the black church and barbershops and rap concerts as as models for how to be in front of an audience and get them in live and get them as engaged as you are.

Sarah: [00:14:39] And I love when he says, “magic can be taught,” you know we like to think that that really dynamic professor. They just they have that magic. They have that you know innate skill at speaking or engaging students but that’s actually a lot of these things you can learn that you can practice. And so I love all that.

Sarah: [00:15:01] And then he also one of the other top ideas of his that I find really engaging is the idea of generating code generative dialogues in your classroom. And so he has this model where you select a few students from a class and you have them meet outside of class, kind of with food and fun, and give them some kind of task that they have autonomy over, some aspects of the course that they can design and that you intentionally select students to be representative of the class, you know different genders and ethnicities. And if there are little cliques and groups forming, you know different people from those in order to both give students autonomy and have them be generating some of the class structure, the class material, but then also to build the real sense of community among the students themselves. And it gives you a window into the sorts of concerns that they have, what they’re interested in. And I love I love that model for how to build a sense of community in the classroom.

Bonni: [00:16:06] I’m really intrigued by the phrase of, “being the spark.” And I see I see two elements, I’m sure my understanding is limited, but I see two elements. One you already described, which of course is that this can be taught and just how important is us for us having that mindset of it instead of, “oh, I’m just not entertaining, I’m just not. That’s just not my personality,” or whatever but that there are- I mean certainly we want it to be authentic. So it’s helpful if we can find images that are just stretching us a little bit beyond where we are versus someone that’s just entirely a different person than we are, that would be harder to emulate than to and to learn.

Bonni: [00:16:46] What about the part of just not feeling it? To what extent do you embrace or believe in more of a behaviorist approach from a psychological perspective and what part do we come back to authenticity? I’m wondering if you wrestle with those things or bring that into being the spark?

Sarah: [00:17:04] Right. I think two things. One, I just wanted to before I answered your question, I just want to touch on and agree with you that authenticity is important. And that I do think that there are certain attributes that we all can benefit from. There’s a lot of literature that I review in the book on immediacy cues and that’s just things like eye contact, gestures, leaning forward, use of inclusive pronouns like we. And I think some of that can generalize no matter what your personality or your style is.

Sarah: [00:17:36] But I think that also we need to be authentically ourselves. And I think we all know that we all can think of different features in our past with very different styles but who nonetheless really made us feel passionate about the subject.

Bonni: [00:17:50] Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: [00:17:51] And some people can just sit quietly and read a poem in a very quiet, non-entertainer sort of way and it just draws us in. I always use this example and I won’t name him but we have a professor on campus who is very authoritative and kind of steely and wears three piece suits and cold calls on students and has a style that’s a little harsh that would go against some of the literature. But students love him. They absolutely love him. They will change their major. So I think we need to be attentive to the fact that there are lots of different ways to portray that passion to be the spark.

Bonni: [00:18:30] I’ve been thinking so much about authenticity too and I know I mentioned this on a recent show but just have to bring it up again. There’s this wonderful new podcast and I say new and then it came and went because it’s just four episodes. The Harvard Business Review put out a podcast titled Women at Work and it is so worth going and listening to all four episodes.

Bonni: [00:18:49] But one of them was about authenticity. And I just realized how white my view is of authenticity because most of the people on it were African-American and they talked really about the blackness of authenticity. And I realized like all the TED talks I had been watching, books I had been reading, they really were from a white woman’s perspective. And that we can go so much deeper and then it’s so much more problematic in really fascinating ways when we go deeper and realize, “oh gosh, there’s so much more that I hadn’t unpacked yet,” just from what I’ve read and been exposed to. So I would really suggest people go and check that out if you are interested in the topic of authenticity and especially maybe breaking your own mental image of what that word it. It’s really good. It’s really good.

Bonni: [00:19:39] So one of the things then, I know you wanted to share a little bit then about is reaction to my thoughts on behavioralism and to being the spark.

Sarah: [00:19:49] So I think I took a little bit of a look in the book at literature an emotional labor and that has to do with sort of I think what you’re talking about. To what extent should you kind of fake if you’re not feeling it? To what extent is it just putting on certain behaviors that the students are responding to? Does it matter if you’re feeling it deep inside?

Sarah: [00:20:08] And that literature is really interesting. Some of the classic work by these flight attendants because they always have to be positive, even in some pretty scary situations. And that literature tends to show that there’s a difference, there’s two forms of emotional labor. One that’s called Surface Acting which is just what it sounds like, putting on the show without feeling or changing what you’re feeling inside. And that tends to be more associated with kind of a stress response in the person performing and also not as great a reaction from the receivers of that performance.

Sarah: [00:20:52] Whereas there is another form of emotional labor which is called Deep Acting and not relates a lot to actually something I’ve researched quite a bit which is emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal. And rethinking the situation in order to change kind of your inner emotions and then to portray those. And that form of emotional labor, you know doing some work at the start of class, you know even if you’re not feeling it to check in with your values, to check in with your motivations, why you are there, what you’re hoping to bring to the students and then kind of eliciting those emotions to then portray them is probably going to be less wearying and also more persuasive.

Bonni: [00:21:37] Oh that’s so powerful. I had not remembered that aspect of your book and just how important that is. This is something that if I do regularly make such a difference and then I get off track and I can really feel it.

Sarah: [00:21:48] Yeah it’s hard, it’s hard work.

Bonni: [00:21:51] I know one of the things he wanted to share with us today is totally shifting gears and that is to talk a little bit about a grant study that you’ve been a part of from the Davis Educational Foundation. Could you share about that?

Sarah: [00:22:02] Absolutely. And this is hot off the presses because it’s not yet off the presses. We’re just coming to the data analysis stage and just have some preliminary results to share. And so this was as you mentioned, generously funded by the Davis Educational Foundation and it’s a grant study that I’m been working on with Jim Lang and Heather Urry of Tufts University. And Jeff Birk, who was when he joined us affiliated with Columbia University and Carl Fulwiler of University of Massacusets Medical School.

Sarah: [00:22:35] And what we were doing was trying to test some of the ideas in my book. So I think most of what we’ve talked about together both this episode and the previous episode has been on how emotions are beneficial in the classroom. But of course, emotions can also be detrimental. Students are feeling highly anxious if they’re really frustrated or if they’re bored. These negative affective states can probably interfere with learning.

Sarah: [00:23:03] And so we wanted to know could we give students some tools from emotion science, namely mindfulness and also cognitive reappraisal or rethinking their situation or your emotions in order to change it. Could we give them those tools and would that benefit learning? And so we used a fleet of iPads. So Jim and I were running around Assumption College with armfuls of iPads and we programmed a web application to teach students a little bit about mindfulness or reappraisal and they would engage with the iPad to learn these techniques and then the teacher would teach the lesson and then they would pick up the iPad again and take a quiz.

Sarah: [00:23:49] And then at the end of the semester we had them take a final exam and we had lots of controls, control days, control sessions that I won’t bore you with. But what we’re finding is that reappraisal is the most effective in generating better learning in the long term.

Sarah: [00:24:06] So again this is all preliminary but our data seems to indicate that giving students some ways of rethinking how they’ll approach their boredom, their frustration, their anxiety at the start of class yields better learning in the long term. That they are better able to engage with the material that the professor is teaching them and then have better performance on that final exam that we give them at the end of the semester.So we’re pretty excited about that.

Bonni: [00:24:37] I know it’s totally breaking the rules of research, but actually it’s not entirely breaking the rules of research, but could you just tell a fictitious story of someone and kind of walk us through her day of how she might have taken the iPad and what it might, the things that might have shown or could do just tell a quick story of a student who so I can get inside of her head and understand better?

Sarah: [00:24:58] Right. So one of the classes was a math class, an introductory math classes. So I’ll take a fictitious example from there.

Bonni: [00:25:07] That’s good because that’s a subject that has caused me a lot of anxiety in my life so it’s perfect. I love it.

Sarah: [00:25:15] Math anxiety is real. And so a student might come into that class and feeling a little anxious about her abilities or performance or about the work that they’re doing in the classroom or feeling worried about what the professor is thinking of here abilities.

Bonni: [00:25:32] The other students, is she the only one that has an iPad in this class or are there a few? Like how does, how is the other students?

Sarah: [00:25:39] The whole class has an iPad.

Bonni: [00:25:41] Oh so she she is a part of this study and everyone in there is going through the same kind of content. So it’s not like she got there early or something like that. OK.

Sarah: [00:25:50] Right. And one thing that we did is Don’t of his getting, introducing more layers, but different students did different things on different days and everyone would have the iPad we would come in and pass out the iPad, everyone put on their earphones, pick up the iPads. But some of those students, it was randomized, so some of the students will be doing reappraisal that day, some students will be doing mindfulness, some students will be doing a controlled condition.

Sarah: [00:26:14] But this student might come in you know feeling anxiety. She might also be experiencing some stereotype threat knowing that there is a stereotype about women and math. And so she would put on the headphones and open up the app and it would show her some images and some text and walk her through, first kind of normalizing emotions in the classroom, saying you know college can be an exciting time but it can also be a stressful time that you might have these sorts of concerns that your fellow students are having these same concerns. But also emotions are part of learning and that being frustrated as you are learning new skills is natural and that that might actually help your learning.

Sarah: [00:26:56] And then we specifically ask about boredom, frustration, and anxiety. And we give her three different ways that she could rethink, you know if you start feeling anxious about your performance or about the upcoming quiz or something like that, here is three different things that you could tell yourself. You could tell yourself that many people in the classroom are feeling anxious and that that’s a natural feeling that you shouldn’t worry about it. You could think that these tests and quizzes that you’re taking are there to help you learn, they’re not there to evaluate you or judge you, etc. So we would give her some ways of rethinking that anxiety.

Sarah: [00:27:39] And then we asked her to choose her favorite one. You know, if you start feeling anxious during the class, which one of these do you think would be the most effective? And that kind of taps into there’s a literature on what are called implementation intentions, which are kind of if, then statements showing that this can be really powerful especially when pursuing goals. And so we kind of framed it in that format. If you start feeling anxious, then you know what? And ask her for her to commit to one of these strategies.

Bonni: [00:28:10] Oh I like that too because the it would obviously one’s going to resonate more than others and then that really does help internalize it a little bit more of I do intend to take action this away. Oh that’s wonderful. Well thank you for sharing about the study. I can’t wait till it comes out. Sounds like a really good team of people working on it. I’m just excited to see what your findings are.And where and when might we expect this? We’re recording this and when can we impatient people be ready for the results?

Sarah: [00:28:43] Well a couple of different venues. The actual publication will be a little bit subject to the whims of peer review, how long that will take we are hoping to get them out quickly to the peer reviewers. But in my experience, that can be a long process.

Sarah: [00:28:58] I’m presenting a poster at the Association for Psychological Science and May so some of the results will be there. And then I would love to pitch our one day conference. So the same team that put together the research study is part of a grant. We had a dissemination piece. And so we’re going to be hosting a one day conference on just kind of social, emotional, and motivational aspects of higher ed pedagogy next Spring, so Spring 2019 probably mid May, on a Friday in mid may.

Sarah: [00:29:29] We’re still kind of cashing out all the details, but we’ll be presenting our results and then we’re hoping to have a couple of other speakers present other research. We’re going to have Carl Fulwiler guide people through a brief mindfulness activity you could use in class. And then we’re also hoping to have an actor come and teach a little bit about cues and some of those ways that we can show our inner spark.

Bonni: [00:29:57] Sounds like a great conference and I was thinking as you said it, that’s a long time away and then I realize actually it’s going to be the blink of an eye. Well thanks for sharing some updates on what you’re discovering about your book The Spark of Learning and also about the Davis Educational Foundation Grant Study.

Bonni: [00:30:18] This is the point in the show where we get to give some recommendations and I have a general one and then a specific one. My general one is a tool called Goodreads and good reads has actually been a way that is getting to read more. And people like Sarah and people like me can use it in the sense of you can read your books digitally and actually now if you read them on Amazon Kindle, they’ll sink back and forth to Goodreads which is where I went to find the notes that I took on Sarah’s book only to realize it was a physical copy. And I can network with other people whether I know them or whether they just have similar reading tastes to mine. And they have a reading challenge you could choose to participate in every year and mine I just up by a couple of books and it’s just amazing.

Bonni: [00:31:06] I review this seems silly but like all think like Oh okay well we just started April now so I better you know get the ball because I’ve got you know my goal for this year is twenty four bucks which to some of you may not seem like that much but to me with two small children it’s a stretch but not beyond what’s doable for me. And yes so good reads is really a great service. And then it’s kind of like a social network for readers. You can track what you’ve read and again choose, you can choose to connect with other people or just choose to have it as a private list of your readings.

Bonni: [00:31:39] And then specifically they had at the end of I believe 2017, they had kind of their best of best, most read, most recommended lists. And one of the books that I discovered through that is called The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. And you may have seen that written up in different, because it certainly showed up in a lot of top book lists. It’s about a 16 year old named Star Carter and her navigating between two of her cultural worlds. There’s the poor neighborhood where she lives. And then there’s the fancy suburban prep school where she goes to school.

Bonni: [00:32:17] And she just has to balance very cultural differences and she has a terrible thing happen that she witnesses which is the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. And Khalil was unarmed. And it’s really the story of her navigating through these two different worlds and her life is at risk of course because there are some people who if she shares what happened you know, it’s just a very complex ethical world she has to navigate. And there are lots of really important cultural lessons that we could learn and things about communities and activism. And it’s just a riveting story. I read it super super fast. So two recommendations one is to check out Goodreads as a possibility for you to either track your own reading or even share with others and the second one is the book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. And Sarah, what do you have to recommend for us today?

Sarah: [00:33:15] Well I will send you the links for the books that I recommended earlier. So Chris Emdin’s book and Kentina Smith’s blog post on emotional hooks. I have both of those.

Sarah: [00:33:28] I think also one thing that I ran into the last year too is Cathy Davidson’s book The New Education and I am halfway through it. But I love all of it and do the things I rarely take from it. One she has a whole chapter on community colleges and how they are the best model for higher education and I identified with that so strongly and I think, not to play favorites, but I observed other people that I have done a lot of these workshops and keynotes and things and almost without fail, my favorites have all been community colleges and the faculty are just so energized and so caring and I just I have left every single one of them just feeling revitalized and I think Cathy Davidson rarely puts a finger on a lot of why even that it’s not a deficit model of education it is a model of let’s educate everyone.

Sarah: [00:34:31] And she could someone who says we take the top 100 percent of students and I think that there’s something that’s kind of poisonous about non community colleges model of focusing on selectivity and kind of bragging about all the people that they reject. And she goes into a lot of other and some models of really stunning community colleges that are doing amazing work and I love that.

Sarah: [00:34:56] And she also has two chapters. One against technophobia which is you know strikes the heart of another kind of research interest of mine. But then she also has a chapter that is against technophilia and that we can’t we can’t think technology’s going to swoop in and save everything but because it’s clearly not. But you know kind of wringing our hands endlessly about technology is also not a good idea. And so that’s a very fantastic read that I am looking forward to finishing.

Bonni: [00:35:28] Well Sarah thank you so much for coming back on the show and we already have agreed that you have got to come back again because you have a book coming now in 2019 called Hive Mind and we’ve got to come back and have you talk about that one. That will be March of 2019 from Grand Central Publishing. So we already have this book a date for that too because I can’t wait to read it and also to get to talk to you about it as well.

Sarah: [00:35:54] You don’t have to twist my arm.

Bonni: [00:35:56] Thanks again for being here.

Sarah: [00:35:58] Thank you.

Bonni: [00:36:01] Thanks once again to Sarah Rose Cavanagh for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. It was great to hear more about the spark of learning and also about the research that you conducted through the grant. And we’re looking forward to hearing more when those results come out. Thanks to all of you for listening.

Bonni: [00:36:24] If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, you can get all the links to the great things that Sarah and I talked about, the Christopher Emdin book and Ted talk and the HBR Women at Work podcast, Derek Bruff talking about times for telling. There’s a lot more, so you can subscribe at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe and if you have been listening to the show for a while and give me a lot out of it it would be great for you to share a review on whatever service is you use to listen to the show. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.