[00:00:01] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 413 of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, Heidi Weston and Peter Felton join me to talk about how mattering matters.

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[00:00:14] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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[00:00:23] Bonni: 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.

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[00:00:51] Bonni: I’m so pleased today to be welcoming to the show two guests, Heidi Weston and Peter Felton. Heidi Weston is an undergraduate student at Elon University, where she studies history and education. Heidi is a Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education teaching fellow. Peter Felton is executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, assistant provost for Teaching and Learning, and professor of history at Elon University.

Peter has published six books about undergraduate education, including with Leo Lambert, Relationship-Rich Education, How Human Connections Drive Success in College Teaching. His next book, A Student Guide to Relationship-Rich Education is coauthored with Isis Artze-Vega, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in early 2023 with an open-access online version free to all readers.

Heidi, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed and, Peter, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:02:02] Peter Felton: Thanks, Bonni.

[00:02:03] Heidi Weston: Thank you.

[00:02:04] Bonni: I am very excited to get to follow up the conversation that I feel like I had with you before. I got to hear each of you share about this important research, and it felt like we were talking, but now we actually get to have this conversation. Thanks for being here today.

Before we get into the research, I’d like to do a little bit of a research of my own and ask you this question. Heidi, could you tell us about a time that you remember recalling feeling like you mattered? It could be in a school context. It could be somewhere else. Do you have a time that you remember?

[00:02:40] Heidi: Yes, mine is in the school context, and it comes from when I was in third grade. My family had just moved to a new city and I was in the new classroom. I finally had a teacher who realized that I didn’t know how to read. I had calmed my way to third grade with networking with my peers, and no one noticed that I didn’t know how to read except for my mother.

At my previous school, she had told the faculty all the way up to the principal that I need an intervention, and they had decided that she was just a frustrated, retired school teacher. But this one teacher, Ms. Tuthill, I’m going to name drop because she deserves it, really saw my struggles and she worked with my mom to help get me the 504 plan that I needed without waiting for me to fail.

Most interventions in schools depend on a student failing and then the IEP process takes place, but she didn’t want me to fail. She really made sure that I got the help I needed so I could succeed. Now, I’ve been wildly successful in my educational experience. That really made me feel like I mattered that she took the time to do that.

[00:03:45] Bonni: Oh, what a powerful story, Heidi. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times that we as educators can think that we are teaching and can think that people are learning and until we actually really let people know that they matter, and part of that is recognizing where there may be some disconnect. I have just a quick story to share with you, Heidi, since you mentioned this.

My first career was actually in a weird context, at least now looking back, I taught computer classes. Then after about a year of doing that, I got promoted and then I taught other people how to teach computer classes. Picture this back in the back in the day with just– picture a room with 25 big computer monitors, because this is before the flat screens that we have today. The instructor would be standing at the front of the room and they’re teaching Excel, Word, whatever it is, and they would say, “Are y’all with me?”

I’d be observing their class, and I’m sitting in the back of the room and they are most certainly not with them, but that is so implematic for me. Again, I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m making fun of people. I know that I still very much have the capacity to do this in my teaching, but I try to really wrestle with that and say, “How would you know if someone had learned this?”

What a wonderful story and how wonderful too that someone let you know that you mattered in the third grade. I have one child who is in second grade and one that is in fourth grade. You’re right in between my two kids’ ages. I just love and treasure their teachers and just the ways that they’re showing our kids that they matter too. Thank you for that. Great story. Peter, do you have a story of a time you recall feeling like you mattered?

[00:05:35] Peter: Well, I don’t know if I have one that’s that good. But the one that comes to mind for me right away is when I was a freshman in college and I was in my fall freshman year, I was in a philosophy course and I had this amazing professor, Professor Klug, if we’re name dropping. I was a successful student and a pretty competitive student, and the goal was to get A’s. At the end of the semester, I wrote this final paper and saw my grade post, which was an A, and I was happy.

About a week after the grade posted, I got the paper in the mail, and it was from Dr. Klug, and she wrote all over the paper. At the end, she wrote something that really struck me because I can quote it to this day. She said, “Peter, this was the best paper in the class, but you could have written a better paper, and I’d like you to come talk to me in the spring.” It really changed how I thought about school and how I thought about myself because it wasn’t about getting the highest grade. It wasn’t about learning the most or doing my best or anything like that.

That really got to this sense that she wasn’t just looking at the work. She was looking at me, and not just this was a good paper. That, again, it just fundamentally changed how I thought about school and myself.

[00:06:57] Bonni: I’ve been subscribing to a lot of those Substack newsletters. I don’t know, Peter, if you’re reading any of those, or Heidi. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this paper, but there was one– I believe her name is Brianna, but I apologize, Brianna, if I’m not remembering just in the moment. She recently posted a Substack newsletter about feedback. She was talking about the research she had done. I believe she illustrated three different types of feedback, and I really liked them. In fact, I think I even have it to share in one of my newsletters coming up because I thought it was really good.

I’m even intrigued just by feedback that Peter is similar to the kind you just described, just lets the person even know that you read what they wrote. Sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh, wow. I saw that movie too.” Or, “Oh, I haven’t seen that movie yet. Thank you so much. I’ve added it to my IMDB watch list.” To me, that’s feedback. I don’t know, maybe there’s a research project emerging here or something of like, does that actually help people know that they matter? Because you actually read the words, anyway.

What a powerful example. Thanks both of you for sharing these stories. Today’s episode is really going to center on mattering. But before we get to mattering, Peter, I know that you need to become our teacher today and educate us a little bit on some of the very related research that’s been going on for quite a while in higher education, and that has to do with a sense of belonging, the scholarship around a student’s sense of belonging. Could you first share a little bit, Peter, about what kinds of correlations show up around belonging and a student’s college experience?

[00:08:45] Peter: Thank you, Bonni. Just to point folks in a good direction, you’ve done a number of podcasts on belonging in the past. One place that people could go if they want to dig into this more is to look back at your podcast. There’s tons of research over the last decade in the US and around the world that says sense of belonging is tied to a lot of different things we might want for our students, successful transition into higher education, persistence through higher education, graduation rates, academic performance, well-being, and mental health. Belonging is really tied to a lot of things that we value that students value in higher education.

[00:09:24] Bonni: What are some of the essential components that are included under this sense of belonging?

[00:09:29] Peter: Bonni, this is one of those great academic terms that gets used all the time, but there isn’t one definition out there anywhere that everybody agrees to. Fundamentally, it seems like there’s two parts. One is a sense that you’re valued in the community and then the second is that you fit in the community, that you are integrated into connected to similar to others in the community.

[00:09:51] Bonni: I know that there is some research that specifically looks at students of color and their sense of belonging in college context as well.

[00:10:01] Peter: It’s funny, Bonni, because actually, Heidi and I, with Alison Cook-Sather, a colleague from Bryn Mawr College, are writing a paper about all this, and we’ve been digging into the research. There’s actually literature from before belonging became a popular thing in higher education that says, “Students of color don’t experience this the same way as majority students do.”

There’s quite a lot of research now in the US and around the world, again, that shows things like Black students in the US feel less like they fit in many higher education contexts than white students do. Their sense of belonging is much weaker, in general, than it is compared to white students in higher ed.

[00:10:44] Bonni: When you talk about past episodes that we’ve done on sense of belonging, I think about one episode in particular that we’ve done about just research in general. That was from Yolanda Flores Niemann, who’s the editor of Presumed Incompetent. I so distinctly remember her sharing with us way back when years ago about generally speaking when you hear about any type of research about really anything.

She was specifically talking about, in higher education, that you might as well just put at the end of it “White people” [chuckles] that until you parse out– That’s important for us just to recognize the different ways that people may experience these things and the importance of our research addressing those things.

[00:11:29] Peter: Bonni, even just thinking about the word, because we’ve heard a number of students talk about this, that belonging might sound like a good term to academic researchers and all this. For example, if you are a student of color on an American campus in the South and this campus existed before the Civil War, this campus was probably built by enslaved people, and so this sense that you belong on campus. Then you’re thinking perhaps about your ancestors who belonged to the people who created this institution.

This idea that, I even want to be associated with the word belonging, is really complicated. It’s not always just students of color, there’s actually a really cool new paper from Finland, looking at students with significant learning disabilities, is the language they use there, and that a number of these students say, “I don’t want to belong in an academic environment that so privileges students who are different than me.”

[00:12:27] Bonni: You’ve touched on a couple of reasons why it’s important for us to rethink belonging as a construct. Peter, is there more you would like to add about the wrestling that we ought to be doing around that as a construct?

[00:12:40] Peter: The one other really significant critique of belonging, and there’s a lot, the one other significant critique of belonging that I think is worthwhile is often, when we talk about belonging, we imply or sometimes just outright state that it’s on students to find their people. Students need to find their fit on campus. That puts the shoe on the wrong foot as it were because it really is our responsibility, those of us who work and teach and lead institutions of higher education. It’s our responsibility to create spaces and opportunities for all of our students to succeed and just saying, “Well, they don’t fit, that’s their fault. They’re not trying hard enough. They’re not doing it.” That’s got things backwards, I think.

That’s, in some ways, what led us to this sense of mattering, because the difference here between belonging and mattering, they’re related terms. Mattering comes out of psychology, and especially psychology around wellbeing. Mattering, essentially, keeps the value part of belonging without the sense of fit, in other words, without the sense that you have to be integrated. You have to find people who are similar to you. You have to fit in in some ways.

Mattering is about a sense that others depend on you or see you as important or see you as an individual. In both Heidi’s story and mine, that someone’s actively paying attention to who you are as a person and your distinct identities, your distinct contributions, your distinct ways of being in this community. It isn’t, do you fit or not? It’s really about being valued. There’s a bunch of research on mattering that’s existed, especially in social psychology. There’s only really new research coming out looking at mattering in higher education.

Heidi and I, and our colleague Alison Cook-Sather from Bryn Mawr, started talking about this, thinking about some data that we had, that we were thinking about looking at students’ perspectives on this because the research on mattering so far in higher education has been about faculty or has been about why mattering should matter, not what students actually experience. In our research project that Alison, Heidi and I are doing, Heidi has been the person who’s really dug through the student voices in the interviews. Heidi, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about what you did and what you found?

[00:15:08] Heidi: Yes. While looking through the interviews conducted at Bryn Mawr, Haverford and LaGuardia, and these are coming from partnership programs, we identified three sources of mattering. The first comes when students feel they’re taken seriously. A Haverford student partner described how their input and ideas were taken seriously by their faculty partner. Using almost the exact same language, a Bryn Mawr student partner explained, “My advice was taken seriously.”

Well, these are examples of student-to-faculty interaction. Students in the same programs experienced it with student-to-student interaction. When describing weekly meetings that student partners participate in, one student stated, “I feel my opinion actually matters.” Working as a student partner allows students to recognize that they have something to contribute and that their contribution matters. The situations described by these students are more than validation for a job well done. They are evidence of students’ insights mattering to those in which they collaborate.

The second source of mattering comes when students feel like they have a voice. One former SaLT student partner, this is the program at Bryn Mawr, and have referred, stated, “Being a partner literally gave me a voice. The development of voice is important because it empowers students to address the issues that they perceive to be negatively affecting their lives.”

One student described in their interview how they felt uncomfortable in the way in which a class was taught. The student partner justified their choice to address this issue with the professor because they stated, “I have a right to feel comfortable and engaged in class.” This student not only felt that they had a voice in which to contribute, but also that it was important to feel as if you have voice exemplifies an understanding that you and your experiences matter.

The third source of mattering that we identified came mostly from our LaGuardia interviews. This source of mattering comes when students feel that somebody is invested in them. One partner described how, “Participating in the Peer Advisor Academy gave me the resources I needed to be part of a community, motivated me to graduate, and in ways I didn’t get from anybody else.” While another described that her peer mentors, “Believed in me more than I did myself.” Through peer mentoring partnerships that students experience, have others telling them that they are worthy of a mentor’s time and energy, that their dreams were significant, and that they mattered.

[00:17:23] Bonni: Something that’s coming up as you’re sharing those things, Heidi, that I think it probably took me a little while to recognize I needed to change on, and that was just being more transparent about what I used to think was obvious. I used to have just assumed that people knew I was invested in them because, to me, there would be lots of clues that I’m invested in you. That would just be one example, or that they have a voice or that I take them seriously. I’ve just found so much.

There’s some research, and Peter, you may be familiar with this, TiLT. It’s Transparency in Learning and Teaching. I believe more of their work is around assessment, Peter, but I tend to extend it beyond just assessment in terms of, if I am feeling and thinking something, especially I’m finding this a lot with teaching topics that shouldn’t be controversial but, today, apparently are, [laughs] where I can start out of going, “This is a value that I have as a human being. Do you share that value too?” Then before we walk into what, unfortunately, are becoming some more controversial things, so if we can find that grounding and I can be transparent about, “This is why I do this.”

I’ve been talking a lot about deadlines too, because, boy, I’ll tell you, Heidi, and I’m sure, Peter, you probably heard this, I feel like we really, as educators, have had our mindsets pretty shook up, what would be the best way to serve students? I’m finding it’s not to have no deadlines at all, so how do you create an appropriate level of urgency, just like, “Hey, I’m going to meet you at the gym, and we’re both going to go for a walk,” or whatever it is that that’s an appropriate level of urgency to get people to work out more often and be healthier?

We know that, that research would show you those kinds of accountability, but to be more transparent in that. I’m seeing the transparency in your research, potentially having some connection to mattering as well from the stories that you shared here.

[00:19:25] Heidi: It also has to do with students seeing direct action taken from the feedback that they present to their partners. If having voice comes from when they– with their partner give them a suggestion and then they see a change. It isn’t like, “Oh, well, I’ll change that next semester.” It’s an immediate adjustment.

[00:19:45] Bonni: Yes. I’m finding that so much even with our faculty today, Heidi, where I’m trying not to be paternalistic to my colleagues. But it’s like, yes, even if you change things to faculty colleagues, you actually need to let them know that you’ve changed it based on their feedback. It’s making a change and having that sense of urgency that you described, Heidi, but then actually communicating that change back out.

[00:20:08] Peter: Yes. I think there’s an aspect of trust here too that is really important for us to think about and that maybe some of us took for granted before COVID where we were in a room with students who we felt like we could build some rapport and we could get along and we could find ways to connect with them, and then all of a sudden we’re staring at each other or staring at blank screens and that trust is lost.

Some of my assumptions at least about trust with my students before, it’s become really clear in the research that different students trust faculty, trust colleges and universities differently than other students do, for a good reason. Some of the reason why I think mattering matters so much for new majority students or first-generation students or students who are working full-time or parenting full-time and students of color is because they may not trust us.

They may not trust our institutions very much because they’ve been shown throughout their life that maybe schools, maybe teachers, maybe institutions don’t care that much about them. We’ve got to lead with us creating that trust, us creating that sense of mattering.

[00:21:20] Bonni: Heidi, what kinds of things can you share with us that mattering helps to enable?

[00:21:27] Heidi: Yes. When students feel that they matter, they become self-advocates. Going back to that quote I had shared earlier about the student sharing how they have a right to feel comfortable and engaged in class, they continue by saying, if a professor is not making that happen, then we can talk about that, we can figure out why. This quote demonstrates a willingness among the student to stand up for their need which is something you might not see if a student doesn’t feel that they matter.

Another impact of mattering is it allows students to become advocates for others. In the examples of LaGuardia’s Peer Mentoring Programs, one student technology mentor learned about a learning difference experienced by another mentee. This prompted the student mentor to then advocate for the student’s learning needs when they themselves were not willing to.

The final impact of mattering is that, because of the lack of fit, it allows students to carry their sense of mattering outside of a context in which it was originally fostered. One LaGuardia student said, “Every time I go in front of students and I second guess myself, I remember that my student success mentor told me I’m awesome.” Mattering, unlike belonging, is transferable and durable between situations.

[00:22:33] Peter: I think, as someone who teaches in higher ed, that last point is so important because, again, belonging can be very helpful as a concept. It’s a way for us to think about things. I’ve taught students who feel like they belong on the football field. They belong with their sorority, but they don’t belong in my history classroom. It’s really appealing, really exciting for me to think that, if a student feels like they matter, their perspective, their individuality, their insights matter, that they’re going to bring that into the classroom with me or they’re going to take that back to their sorority. They’re going to take that back to the football team, or they’re going to take that with them in their life.

One of the things that this mattering research has me excited about, to go back to our colleague, Alison Cook-Sather, she and I were doing a project years ago, and she said something which I continue to love which is, this sounds like this kind of work creates the kinds of students I want to teach because I want students in my classroom who are advocates for each other, who are thinking, taking agency in their own education and asking, not just waiting for me to initiate things or me to guide things, but saying, “What about this? How can I do that? How can I help my colleagues and my peers do this? Why does this matter in the community?”

That’s the kind of thing that I really want for my students. Those students are a pleasure to teach. That kind of agency seems to come with this sense of mattering in a way that it doesn’t necessarily come with a sense of belonging, at least for students of color.

[00:24:12] Bonni: This is so perfect then. We’ve got to the depressing part a few minutes ago. [chuckles] Then Heidi, you just gave us some hope, and Peter you extended that hope and Allison helped you do that as well with creating the kinds of students that we love teaching. What advice do you have for educators to help students matter more or feel that they matter more?

[00:24:36] Peter: Bonnie, I’ll share a brand new paper that came out of Canada that looks right at this paper that these scholars interviewed 12 award-winning professors and what they think about mattering and what they do. There’s some practical advice in there. Fundamentally, it comes down to having students have the sense that you care about them as people and you care about their learning.

They quote another paper in this which I love, it’s a quote from a student, “If they don’t care, I don’t care.” Helping students get the sense that you are excited about them as humans, you see them as capable of learning these things even if they’re not doing that right now and that you care that they succeed. There’s lots of different ways to do that from giving feedback that connects with them as well as challenges them, to being human and creating spaces for them to be human.

I don’t think there’s one thing we need to do. The one thing we need to remember is just to emphasize in our interactions with students that we want them to weave those interactions with this sense, that you know them as a person, you’re trying to know them as a person, and you’re challenging them and supporting them as a person

[00:25:55] Bonni: That last bit when you talk about challenging them, I think that too many times we can really care and then we learn. I mentioned earlier about the research around transparency, and so let’s be transparent about that care. Let’s be transparent about those things, but we leave out the challenging them part because that’s where we run into it being perceived as or actually being inauthentic.

I see you as capable. Okay, not really because I haven’t really challenged you to help you stretch a little bit beyond what you thought you were capable of and have opportunities to fail and see what that feels like, and then have that success of– I’m thinking of Ken Banes of course, famous research here and his constant [chuckles] important telling us to let students have opportunities to fail and try again.

I think sometimes, when we emphasize what we think is going to help people feel like they matter, if we don’t go back to what Heidi said earlier and the research you found where that mattering can then transfer into other contexts, the example that you gave Heidi was I’m showing up in other spaces, having a little bit different sense of confidence. I believe, Peter, this probably is tying back to some of the agency and the sense of agency that you’ve also discovered. Do you want to comment a little bit about the connections between agency and mattering?

[00:27:24] Peter: Yes. Just two things. One is you’re reminding me, Bonnie, your comments are reminding me of really powerful research by Darnell Cole who’s a scholar at the University of Southern California, who one of the things he studied is how male undergraduates of color receive feedback from white professors. What he found is that these male students of color respond very more positively when faculty members articulate high standards as well as high belief in their capacity to succeed.

Without articulating the high standards, these students sometimes assume someone like me is lowering my standards. I say, “This is a really good paper.” “No, okay, you don’t actually believe that, you’re just saying that.” If I say, “I have really high standards and this paper is really strong for these particular reasons,” or ultimately, we’ve talked about having high standards, “Here’s some of the ways you’re paper isn’t getting there right now, but I know you’re capable of doing it.

I’ve seen you do that in class. I know you can do this. I expect even more of you.” I think that kind of feedback is really important. Care that’s just the classic kindergarten care of you get a gold star and you get a gold star is actually alienating for a lot of students.

[00:28:44] Bonni: Yes. Heidi left her behind until the third grade [laughs] in terms of– isn’t that interesting how your story about the professor who told you that you could do better and then, Heidi, as a teacher in third grade recognizing she can’t do what a lot of the other kids I suspect in the class probably could have done by then? Oh, thank you so much. Anything that you would like to add about the research or mattering before we go in possibly an entirely different direction, although I don’t know yet [laughs] with a recommendation segment?

[00:29:14] Peter: Well, I would just say that this is pretty new research in higher education, and so I think there’s a lot of space for people to think about this creatively and to share what they’re learning and to share what they’re trying. This isn’t really settled work that everybody knows the results of, and so I’d encourage anybody who’s listening to say, “Well, how can I try to help my students develop this sense of mattering, and then what can I notice about what happens, what works, what doesn’t work with my students?”

[00:29:44] Bonni: Before I get to the recommendations segment of today’s episode, I want to take just a moment to thank today’s sponsor and that is TextExpander. TextExpander is the longest running sponsor of Teaching In Higher Ed, and I feel so good about that because it is such an integral part of my computing life. I use TextExpander to take short snippets of texts that are really easy to create and to type. Then they expand to things that are either harder, longer to type, or they are harder to remember.

Everything from something as short as a phone number, I frequently forget, or as long as a letter of recommendation, where, yes, there are some aspects that are different with every letter of recommendation like the name address, et cetera, and also the important, distinct, rich feedback I want to provide. Some of the things that do repeat themselves, I can automate those things and free up my time to focus the writing and my efforts on the more nuanced and unique information.

Thanks again to TextExpander for sponsoring today’s episode. I’d like you to head over to textexpander.com/podcast, to learn a little bit more about what TextExpander can do for you. Take advantage of a free trial and also a special offer for Teaching in Higher Ed listeners. Please let them know that you heard about TextExpander from Teaching in Higher Ed. Thanks once again to TextExpander for sponsoring today’s episode.

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. Boy, do I wish I could have a perfect segue right now, but I guess I’m not going to come up with one because I’ve got an entirely different type of recommendation and that is, I am going to recommend that people in general use what is called a Recipes Manager. I have some colleagues who are about to start. I’ve got one about to start law school, another about to start a doctoral program. I’m always telling them to use references manager. I’m a big, big influence. [chuckles] I’m on team references manager.

I’m also now on team recipes manager. For people not familiar with recipes managers and what they can do for you, you can so easily be on a website, including one that’s just covered with advertisements. I don’t know if anybody’s read recipes recently, but you have to have the entire story that’s 6,000 words before you can actually get to how many cups of whatever it is that you need.

What these do is they’re often built in through some kind of an extension or maybe within the app if you have the link. It’ll just take out the important information about what are the ingredients, what are the instructions. Then you can pretty easily adjust it. Maybe there’s only two of you that you’re cooking for, or only one of you. Then it can automatically do all that math for you and make those adjustments. There’s a lot of capabilities.

They can sometimes scan. Maybe you have a hard copy cookbook, but you’d like to add some of your favorites from when you were growing up. A lot of them you can even today scan the image and then automatically have all of it in there for those adjustments. Many of them will make your groceries list for you and do some meal planning. You go, “I’d like to cook on this on Tuesday and this on Thursday,” and then it’ll let you know what you need to get. You can say, I’ve got this in my pantry and all that good stuff, and just really help you be organized. These are the main dishes, these are the appetizers, et cetera.

I’d like to specifically recommend the Mela recipes app. I’d like to apologize to my Windows friends and colleagues [chuckles] that this one is just on the Mac. M-E-L-A.recipes is the URL. I’ll have that in the show notes. What makes the Mela recipes app different than any recipes manager I’ve ever heard of or seen on Mac or Windows, is that it has a feature that allows you to subscribe to what are called RSS feeds. We’ve talked about this many times on the show.

In case you’re a new listener, an RSS feed is just a way to have the recipes that different entities are putting out on a weekly basis, all come into your recipes manager, almost like a custom newspaper, and you’re getting in from different websites. They have some suggestions on their website of ones that they know have good, robust RSS feeds. You can go, “Oh, now, here’s something new I want to try.” It’s just a wonderful feature. I had held off because I don’t like to change tools very often.

I feel like, to go deep on a tool is better for me than to try every latest and greatest. I kept looking at it and kept looking at it. We had our spring break last week. I thought, okay, this is the time to let myself play with a little toy. Boy, did I have the greatest reward because it was so fast to export my recipes from my old one and get them in there. I’ve just been absolutely tickled and delighted, including by the way that I get to share recipes with Dave too, super easy to be able to share.

He often does a lot of our grocery shopping, so he’ll see whatever shows up on the list. He can add recipes and all of that. That was a long-winded explanation. You can tell that I’m excited about recipes managers in general, and this one specifically. Now, Heidi, I’m going to pass it over to you for your recommendations.

[00:35:05] Heidi: Hey. My recommendation is a little less concrete, so it’s a yes, sure attitude. If you feel an environment where you’re safe and mentored, I feel like, yes, sure can get you pretty far, because I have to tell you some context, this project with Peter and Allison did not start out this grant. I was originally just rereading interviews for a book that Peter was publishing with several co-authors and I brought up mattering, and he’s like, “Would you want to switch the project to that?” I’m like, “Yes, sure.”

Then he’s like, “Would you want to present at a conference?” I went, “Yes, sure.” He’s like, “Do you want to write a paper and be published?” I was like, “Yes, sure.” It has just gotten me pretty far and some wonderful experience that I did not think I would’ve had as an undergraduate when I showed up to college in the August of 2019. It’s been a very fruitful experience. If you feel like you can trust the environment you are in, yes, sure attitude, it can get you places.

[00:36:04] Bonni: Oh, I love that. Heidi, that is the first time that has ever been recommended. Something that it reminds me of is a former guest, Erin Whittick. I follow her on Twitter and I saw that she’s taking an improv class. As soon as I read it, I thought, that must be terrifying. I have no idea if it’s terrifying for her. I know that improv, I’ve heard a lot about, that’s what they teach you in an improv class is “yes, and.” I think so many times when we’re presented with opportunities, that feels scary. I mean, I don’t know. Heidi, did it feel scary when Peter was saying some of these things? [laughs]

[00:36:38] Heidi: Yes.

[00:36:37] Bonni: Okay. [laughs]

[00:36:38] Heidi: Yes, I was definitely a little intimidated.

[00:36:40] Bonni: [laughs] I was just guessing that, but what a wonderful attitude to take. We can learn so much from that, “Yes, sure,” I love it. I love it. Oh, thank you so much for that recommendation, Heidi. Peter, what do you have to recommend today?

[00:36:53] Peter: Well, so I have to start with the balance of Heidi’s, which is trust your students. Trust that they’re capable, trust they can do more amazing things than you know because that wasn’t my intention either when we started doing this project. Heidi just kept bringing amazingly good, interesting things forward, and it just kept going and going and going, so trust your students.

In that vein, I want to recommend a book because one of the joys of my work is I get to work with a bunch of different undergraduates. One of the undergraduates I’m working with right now is doing this project. She’s interviewing high school teachers about how they teach about slavery in North Carolina, in this current political climate, lots of interesting things. Her work has really had me thinking about probably the best book I’ve read in the last year, which is Clint Smith’s book, How the Word is Passed, A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.

If you don’t know the book, it’s won a lot of awards that came out 10 months ago. You might think, “Oh, this is going to be so heavy and so painful and all this,” and it has that. Smith is an award-winning poet, and he just writes beautifully. He has a lot of empathy for all of the people in this book. It’s not a good, bad, or anything else. It’s really a nuanced look at places around the US that are implicated in the history of slavery in this country and how we represent them.

It’s someone who lives in North Carolina and thinks about this a lot. I think we can’t deal with a lot of the problems we face today unless we’re willing to look at our history more carefully and more openly. I think this book is a brilliant introduction to that that I read in just a couple of days and taught me a lot, but also brought me to appreciate on people who have different views than I do too, which is a real gift for a book to do, so Clint Smith’s book.

[00:38:56] Bonni: This is the rare time where you’re helping me resurface a book I’ve already bought, but haven’t read yet. That happens a lot. [chuckles] It’s pretty easy to press the– because I read all digitally these days, to press the buy, but not read it. Thank you. You’re adding me to get that up on my to-read list.

[00:39:12] Peter: Bonni, my daughter, gave me this book for Christmas actually. I was like, “Thanks,” but I was going to take a break and relax and all this. Then I started reading it, and it is so powerful and so beautifully written. It is. It’s really an inspiring and challenging book. Put it at the top of your list.

[00:39:29] Bonni: Thank you both so much for being a guest today on Teaching in Higher Ed. I absolutely loved getting to learn from you. Prior to today’s conversation, I’m so glad to get to spread the work that you’re doing. I just want to encourage you both that it matters. This is the research that you’re doing on mattering really does matter. Just thank you for investing your time tied here in an entirely different time zone than us. When I emailed, I didn’t realize that you were studying abroad. I’m just so glad that you were able to carve out time in your day to come and share on Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:39:59] Heidi: Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:40:01] Peter: Thanks for the opportunity, Bonni.

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[00:40:06] Bonni: Thanks once again to Peter Felton and Heidi Weston for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak, and was edited by the ever-talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by Ciara Smith, a phenomenal educator who just happens to still have time to engage in this side gig for us at Innovate Learning.

If you’d like to receive our weekly email updates, subscribe at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. In that weekly email, you’ll get show notes, you’ll also get recommendations that go above and beyond what gets recommended on the podcast. Head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe, and thanks so much for listening and being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community.

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[00:41:07] [END OF AUDIO]

The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. 

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.