This article was originally posted on EdSurge and is reposted with permission. The following is the latest installment of the Toward Better Teaching advice column. You can pose a question for a future column here.

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Dear Bonni, How do you help inspire other educators? Sometimes the problem isn't my students—it's my colleagues. If they seem bored or tired, the students pick up on that and then think that all classes are tedious.

—Working at a small community college

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Our emotional well-being matters as teachers. Not only because (if we are going to do it well) facilitating the learning of others requires a lot of energy. But also because if we are experiencing feelings that are not conducive to the work of learning, we can inadvertently transfer those emotions to our students—just as they might catch a cold from us if we’re sick.

Daniel Goleman’s research illustrates the way our emotions are contagious. In his book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006), he describes how we humans are hard-wired to connect with one another. Those connections can be a pathway for our emotions to strongly influence another’s, in positive or negative ways.

Create Agreement That Emotions Matter

There are certainly still faculty arguing that we need to stay far away from any desire to be an edu-tainer. They argue that it’s not up to professors to worry about whether a teaching approach is working for students, that somehow the burden is on the students to adapt to whatever style of instruction is used. Thankfully, there is a renewed emphasis on how emotions can spark learning.

Sarah Cavanaugh, author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion (2016), describes how we can energize our students’ learning by heightening curiosity, encouraging mindfulness and capturing learners’ attention. She stresses that “emotions certainly determine many of our motivations, decisions, and behaviors, and the circuits governing both learning and emotion overlap.”

Think back to a teacher who had a tremendous impact on you—and there was likely a way that person captivated your imagination or tapped into emotion in some way. Dave Stachowiak (my husband and host of the Coaching for Leaders podcast) shares this story of a class that has stuck with him since high school.

On the first day of the chemistry course, the teacher provided a routine overview of the syllabus. Then, he casually lit a candle at the front of the room and explained that the most important thing for students to learn in the class, was that things were not always what they seemed. And with that, he picked up the burning candle and popped it in his mouth, and chewed. Then he said “see you tomorrow,” and left the room.

As Dave mentions, his chemistry teacher was not dynamic one hundred percent of the time. “He didn’t need to be,” Dave emphasizes, “because we were always on the edge of our seat.”

When students first join the online portion of my Introduction to Business class, they are presented with an introductory video for the course that is meant to mimic the feel of watching an Indiana Jones movie.

Like Dave’s teacher, I try to give them the sense that this class is going to be different. My hope is that they see it as an adventure that will help them learn, but also will be a series of experiences we will have together in the process. I work hard on those first impressions to engage students’ sense of encountering the unexpected.

My advice is to try to generate some kind of agreement among your fellow faculty members that it is worth it to be purposeful about how to ignite the imagination of your students.

Raise the Collective Self-Awareness

I have been teaching in higher education for 15 years now. Not once have I ever had a professor confess that they perceive themselves as boring. Yet, I remain convinced that there are those who do not possess the capacity for drawing learners in and gaining their attention.

In Ken Bain’s longitudinal study of how superb post-secondary educators approach their teaching, he asserts the importance of attaining and maintaining students’ attention. Bain writes in What the Best College Teachers Do (2004):

“They consciously try to get students’ attention with some provocative act, question, or statement.”

One of the best ways I have ever observed of raising one’s self-awareness is by using video or audio recording as feedback. My first professional job out of college was teaching computer classes. The person I reported to handed me a cassette tape as I was headed out of work one day. It was a recording of me teaching that day. As I listened, I immediately identified phrases I was saying repetitively that were distracting. It was painful to listen to—but it provided me with incredibly powerful feedback that has stayed with me for decades to come.

A tool like Swivl can help with video and audio recording feedback. Even if you do not ultimately decide to invest in a product made specifically for that purpose, knowing more about how video can transform our teaching is helpful. This video series with Jim Knight (a senior research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning) conveys how videos can “eliminate perceptual errors and allow for teachers and coaches to refer to real evidence of practice.”

Acknowledge and Redirect

The work of teaching is one of the hardest things I have ever done. When my colleagues want to vent about the challenges they are encountering, I hope to be a good listener for them. However, if too much of the conversation seems to be about student shaming, I do try to redirect to something more positive.

It is a delicate balance to know when we just need a person who can relate to our frustrations and when we really need to focus our attention back on more productive and life-giving thoughts.

Christopher Emdin, author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood (2017), epitomizes this sentiment when he writes:

“The kind of teacher you will become is directly related to the kind of teachers you associate with. Teaching is a profession where misery does more than just love company—it recruits, seduces, and romances it. Avoid people who are unhappy and disgruntled about the possibilities for transforming education. They are the enemy of the spirit of the teacher.”

When we focus on increasing our collective capacity to serve our students well, we leverage the best of what a community of teachers has to offer.

Photo credit: Simone Acquaroli on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I headed to Nebraska to visit Hastings College. I did a keynote and a workshop and had a wonderful time. They are doing some transformative work at Hastings that it was fun to catch a small glimpse of during my time with them.

Whenever I travel, I think back to the post I wrote with guidance on how to ease the process of moving throughout the world. Much of the post still holds up and is worth a look. However, the best part came in the comments.

Robert Talbert recommended getting TSA pre-check – and that advice has paid off in spades for me and for our entire family.

If you follow Robert on social media, you might have seen that he is currently recovering from heart surgery. You can learn more about it on his blog. He has also invited some of us to help him queue up some posts during his recovery. Watch for one from me toward the end of February.  

As I think back to my Nebraska trip, I have a few other travel-related resources to share, plus a request from a listener to participate in his research.

PackPoint

I had grown tired of fumbling around with my packing list in Evernote. Each time I traveled, I copied the text over to a new note and sometimes even had to uncheck the checkboxes, if I had messed up my system the last time I used it. Yes, Evernote has templates now, but they still don’t go anywhere as far as my new packing list find.

PackPoint is a great app, which has features I didn’t even realize I needed. As soon as I purchased it, I could easily integrate it with my TripIt account. PackPoint then knew that I was headed to Nebraska – and that it was cold there. It added a heavy jacket to my packing list without me even needing to lift a finger.

It bases packing lists around activities. There are many built-in activities, such as essentials, swimming, business casual, hiking, and so on. It was easy to set up my own built-in activities, such as the one I created for the various electronics that I bring and their associated chargers.

Tom Bihn Backpack

I received a new Tom Bihn backpack for Christmas and this was my first long-distance trip with it. I like the way it can expand to fit a large number of items, yet isn’t awkward when there isn’t much stuff in it.

The Synapse has a place for a water bottle in the middle of the bag, which I discovered I like a lot more. It centers the weight and also I don’t have to worry about the bottle falling off the side when I’m moving about.

Noise Canceling Headphones

I wrote my first travel tips post in 2017, before I discovered the joys of having noise canceling headphones. I purchased a pair of Beats, but candidly didn’t do a bunch of comparisons before diving in. They have a long battery life and are easy to connect to my iPhone or iPad during a flight via bluetooth.

TextExpander

The other tool I am always happy to have on the road with me is TextExpander. In full transparency, they are a regular sponsor of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, but I was recommending them long before they started supporting the show.

There were quite a few weather delays during my trip to Nebraska, which made me grateful that I had all the tools I needed to get some serious work done during that time. With TextExpander, I can have access to all my snippets across my computer, smartphone, and tablet – with everything syncing across all of those platforms.

I use TextExpander to save time with my email signatures, letters of recommendation for students, data I forget all the time (like my work phone number), and for longer pieces like creating the show notes for each episode.

Here’s a post I wrote in 2018 with more about TextExpander, including a demo of how I use it.

Participate in Educational Podcasts Research

Even though it has nothing to do with travel (except for the way in which podcasts help us go different places in our minds), I did want to extend an invitation to you on behalf of a listener. The last thing worth checking out is participating in Scott McNamara’s research on educational research.

He writes:

“Hello, I am Scott McNamara, Ph.D. at the University of Northern Iowa. I am conducting a study to examine the motivational factors for listening to educational podcasts. This study consists of completing a short 20-minute survey. To participate in the study, you must be in the field of education (e.g., pre-service teacher, higher education professor, education administrator, practicing teacher, related service provider) and have listened to an educational podcast.

If you are interested in participating in this study, please visit this information on the Survey to find out more. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please email Dr. Scott McNamara at the University of Northern Iowa at scott.mcnamara@Uni.edu.”

Please consider supporting Scott’s research, as we will all be able to benefit when he publishes his results.

Your Turn

What have you been packing up for your trips, lately, that have helped reduce the stress of travel and enjoy yourself a bit more?

Sorry about starting with a bad, musical pun in the title. I want to share about three powerful exchanges that I have witnessed recently on Twitter. My apologies if you now can't get Three Little Birds out of your head.

Ian Wolf Encounters a Disengaged Student

Let's begin with an experience most of us have encountered, as shared by Ian Wolf.

2/ Student came in 15 min late to my Science Fiction class of 12.

She did not blend.

She immediately began to stare at her phone with a single earbud firmly entrenched.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

3/ Now, just so y'all know, I'm dynamic AF: high kicks, deep stances, lots of questions and dialogue, and that's just the times when I lecture.

I couldn't get this girl to engage with the class.

I even asked her – politely – to join. She pulled out the earbud for, like, 2 min.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

4/ Now old me woulda lost his cool and called her out for being disrespectful and surly.

But when I noticed the earbud go back in, I saw two paths diverge in a yellow wood. I decided to take the one less traveled by.

I figured there had to be a good reason for her.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

5/ As I released class, I asked her to hang on for a sec in my most soothing and calm voice. Once everyone else was gone, I didn't tell her what was wrong about how she had behaved.

I asked her if she was okay.

She was not.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

6/ As I was directing her to the campus resources best suited to help, I was struck with the realization I could have utterly lost her as a student if old me had spoken. No question. I would have escalated, she would have responded in kind, etc.

Instead, I just listened.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

7/ I never would have grown as an educator without the great insight, development, and tirelessness of those mentioned already.

I'm proud of being better at my job now than I was then; however, I wouldn't be good without better educators to guide me.

tl;dr Thanks, y'all.

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

A few thoughts that came to mind as I read Ian's tweets… When he mentions that the young woman didn't “blend.” It is impossible for me to read something like that and not go back to this old SNL skit of the bass-o-matic. “Mmmmmmm. That's terrific bass!”

via GIPHY

And off my mind goes to the question of “will it blend?” from Blendtec. I'm also having fun picturing Ian doing high kicks and deep stances in his classes. In case he needs it (or some of you do, too), please follow that up with some of these stretches.

In case you aren't familiar with some of the acronyms Ian used. AF is akin to “as heck” – like how so many of us are saying it is cold “as heck” in the midwest right now. Except that isn't quite strong enough, so some people use a word that rhymes with duck instead of using the word heck. Also, TL/DR stands for too long/didn't read. Some people recognize that we may not have time to read the whole article or series of tweets sometimes, so they synthesize it for us. So Ian shortens his series of tweets 1-7 down into “Thanks, y'all.”

Ian's first tweet began by mentioning people who have inspired him in making these changes in how he interacts with students. I didn't want to start with it, lest it seemed self-serving. However, he mentions others who have had a profound impact on me, as well, so here it is:

1/ I need to begin this thread with a big thanks to @bonni208 for stressing kindness in her @tihighered podcast, @Jessifer for vociferously arguing for treating students as people, & @SaRoseCav for showing through her research just how impactful emotion is on learning.
Story time…

— Ian Wolf (@MrWolfatLC) January 26, 2019

Ian was a guest on episode #222 when he shared about those Teaching in Higher Ed guests who have made the biggest impact on his teaching. He is also a proud member of the Teaching in Higher Ed Completionists – those people who have listened to every single episode of the podcast.

I am working on getting a dedicated page on the site for completionists to share favorite episodes, though I haven't gotten to it quite yet. There is a completionists Slack channel, however.

Viji Sathy Receives a Gift

Many of us have received gifts from our students to thank us for our teaching. In this next series of tweets, Viji Sathy tells a story of some earrings a student gave to her. As you might expect, it was so much more than that.

These may look like ordinary earrings. They are not. #TuesdayThanks pic.twitter.com/NY7UtkxpoS

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

Viji continues on after that with:

After my first semester of teaching I was riddled with self-doubt and wondering if I had taken on more than I could handle. The soundtrack in my head that first year was impatient and unkind. #ImposterSyndrome in full force.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

But after the semester, this student stopped by to gift me these handmade earrings to thank me for teaching and demonstrating care in the class.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

Semester after semester, I chipped away. I attended #facdev, read a lot, asked for help and advice. Now I find myself in the position to offer #facdev, writing a lot, and offering help and advice.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

These earrings stay out to remind me of this wonderful and unpredictable journey.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

To my educator colleagues, who may be doubting themselves right now: stay the course, ask for help. Remember everyone has a day 1, or semester 1. We all remember it.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

And to that wonderful student, I have so much gratitude for the gift you gave me — and it wasn’t the earrings, but I love them too.

— ＶＩＪＩ ＳＡＴＨＹ (@vijisathy) January 29, 2019

Viji's story reminds me of the importance of committing to lifelong learning in our profession. We may get to places in our teaching where we are effective at coaching others, but there will always be more to discover, fail at, and learn from…

Matthew Cortland Has a Leaky Roof

These past few weeks on academic twitter have been focused a lot on disability accommodations. A professor wound up apologizing for his suggestion that he would not accommodate students' needs surrounding test anxiety. There was this powerful post about neurodiversity. And then there was this memorable series of tweets from Matthew Cortland, esq.

Someone messages to ask, in what I believe to be good faith, why I go so hard at academics for ableism.

It's because the roof leaks.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

When it's wet outside, water leaks from the bedroom ceiling. You may ask, quite reasonably, ‘why don't you do something about it?'

Because sometimes I have to pay the rent late.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I was told by law school administration that I couldn't tell professors I had a disability or that I needed accommodations. I have #IBD, my symptoms require, as my accommodations letters put it, “unhindered restroom access.” The law school tried, very hard, to violate the ADA

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I had to threaten to sue them to be allowed to tell professors I had a reasonable accommodation on the basis of disability that meant if I needed to go to the restroom? I wasn't going to raise my hand and ask for permission (as some profs insisted).

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

One professor, upon my disclosing chronic illness said, “you won't need something silly, like a large font, will you?”

When I explained Crohn's, he interrogated me about how he'd know if I was faking or if I was really in the bathroom.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

That was the first interrogation of many. I was cross examined, repeatedly, about my accommodations. Even though they were from Uni Dis Services & based upon voluminous medical evidence, were they legit? no, really, how was I scamming them?

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

Instead of assigning a proctor to stop time when I needed to toilet (as I requested) they gave me 1.5x time on exams. I had final exams (upon which the entire class grade depends) taken away from me before my allotted time had expired. It literally trashed my gpa.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

For the entirety of my law school career, I was told every single day, explicitly and implicitly, that I didn't belong, that I wasn't welcome, that the profession didn't have any room for me.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I was told by the professors who were supposed to mentor me that if I got a firm job (and I wouldn't, but if there was a miracle), they'd fire me after a month on some pretext because I “need to use the bathroom too much.”

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

…it was relentless. And other professors saw it. And my classmates saw it. And it perpetuated a culture. Those professors weren't just teaching what was on the syllabus – they were teaching discrimination, they were teaching ableism.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

That pernicious discrimination is the norm throughout the profession. And if it's ever to stop, it must begin with academe, it must begin with law schools. That's why I go so hard.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

I have an incredibly expensive education, a license to practice law, a useful skillset. I'm a good advocate.

When it's wet outside, the roof leaks because I never got a firm job, because I'm unemployable because I spend too much time in the bathroom.

— Matthew Cortland, esq (@mattbc) January 28, 2019

Cortland's thread has been added to since I first bookmarked it, including this Patreon page entitled Shouldn't Need to Become a Lawyer. I also noticed a number of powerful videos of him advocating for various healthcare policy issues.

Your Turn

These three individuals really got me thinking about my teacher. I am grateful for their expressions of despair, change, and hope in this place. What have you been reading on Twitter that has been transformative lately?