Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 559 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, cultivating critical teaching behaviors with Lauren Barbeau and Claudia Cornejo Happel. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. 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. I’m excited today to be welcoming to the show two guests who have created a framework called the Critical Teaching Behaviors Framework. It defines instructional practices to create a shared understanding of good teaching by providing a concise synthesis of research based teaching behaviors proven effective for improving student learning. And you’ll be hearing us discuss what is the framework and also their book on the same topic, critical teaching behaviors, and there are six defined categories, representative behaviors, and there’s also documentation that we could use to collect as evidence of engagement in these behaviors, which are align, include, engage, assess, integrate technology, and reflect.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:49]:

And the two guests today are Lauren Barbeau + Claudia Cornejo Happel. And Lauren is passionate about enhancing the value for and quality of teaching in higher education. Her coauthored book, Critical Teaching Behaviors, I just described, and she earned her PhD in English from Washington University in Saint Louis and began her career in educational development in 2013, serving in educational development roles at Georgia Southern University and the University of Georgia. Lauren currently assists faculty in finding the right technology tools to meet their pedagogical needs as the assistant director of learning and technology initiatives at the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Tech. Claudia Cornejo Happel is dedicated to fostering collaborative teaching communities that empower educators to elevate student success. As director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, she leads initiatives to promote evidence based practices and enhance teaching and learning. With a PhD in Spanish and an ed s in instructional technology, Claudia blends diverse academic foundations with practical expertise to research inclusive practices, document effective teaching, and support institutions nationwide in creating transformative teaching cultures. Claudia and Lauren, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Lauren Barbeau [00:03:24]:

Thank you for having us, Bonni.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:03:26]:

Excited to be here.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:28]:

I would love if one of you would take us back to what you remember about assessing your own teaching early in your career.

Lauren Barbeau [00:03:37]:

Early in my career, when I started as a graduate student instructor, I think I considered teaching a popularity contest. And part of that was maybe the tone that was set by other grad students who were already teaching and the way that they talked about their teaching, the way that they talked about their students, and, their evaluations. And so part of me felt very discouraged going into the classroom because I was not popular at any point in my life. And so going into the classroom, I felt like I was already at a disadvantage because I was entering a popularity contest that I was bound to lose. So assessing teaching at that very early stage looked like a cult of personality. How many undergraduates you could get to sort of worship at the throne of your teaching. Right? There were some very popular and very effective graduate teachers in my department too, and I I think I looked up to them as who I wanted to be, but also felt extremely discouraged realizing that maybe I just wasn’t going to be the kind of popular cult of personality that they were. It took some time for me to realize I I early in my career, I was engaged with the teaching center at, WashU in Saint Louis.

Lauren Barbeau [00:04:57]:

I I went to almost every event that I could, but it took some time to realize that good teaching is about more than personality. And those workshops were the beginning of that realization for me. But that shift in how I perceived success as an instructor really didn’t come until I was teaching as an adjunct at a community college in a very rural part of East Tennessee. And I realized that effective teaching is so much more than personality. In fact, personality plays a very minor role in your teaching effectiveness. In a space where students needed me to be a good teacher, they didn’t need a personality. They needed strategies that helped them learn. And that was really the beginning of a shift in how I personally assessed my teaching.

Lauren Barbeau [00:05:50]:

And I would even say that those are the roots of the project that Claudia and I started in the critical teaching behaviors framework.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:05:57]:

And I think for me, looking back to when I first started teaching, I didn’t even know that teaching could be could be assessed. For me, teaching was about assessing students. And so for me, the idea of using data about my teaching as a way to improve only came when I started working with the teaching center at Ohio State and really exploring some of the ways in which we can gather data or assess and evaluate not only what students learn, but also how effective we are in our teaching, whether that is through student midterm feedback, of courses, and of course evaluations. And sometimes to say, okay. Well, that’s maybe part of the popularity contest, but we can always learn from that data as well. Exchanges with colleagues, there are a lot of information that we can gather about our teaching that I hadn’t considered when I first stepped into the classroom. And so similar to what Lauren said, that was for me what started to help me think about my teaching, to be more reflective about it, to realize that it’s not something that we do in isolation, that it’s something where we have lots of input opportunities for, and that it’s something that is not a static quality, but something that we can get better at.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:18]:

As you’re both sharing, I’m reflecting on more than two decades of teaching in this context. I feel like I’ve been teaching since I was five, but and learning since I was, hopefully, since I was born. But I’m thinking about it can be really confusing. And I I think it’s maybe even more confusing to me knowing some of what I didn’t know earlier in my career than maybe even back then. I may have more had a more simplistic thing. And what I mean specifically, what’s coming to mind is that I’m hearing the themes in both of your stories that we ought not to think about this as a contest for charisma. And yet what I’m not hearing is that means that it doesn’t matter that we would ever try to spark something in students. And I’ve been thinking a lot in recent weeks about attention.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:13]:

And, specifically, my reflections have been mostly focused on my own attention and where I would like to invest it and wanting to consume things that are nourishing to me. I’m thinking a lot of metaphors of seeds and planting and and what that what that means. And it’s also getting me thinking about that it does matter. Sometimes what gets students’ attention is something of a personality, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be something else that was novel, something that was unique. I was just corresponding with some colleagues. I got the most edifying words from a student who’s taken an online asynchronous class with me. She says, I’ve never taken a class like this before.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:54]:

And I’m so curious about these things, and I’m having so much fun. And I thought, literally, like, it was unsolicited feedback. And I just thought, oh my gosh. This student has no idea the words that that she is writing, curiosity, and having fun. I mean, that that’s exactly what I’m trying to do and break all of these norms that people have in their head too many times just because they’ve had a bad learning experience. I’m gonna say one last thing too as I’m thinking about it, and I’m sure we’re gonna talk a lot about this today. But the other thing that’s confusing for me and confusing for anybody who tries to measure these things is separating out what are people’s preferences to what actually helps people learn and to be self aware enough to know that those are two very different things, and it’s not us and them. It’s not, well, those students think that they want this, but what they really need are the vegetables, you know, for in their to get their nourishment in their learning, but we’re like that too.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:54]:

Human beings will resist some of some of this stuff. So I wanna have each of you share a little bit then about some of these shifts. Lauren, you talked a little bit about a shift, but tell us a little bit more about what are some other things that either began to shift for you or you’re thinking about in more recent days like me that are fundamental to this wonderful project that you’ll be telling us about today.

Lauren Barbeau [00:10:18]:

Yeah. So to the point about getting attention and what gets students’ attention, personality certainly can. You know, having charisma or riz as apparently the kids are calling it these days. I didn’t

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:30]:

know. I didn’t know.

Lauren Barbeau [00:10:32]:

That’s what the kids are calling it. My undergrad worker informs me. Right? Help me stay young, I guess, in my vocabulary. It definitely can help, but what I found from watching other people teach, learning from other people, what I found from turning to the research is that oftentimes what gets student interest is our interest in them. It’s not our personality. And so this is, of course, drawing on some of the work by Peter Felton and his colleagues, but this has proven so true. So I’ll give an example from a recent class I’m teaching. I’m teaching a graduate course in pedagogy this semester.

Lauren Barbeau [00:11:11]:

And the first day of class, I had them do an exercise where I had them reflect on what good teaching is by thinking about who a good teacher was in their life. And so they each identified a teacher that influenced them, and they had to explain why they thought this person was a good teacher, they why they wanna teach like them and how they influence their lives. And at the end of that, we pull out the themes of what they said. This is an activity I’ve done several times over the year when teaching these graduate pedagogy courses. What’s fascinating is that they always say one of the major themes is they were interested in me. They cared about me. So it’s not necessarily personality here. It’s the care and investment that we have in our students, which speaks so much to including students, creating that sense of belonging in the classroom.

Lauren Barbeau [00:12:00]:

And while energy and enthusiasm for your topic are also excellent ways of getting students invested in the content, so often getting people’s attention starts with giving them your attention.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:12:14]:

Yes. And related to that, paying attention to our students, and that also is one of the include behaviors, includes making sure that we are connecting what we are talking about in the classroom to their interests, that we are transparent about why are we doing it. At my institution, I facilitate a lot of midterm student feedback where students have an opportunity to provide feedback to instructors at mid semester. And in recent semesters, one of the most common thing I’m hearing is my professor gives me so much busy work. And a lot of time, the instructor has very good reason for assigning activities, for giving students tasks, but they never explain what students will take away from it. And so I think that really comes back to what Lauren just said, caring about students, being transparent about what we’re doing in the classroom, explaining our purpose, and really not just assuming that students will know that we are the teacher and we know what we’re doing and we get it right just because we’re the teachers, but involving them in the conversation that is the learning together in the classroom.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:23]:

That, to me, what you’re what you’re describing here can be done in a at least in a as I think through my experience, that can be done in more of a clumsy transactional way versus when I find ways to do it in a more rooted way, both the connecting to their interests as well as responding to any concerns about busy work. I think the one thing that I celebrate, and I’ve learned this, of course, from people who’ve come on this podcast and wonderful books that I have read, is that when we’re doing these things ourselves, it’s really hard for students to at least this I’ve I’ve just found they don’t really think of it as busy work. They might say that they’re busy, and they’re feeling overwhelmed, and how wonderful when I can come with empathy. But when I’m doing some of the practices, the very things that I’m assigning along with them because it is a integral part of who I am, I’m just not met with I am met with this as challenging, but I’m not met with this as busy work. Those are two very different things and two different kinds of feedback that that we might experience. One thing I was really intrigued when I first by the way, I’m just for listeners’ sake, Lauren and I happened to be sitting next to each other in November of twenty twenty four when I first learned about Claudia and Lauren’s work. And I was really, really intrigued by one aspect of it, and that was that you you have done a bunch of research around effective behaviors for teaching excellence, which is the whole reason we’re having today’s conversation. Spoiler alert.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:58]:

That’s where we’re headed next. But before we even start talking specifically about these behaviors, I was curious just about why you would focus on behaviors versus something else, like a quality of a person or characteristic or that kind of a thing. And as a quick anecdote, I still I I remember being very young and hearing about the someone who, by the way, I would never listen to today. I’m not even gonna mention their name because it’s that much where I wouldn’t want to. But just this idea that this person would say, like, if you’ve fallen out of love with someone. I remember as a teenager, young teenager, you know, if you’re falling out of love, maybe behave like someone who is in love. And that this person felt like that’s a way to restore love into a relationship that we might behave. So I’ve been intrigued for a very, very long time.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:50]:

Can we behave our way into things? So I’m I’m interested. I don’t know what the answer, by the way, for listeners. I don’t know what the answer is gonna be, so I can’t wait to find out about, you know, where did you start with behaviors, or did you end up at behaviors? Because you went and tried some other possible paradigms first in your research and and coming up with this framework.

Lauren Barbeau [00:16:12]:

So I will say that we started with behaviors. Part of the reason we started with behaviors, this was an intentional choice, is because we are not the first teaching framework to ever exist right there. There are lots of teaching frameworks out there. And when we initially I don’t think we set out to build a teaching framework. It was a thing that happened incidentally. And and part of the reason we ended up building a framework is because what we needed didn’t exist. What we agreed upon when we set out on this project is that good teaching can be learned. We believe that we all can get better at teaching if we put in the time to do it.

Lauren Barbeau [00:16:54]:

A lot of the teaching frameworks that we looked at highlight qualities. And while if you break it down and and actually get into their frameworks, they’re not necessarily all about, you know, qualities. The idea of equality has this innateness to it. Right? It’s a characteristic. You’re born with it. And I think it adds to this myth that you’re either born being a good teacher or you’re not or you’re born being a good researcher, so I’m gonna put my time there. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s something you learn.

Lauren Barbeau [00:17:28]:

It’s something you can get better at. And so we had these very long, very intense conversations about what it means for teaching to be a behavior. And since we’re moving in that direction, I will say the critical teaching behaviors framework, which was the outcome of all of this research and all these conversations, is also based around action verbs. That’s not a mistake. That was intentional, partially because my PhD is in English. Words matter to me, especially action verbs after grading a lot of undergrad papers that don’t have them. But, really, in all seriousness, the verbs matter because it’s things we can do. Thinking back to my own experience as that new graduate instructor looking at the good teachers who were elevated in my department and thinking about the cult of personality and how that felt so unattainable.

Lauren Barbeau [00:18:21]:

And my own journey thinking about how I built those skills and intentionally pursued opportunities to grow. We wanted to create a framework that gives people the sense that they also can grow, that there are things they can do. It’s actionable. It’s not just something that you’re born with. It’s not a checklist that you either meet all these criteria or you don’t. It’s living. It’s breathing. It’s holistic.

Lauren Barbeau [00:18:46]:

It’s flexible just like we are. We are people, and we are dynamic. And we needed something that was more dynamic and holistic when it came to documenting and explaining what it is to be a good teacher.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:01]:

In your book, you share six categories of critical teaching behaviors, and this is something also by the way, we’ll have a link to your book, but also to your website. So if people want to see the full list of them and explore them, that’s available to you. Is there any category that stands out as more challenging than the rest as someone was getting started?

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:19:21]:

I’m gonna I’m gonna jump in on that and just say that I don’t think there is a single category that is more challenging than another as a whole. I really think that depends on who you are as an instructor and your values and your preferences and the knowledge and experiences that you are bringing to the classroom. So I don’t think there is a single category that’s across the board more challenging than another. I think what we have learned in working with lots of faculty using the critical teaching behavior framework for their teaching and for growing as instructors is that often there is a preferred category. We talk about that also as a core value category, that is easy to use as a lens also to think about teaching. So for example, I recently talked to a faculty member who really invest a lot of time into her teaching and including students in the learning process in the classroom. She teaches a hundred students, but makes an effort to learn students’ names by week two of the semester. And so the way that she talked about her teaching was that it’s it’s really including is what brings her joy, what matters to her the most.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:20:45]:

But she also uses include to implement some of the other critical teaching behaviors into her class. So for example, she uses polling software into her bigger lecturers because it allows her to check-in with all of the students on how things are going. And she makes sure that she is really transparent in communicating expectations, for example. So using the TIL teaching transparency and learning and teaching framework to communicate the purpose, the, task, and the criteria for assignments. She invests into unpacking the hidden curriculum of higher education. So for example, telling students, my name is x y and z. If you want to write me an email, this is how you address me. So her include value really also functions as a lens to address some of the other cards that are about, engaging students through polling, assessing their work in a transparent manner.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:21:47]:

And so while there’s no one thing that is more difficult than another, it really helps us to find a behavior that resonates with us and that we can use as a lens to think about our teaching more holistically.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:02]:

How refreshing to think about it coming back to our strengths and that as an entry point and that our strengths then can spill over into some of these other areas and complement them from what I’m hearing. Lauren, do you have any thoughts about are any of the categories in your mind might act like a fulcrum? I realize that Claudia’s example might be that the category could be the area where you feel a lot of strength in. But is there another thing that comes to mind for you of getting started point or something like that? I’m I’m thinking about how hard some of these things can seem. Is there a way to shrink them down as a getting started point? Anything coming to mind for you?

Lauren Barbeau [00:22:40]:

I always draw it back to the reflect category. So if you look at what has become our CTB logo, you have the six different categories, and they’re all these colorful little balls in a stained glass window sort of model. This isn’t an accident either. That was the product of a conversation that Claudia and I had after we had built a preliminary version of the framework. I said, this is all great, but teaching doesn’t fall into nice, neat color coded boxes, does it? We need something that represents the complexity and the messiness and the way that behaviors overlap and might fall into more than one category that we can’t represent in boxes. And what we ended up with was the the CTB model, the stained glass window, and reflect is the outer ring of that. Now every one of us has a different model, how we conceptualize teaching and the different components of teaching. And this is not to invalidate that.

Lauren Barbeau [00:23:40]:

This is to say, in our conception of things, reflect is what allows us to it it’s the fulcrum for me. Because if we can’t reflect on our teaching, we can’t even identify our strengths to start leveraging them, to start working on any of these categories. So to me, this all comes down to reflecting so that we can identify what we’re doing well, what we might want to improve, how we can leverage what we’re already doing well to help us improve, what small changes we can start making today, tomorrow to change the way we’re teaching so that we’re improving student learning. I think that reflect category is essential to decision making and data collection. When we’re intentional about what we’re doing, we’re much more capable of collecting data that allows us to make better decisions about what we’re gonna do in our teaching. So I would say if you’re looking for an entry point into critical teaching behaviors, start by reflecting on your teaching and take a look at the materials we’ve provided to help you do that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:47]:

I think often about the conversations I have at at the end of a semester and then also once it comes time to when the sometimes dreaded email is about to come out from in our case, it’s our institutional research department of your course evaluations are ready. And as long as I’ve been doing this, and, truly, listeners have written into me sometimes frustrated with me of of saying, like, you don’t understand what it’s like to really have bad evaluations, and I want to I just so I wanna own that. I’ve heard you. Those of you who have written to me, I’ve heard you. So I don’t wanna sound like I’m taking up my tiny violin. But so, I mean, I mostly get wonderful feedback, and yet I dread that email coming. And part of that can be it can be very confusing for us to separate out what was more of a preference and us all as human beings wanting to resist against being challenged and experience that failure feedback, try it again. You know, that that’s something that we can’t not I don’t wanna say all of us, but some of us can can try to avoid that in various context for sure, including our our learning context.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:54]:

Any advice around reflect as a means for thinking through that visceral reaction that we can have during times like that versus actually sussing out what’s what’s really gonna be helpful.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:26:11]:

And I know this is not going to be an easy ask either. But in my experience, it can be really valuable to engage in some of this reflect with trusted colleagues. I think a lot of times we get hung up on because we’re so close. Right? We’re so close to the class. We’re so close to what we did. It’s so personal to us because we invested so much time into it. And so really connecting with a trusted colleague around the feedback and going through it in a way that helps us really suss out some of the strength that students will mention. But then also think through some of the hopefully, constructively critical feedback that we are receiving to move forward and make an action plan and to talk through ideas.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:27:04]:

For me, that has always been one of my really, favorite parts of this project is it allows us to have some of these conversations with colleagues in a more productive way because we’re starting with a common language, a common denominator where we are more or less agreeing on what are some of the components of good teaching. And so getting together and having more conversations around teaching, whether that is unpacking complicated feedback, whether that is even just visiting and engaging in conversations around what are you doing in the classroom. I feel we don’t always do that enough, and, hopefully, this gives us an opportunity to do more of that.

Lauren Barbeau [00:27:46]:

I wanna return to what I mentioned earlier about my experience being an adjunct at a community college. So back in 2016, I was just launching my postgraduate career, and I was an adjunct teaching for dual enrollment courses. And it was a really hard semester. It was a hard semester because my husband had lost his job. The job we moved out there for him to follow, they laid off 300 people, most of them new employees. I couldn’t find a job that was full time, so I was adjuncting and tutoring. And we were in a space where we had bought a house the year beforehand when we moved out there, and now we really had I was making less as an adjunct than I did as a graduate student. And we were looking at how do we pay our bills and the stress of, are we gonna lose our house? Are we gonna lose our cars? I was driving between three campuses every single day to teach classes, and I was teaching my first class of high school students at 07:20 in the morning.

Lauren Barbeau [00:28:51]:

And then I would be up grading and lesson planning until 11:00, maybe midnight. I say all this as a preamble to what I’ll say about reflect. Be kind to yourself because some semesters are harder than others. And when I look back on that time in my life, I got the worst teaching evals of my entire life. It was devastating. It was so devastating, Bonni, I actually burned them. Like, I ceremonially took them out and burned them because it was a cathartic experience. I they were so emotionally devastating that I couldn’t do anything productive with them at the time.

Lauren Barbeau [00:29:29]:

Now that I’m removed from that emotionally, I think back to those evals, and I can more productively reflect on them. And some of the lessons I’ve gleaned from them were what’s happening in our personal lives does affect what happens in the classroom. And even though I was trying to be the best teacher that I could be, it was a very stressful time, and I wasn’t able to show up the way I wanted to in the classroom. So one of the lessons I learned from that was to be kind to myself. The next lesson I learned from that is, boy, I cared. I cared so much about whether they succeeded, and it was deeply upsetting to me that that didn’t come across. So another point of reflection I realized is that, I need to do some work on my on my teaching persona. And Claudia and I have long conversations about what it means to have a teaching persona versus a personality.

Lauren Barbeau [00:30:20]:

We do believe a persona is intentionally constructed. What I learned from my experience that semester is that students understand me and who I am as a teacher through the behaviors they experience from me. They don’t know me as a person outside of of the classroom. Their interactions with me are that space that we have each week, and they know who I am by how I behave. And so one of the reflections that I gleaned from that was if I want them to give a certain kind of feedback and experience me a certain way, I need to be enacting behaviors that communicate care to them. In my head that semester, I knew I cared. I was so devoted. You don’t stay up until eleven or midnight every night giving feedback on a 20 student papers because you don’t care.

Lauren Barbeau [00:31:10]:

You don’t. However, they didn’t experience my feedback as care. And when I was far enough removed from the incident to not be emotionally invested anymore, I realized I needed to do something to communicate care because it wasn’t useful for me to give that level of feedback, to invest that amount of time, and have students experience that as a negative learning experience when what I wanted was positive growth. So even though this was one of the darkest phases of of my life personally and professionally, it was a hard time. It was actually the foundation of everything that we’re doing now because I realized I can choose who I wanna be in the classroom. I can intentionally construct a persona that communicates care and interest that engages students by bringing in real life examples, making it relevant to them. I can communicate the alignment of my course in a way that eliminates or at least reduces the sense that I’m giving them busy work. I can give them feedback that doesn’t feel overwhelming or devastating.

Lauren Barbeau [00:32:17]:

I can give them feedback that really produces growth, And that has entirely changed my teaching career.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:25]:

What a powerful story of a extremely difficult time in your life. Thank you so much for sharing that and for the encouragement it can bring. And, Claudia, from your story and Lauren’s and and your work, you’re really talking about giving us an opportunity to have a longer term view on things. I was thinking about the things that I have attempted to do to share care and that when I’m in the moment, I don’t always get to see it. I kinda don’t like I I really I I both enjoy the way that our learning management system allows me to leave rich feedback. I could do that in video. I could do that audio. I could do that in written.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:03]:

I can I can add in my own emojis? It’s so it’s so much fun, but I don’t yet require for the students to write me back. And so I’m never really sure. I spent a lot of time doing that, and I’m never really sure do they actually is is there is this are they even seeing this? You know? And and but I don’t want it to become yet another transactional thing that they have to do or whatever. But when I look over time, because of these little nuggets of feedback that either I do or that come out of course evaluations, I can see many of them do see that. And and that and then so I can save that over time where if this morning when I was doing my grading slash feedback, I thought, oh gosh. Is anyone even gonna see this? I’m spending a lot of time, but it’s like, oh, no. But you can remember through that reflect work, over time, you know that most of them will see it, and and most of them will give you the kind of feedback. That that’s a behavior that actually matters in this.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:01]:

So that’s what a what a beautiful reflection you’ve just given us. And, also, that was a temporary time in your life that was very difficult, and you’re really talking about self compassion as you describe that that season in your life and perhaps reflect back to self compassion of that that season in your in your teaching. How wonderful. Alright. So before we get to the recommendations, I hope we’ve sparked a lot of curiosity for people. I know I am very curious. So tell us, in addition to visiting the website, in addition to checking out your book, what’s a way that someone who is curious and wants to learn more and start to look at these teaching behaviors in their own teaching? What where should we where should we go? What should we do?

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:34:43]:

I think being curious with each other. So as I mentioned earlier, I think it it’s such a great opportunity to get into conversations with peers as that is possible to ask students, not just at the end, not just waiting for the end of of course feedback, but checking in with students on how things are working. Some faculty do the start, stop, continue, question to students on occasion. And so just getting curious about what we can learn from others about our teaching, but also taking the time regularly to reflect on what it is that we’re doing. What again, what brings us joy? What seems to have the biggest impact on student learning in the classroom and taking a moment to not not just go and do, but think back and look at what we can learn from the things that we have done.

Lauren Barbeau [00:35:31]:

And I would say get curious with us. It’s really exciting when we hear from people who have read the book or are engaging with our work, and they wanna share their thoughts. They wanna have deeper conversations. There’s nothing more rewarding for having spent five years writing a book than to have people actually read it and reach out to you and share thoughts. We actually curate a Google folder full of adaptations of our critical teaching behaviors materials, which are almost all creative commons licensed under share and share alike with the goal that people take these things and make them their own and use them. But because our goal is to create a community around teaching, we want you to share those with us. We wanna put those in our folders so that other people can get curious and begin to construct that larger community. Because it is through this community sense of teaching that we can collaboratively construct definitions of what good teaching means, of what it what teaching excellence, which is a term that is bandied about far too often, what that actually means.

Lauren Barbeau [00:36:40]:

And it’s how we get better. It’s how we identify goals for growth. So we encourage you to reach out to us. We would love to hear from you and hear your experience using the critical teaching behaviors.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:54]:

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. And I recently had a conversation where we were talking about how when our our our facial expressions don’t match what our intent is. And, specifically, we were talking about the especially during the early days of the pandemic when a lot of people were on Zoom and were unaccustomed to communicating in that way, just the all the debates about cameras on, cameras off, all those kinds of things. And and someone actually mentioned a positive thing that they found when they were increasingly in a Zoom session and that they could see themselves, that it actually was really helpful feedback. Now I do want to say there are many for whom it’s really important to turn off their own camera image. It can be just too stressful for for many different reasons. I I just wanted to mention that in case you weren’t aware that you can turn off your image. But for this particular person, it was a helpful thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:53]:

A little a little talk about feedback. Well, we can get feedback, but it’s still going through a bunch of different things. Right now, you know, as I I actually am on camera right now with Claudia and with Lauren, so I’m getting feedback, right, on my on myself in addition to from from them as well. So to the extent that it might be helpful for us to think about how we are coming across in a video online communication channel, I wanted to recommend that there is a app that you can download. On Mac, it’s called Hand Mirror. And on Windows, there’s a different one that does a similar thing called CamDesk. And what these tools do is they they just live right there for you to click on, and it’s basically like being able to look in a mirror before you hop in. And you think about, like, oh, people would tell me if I had something stuck in my teeth, and I still I I have this funny flashback to being 22 years old.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:50]:

And I had gone out to lunch and had some, nachos at a Mexican restaurant, and I I I love, you know, dip it dip take the nacho. You gotta dip it in the beans, and then you gotta dip it in the sour cream. And unbeknownst to me, I was wearing a wine colored silk suit jacket. So we’re going back here to a day or two ago, and I literally had all over the front of my chest sour cream. I mean, and no one told me. I taught from 01:00 until 04:00, and not a single soul in that 24 person class decided to mention to me at any period of time that I just had sour cream all over the front of my wine colored jacket. And I went into the bathroom and saw myself and thought, oh my goodness gracious. So these apps can save us from those things before you get on the Zoom.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:42]:

So they’re just a quick way of being able to just do a quick visual check before you hop on and your camera’s there for the whole world to see. Hand mirror for the Mac and cam desk for Windows. And, Claudia, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:39:58]:

That sounds great. Also, I’m sorry. That sounds like a horrible experience. But my recommendation today is, I have two actually. I have the live your values deck of cards, which I found a few months back and it’s been really helpful to me. It’s a deck of cards with about 78, I think, cards that have different values on it that are explained with the one phrase, and then they have ideas for how what we can do in our life to enact those values. For example, I have this one value that says growth, and the recommendation is pursue interesting and challenging tasks. I mean, nothing earth shattering.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:40:43]:

But in my personal professional lives, there’s been just a lot of changes and lots of opportunities, lots of challenges, and I have found it really helpful as a way to ground me to think back and explore the values that I have selected and reflect on them and pick one. Okay. This is my next step. Additionally, it has really pretty art on it. So that’s my one recommendation. My second recommendation is Lamy fountain pens. I grew up in Germany, and I learned writing with fountain pens. And moving to The United States A Few Years back, I put it aside until a friend of mine recently reintroduced me to them.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:41:25]:

And I have now expanded, and I have, I think, three different fountain pins with three different ink colors, and it just brings me so much joy writing with them. And so those are my two recommendations.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:37]:

Such wonderful recommendations. Thank you so much. And, Lauren, what do you have to share with us today?

Lauren Barbeau [00:41:42]:

K. So I also have two, but the first one really isn’t that exciting. It is a plain notebook. Why am I recommending that you have a plain notebook that I got for free at a conference? I have started this practice, so I have a notebook that I track all of my work in, like a daily to do list that I check things off of so I don’t lose tasks. Great. However, I have really bad ADHD, which means all day long, things are popping in and out of my head, and I have a very hard time focusing and remembering. And I often get caught in an ADHD spin where I’m like, gotta do that. Nope.

Lauren Barbeau [00:42:17]:

Gotta do that first. Nope. Gotta do that. Now I have a plain notebook. This I I don’t like to write anything too messy in my notebook where I keep my to do list. My that’s a place that’s organized. What I started doing in the last month is I I have sort of a parking lot, And it’s not Post it notes, which is what I used to use, and they get cluttered and lost all over my desk. I have this parking lot notebook where I write down thoughts as they pop into my head so that I can hold on to them.

Lauren Barbeau [00:42:44]:

And sometimes they are simple thoughts like text Claudia about updates that I made to this, that, or the other. And sometimes they are multipage values examinations. So I I sat down and I wrote out my values as relate to teaching and learning and as relate to this project so that I can more intentionally say yes and no to things that align with my interests and my values. So making sure I’m I’m living a values driven life. And, then another day, I decided I’d sit down and write out my writing habits and create some goals and rituals and commitments for myself. So this has kind of revolutionized the way that I work and the way that I hold on to ideas and resources. The other recommendation I have is fun. I recently finished a Netflix series called Man on the Inside.

Lauren Barbeau [00:43:36]:

And if you haven’t seen this, it’s super cute, very fun. Yeah. I see Bonni. You’ve watched it. I don’t watch a ton of TV, and I really only like twenty minutes humorous sort of shows. If it’s too much, too long, or too intense, I’m like, no. I’m not here for it. I need to shut down at the end of the day.

Lauren Barbeau [00:43:54]:

It needs to be funny. And this is exactly the sort of funny, heartwarming, but sometimes deeply reflective show that I want at the end of my day. So I hope that Netflix listens to your show because I want them to make more seasons.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:09]:

Oh my goodness. It’s so good. My I my friend got sick over the holiday break, and she also doesn’t watch a lot of TV. And I was like, this is your show, Shannon. You gotta listen. You gotta watch it. And then another friend, sadly, as as of us talking at this exact moment, Jim, who’s, leads our library, Same thing. Alright, Jim.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:29]:

Here’s your prescription. A man on the inside. It really is exactly like you described. So heartwarming, touching, and funny. I mean, it just it’s it it scratches all the itches. It’s so wonderful. Well, thanks to both of you for this work. Boy, Lauren, I can say that your values just shine out from the first moment we got to have that conversation, and it’s so fun to hear you talk about the ongoing work

Lauren Barbeau [00:44:55]:

that you do. One thing

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:55]:

we didn’t mention during our conversation is just that this is never ending work. But when we do it together, what a wonderful way to go about our lives and solidarity and and building up to the collective values and what’s possible through that as well, and you both embody that so much. I’m so grateful for the conversation today and to the opportunity to continue to learn from you and your work.

Lauren Barbeau [00:45:15]:

Thank you, Bonni. This has been a great experience.

Claudia Cornejo Happel [00:45:18]:

Agreed.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:21]:

Thanks once again to Lauren Barbeau and Claudia Cornejo Happel for joining me for the conversation today. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. If you’ve yet to sign up for the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, now is your moment. Head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. You’ll receive the most recent episodes show notes as well as some other resources that go above and beyond those, resources in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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