Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today, on episode number 484 of the Teaching And Higher Ed podcast, an introduction to neurodiversity for educators with Sarah Silverman. 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 so pleased today to welcome Sarah Silverman to the Teaching In Higher Ed podcast. She’s an educator focused on instructional design. Disability studies, and educational technology. She currently teaches women’s and gender studies and disability studies at University of Michigan- Dearborn. In the past, she’s done instructional design and faculty development work with instructors and graduate students at the University of Michigan- Dearborn UW of Wisconsin Madison and the University of California Davis. She is also active in the movement to resist academic surveillance technologies, in particular, remote proctoring. And authored an article on her institution’s decision to resist adopting remote proctoring during the COVID 19 pandemic. Her interests in disability studies include neurodiversity informed educational approaches, the ableist basis of educational technologies, and the intersection of feminist and disability informed pedagogies. She also regularly presents talks and workshop to other educators on topics related to disability, neurodiversity, and educational technology. Sarah Silverman. Welcome to Teaching And Higher Ed.

Sarah Silverman [00:02:06]:

Thank you so much. I’m so pleased to be here, and I’m also pleased to be here as a listener of the podcast.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:11]:

It’s always nice when I get to talk to someone who does listen because then it feels like we can kinda pick up a conversation that’s been happening for a long time. Todd, we heard a little bit about you from your bio, but I’d love to have you share with the listeners just a little bit more about yourself.

Sarah Silverman [00:02:26]:

Great. Thank you. So My first name is Sarah, and I UW she and her pronouns. And I have been an educator for About maybe 6 or 7 years if if I include grad school in that, and I have been focusing on faculty development. It’s design and more recently disability studies. And so I I teach in lots of different kind of capacities and that includes working with faculty but also includes now teaching undergraduate students disability studies. And as I think we’ll be relevant to our further conversation today, I’m also autistic. And this definitely informs a lot of my practice as an educator and also my research interests, which I’ll just say include a lot of interests in accessibility and feminist pedagogies as well as critiques of educational technology from a disability perspective. And today, I’m coming to you from New Haven, Connecticut which is the territory of the Wapinger and Quinton Kaap peoples. And I am very excited to to get started with our talk.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:34]:

Yeah. I know when I first became familiar with your work, I think most of the early times where I was aware of your name, my My husband actually asked me who I was interviewing today. And I said, so Sarah Silverman, not the comedian. Nope. I’m sure you get that joke a lot, but I couldn’t resist. I mean, UW You weren’t gonna have to sit through until I decided to share this story.

Sarah Silverman [00:03:55]:

Yep. I I wanted to I wanted to say that due to the recent proliferation of social media platforms, like, there’s now blue sky, and I’m I’m getting on Twitter alternatives and stuff like that. If you happen to be the first person to claim Sarah Silverman I I just get a flood of messages intended for the comedian Sarah Silverman. And I, have have to inform people that that I’m not that person.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:18]:

So you told us a little bit about yourself, and and I I have been so fortunate to be able to learn from you and and more of a conversational style than course you link to things sometimes. So I Cawood I recognized your name probably for for at least 2 or 3 years now. But what I find it fascinating It and what I have learned from you so far is you seem to resist or want us to resist sort of this quick fix mentality. That it’s like 5 ways to teach neurodiverse students. And what I’m excited about having a conversation with you about today is before we get to that point, UW know, there’s lots of articles out there about that sort of thing. I know for you, an important piece of it has been that we need to learn our history. So would you share with us a little bit about what history is important for us to consider before we would ever even attempt to have any sorts of approaches, techniques to use in serving this population’s broad set of needs?

Sarah Silverman [00:05:18]:

Yes. Yeah. And so thank you so much for starting with that because as you said, this is this is the thing that I focus Bonni. And it it goes hand in hand with the fact that I’m teaching disability studies a lot of the time to undergraduates. And, Disability studies is this kind of emergent, emerging fields where we look at disability from a social perspective, and that represents a reorientation for a lot of people who are encountering it for the first time, especially if they’re used to studying disability in a medicalized or sort of like governmental way. So, like, a lot of my students are in health professions. A lot of them are in Schools of social work and health and human services and things like that. And so when we start looking at historical fights for disability rights and disability justice as a kind of first step that I take instead of just saying like, here are some different disabilities that you might encounter. Most people are a little bit surprised, but it’s it’s along the same lines that I like to start talking about neurodiversity. So What I like to start with is the fact that neurodiversity as a concept and as a movement comes out of early online autistic communities. And in the 19 nineties, more generally, the Internet was becoming available to the average consumer. And if anyone was an UW user at that time, UW saw the, you know, emergence of, message boards and chat rooms and listserves and things like that. And was kind of a brand new way of forming community across much wider distances than had previously been possible and, I guess, especially for those adept debt UW figuring out how to use the the early internet. And So the term neurodiversity in the concept has multiple points of origin. I don’t think that it’s really so useful to say that any one person coined or came up with the term. But it definitely has roots in this early in this early autistic community. It probably originated on the independent living listserv, which was one of these early listserves, but was sort of discussed concurrently. And I can give you a link to put in show notes of a, recent blog post by Martin Dekker, who is one of one of these early autistic activists who kind of goes through the way that this term came to be shaped in these online message boards. So I think it’s probably useful to just offer at this point a basic definition of neurodiversity that we can work with. Does that make sense? Yeah. So a basic definition of neurodiversity is the range of brain functions and behavioral traits, so the range of different ways that the brain works people think and behave regarded as part of a normal variation in the human population. So those those two parts is there is this diversity And kind of consequently, it is not considered pathological or a problem. It’s just part of human diversity. So the way I like to explain this before we talk about any politics or movement associated with neurodiversity is that it’s a Acton, and we’re all part of it. So we’re not necessarily at this point just defining the term talking about individual people’s different types of Neurodiversity or conditions or diagnoses, but every single person in the world is part of part of neurodiversity to the extent that it just describes. Existing range of the way that people think and behave. And the idea of neurodiversity is partially based on this general idea that’s akin to biological diversity, but it is also kind of working against the concept of normality. Mhmm. So Doctor Nick Walker, who’s an autistic psychologist and uses sheher pronouns, says that there’s no normal state of the human brain or human mind any more than there is one normal race, ethnicity, gender, or culture. And so what she’s drawing on there is UW see how when one type of identity or one aspect of diversity is viewed as normal, then that naturally subordinates the other elements of diversity that are present. And so I think that’s the first thing that I like people to understand is that neurodiversity comes out of autistic community and autistic self advocacy. I’ll just say one thing about self advocacy is this is something that applies throughout sort of disability UM and disability rights. And it means the I the ability or the action of understanding one’s own needs and advocating for them, kind of in kind of in the name self advocacy. And The reason I think this is relevant is that if we’re talking about  diversity, it comes from this comes from this idea that UM isn’t a disorder, but a difference. And I think people are pretty familiar with that idea nowadays, but I think it’s important to remember How recently it emerged and started to gain some traction in the general conversation? So autistic advocates say that we should focus on acceptance rather than any cure that could be out there for autism. There’s not even really a known biological basis for autism. It would be shocking to think that there could be a cure, which is what some people who are against the idea of neurodiversity would like, but autistic self advocacy overall opposes UW treatments and lots of tapes of behavioral modification therapy. And the key element is that it’s led by autistic people themselves. UW to be that the entire public conversation about autism was controlled by the medical establishment. So doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and the parents of autistic children and people more generally. So The autistic self advocacy community from which neurodiversity comes is one that’s really focused on returning control of the conversation about needs and supports to the people who are using them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:47]:

Nothing about UM, without us. Yes. That whole idea. I’m I’m fascinated by this idea because because the human brain, of course, wants to sort things, wants to categorize things, and that can be both helpful and not helpful at all. I know for myself, as I reflect on my teaching, there are times in which the labels I my brain may be tempted to place on people can be helpful to me just just to have some sort of a range of of what might meet a particular individual’s needs. And then I I see so quickly the limitations of the ways in which my brain may wish to sort things out. And one one thing I’d I’d love to hear a bit from you about is that there that we used to have this term of asperger’s that I know is not used anymore as a diagnosis and also can be seen as offensive, I believe, if if that’s the case.

Sarah Silverman [00:12:44]:

I’m happy I’m happy to tell you what what I know about that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:47]:

Yeah, please.

Sarah Silverman [00:12:48]:

So, listeners may be familiar with the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual, which is sort of the catalog of all the different psychological psychiatric diagnoses that exist. And so there used to be sort of separate categories of different types of opt asperger’s was considered a type of autism and had some slightly different care different characteristics. It’s named after this guy Hans Asperger who did a lot of initial research on autistic children. And I It seems to me that recent research has kind of shown him to be if if not an a Nazi collaborator, a Nazi sympathizer, and so that’s one of the reasons. I think people are drawn away from using the Asperger’s label, but the other reason much more broadly is that autism is increasingly understood as a spectrum condition and experience and that the the word autism is a umbrella term for the experiences of many different people who share some certain characteristics. I think the primary debate is that, Asperger was often separated because a lot of people who had been diagnosed with Asperger didn’t necessarily have some of the developmental delays or communication differences that other autistic people had. It was sort of this idea of somebody who’s maybe hyperverbal, and it was associated with oftentimes intelligence or being a precocious child and the autistic community wanted to move away from sort of thinking about those factors and more about, like, shared shared experiences. And by the time that, you know, I I’ll share that. I So I’ve been formally diagnosed with with autism. And by the time that I did that, Asperger was no longer being UW, and there were a couple of different levels of autism spectrum that were that were being UW. So it kind of got replaced by this subcategory. All of this is to say is this is very relevant in terms of diagnosis, but I think it’s a little bit less relevant in terms of neurodiversity activism. And that’s kind of where I wanted wanted to go. Yeah. Which is which is that it’s not very helpful to think about neurodiversity or neurodivergence as one particular group of people, it’s more of a coalition of many different people. And so I I’ve described how the The concept has roots in the autistic community, but we now think about neurodiversity as including potentially autistic people, people with ADHD, people with learning disabilities, people with dyslexia, sometimes Tourette’s is included, It also extends to oftentimes people with mental illnesses or other mental disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and This kind of shows us an overlap between neurodiversity as a movement and also the mental health system survivors, psychiatric survivors movement, which have a lot of overlaps and also some points of tension, but that it The the most important thing is neurodiversity is a huge umbrella concept. So what I think what unites people who identify with neurodiversity is their experience of neurodivergence. So I if you want, I can tell I can tell you a little bit about the history of the idea of neurotypicality and neurodivergence as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:29]:

That’s exactly where I was had gonna ask you to head next. So I I know that is important for us to distinguish and and ex explore some of the ways in which these terms are contested. The neurotypical and neurodivergent absolutely would love to hear you share about that.

Sarah Silverman [00:16:46]:

Yeah. So I I wanna share a little bit about that because one of the things that’s kind of motivated me to start teaching more and more publicly about neurodiversity is I I increasingly see the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent being used kind of as synonyms for someone with a diagnosis and someone who’s, quote, normal. Right? And I think You you talked a bit more about how you talked a bit earlier about how your brain kind of, like, goes in certain directions. Like, we’re trying to think in certain ways. And I think a lot of the time, nowadays, people are always looking for the euphemism for something that they think is uncomfortable or stigmatized. So a lot of people tell me, is it neurodivergent? Just another word for autism or ADHD? And then I say, I don’t think that it is. I’ll so I’ll explain I’ll explain a little bit about why. So the the first thing I think is useful to know is that the ideas of normal and typical have their own kind of history associated with the history of statistics and eugenics. And so most people who have studied the natural or social sciences formally will have encountered the science of statistics before. And we’ll and we’ll have heard of the normal distribution. Like, one of the important things to remember about the history of statistics is that even though you could say it’s being used in pretty benign ways, today, It was developed in conjunction with and in support of this, the no longer accepted science of eugenics. Acton the idea of eugenics was that there is an ideal type of human Bonni, and you could extend that to mind. And to improve the human race, The population needed to be normed to look more like that typical standard person. And that had quite violent implications, norming would either involve changing people to be more similar to the norm or eliminating them from the population. And so I’ve I’ve tried to talk to this to a lot of people about this and they say, yeah, but, well, we have to give up the term normal just because It was UW in conjunction with UW. And I don’t think we need to give it up, but I think it’s very helpful to understand its its background, and then to also start to interrogate how normalcy or normality is present. We can get to that later about trying to think about where normalcy is present and enforced in the educational space because that’s prim primarily where I’m where I work. So anyway, that’s that’s a little bit about normal or typical. The origins of the term neurotypical, as far as I can tell, are actually with a spoof website that was called the Institute for the study of the neurologically typical. And it was, again, part of this early autistic online community where there are a lot of message boards and this was kind of a public awareness campaign. And you can read about it in this article in a an amazing open access book that I will provide a link to for the show notes that’s called autistic community and the neurodiversity movement. And in this in this chapter, activist Laura Tisoncik. I think that’s how you pronounce your name. Tisoncik. Recall that this spoof project, the Institute for the study of the neurologically typical, was supposed to turn the tables on the dehumanization. Done to autistic people by autistic researchers. So the fact of coming up with a fake institute kind of mirrored all of the institutes that existed and were popping up on the sort of medicalized study of autism. And so neurotypical Kelsie this situation, it doesn’t mean, quote, a normal person. It means a satirical idea of of what a normal person would be the point being that no such thing is possible, at least outside of the, you know, violent implications of eugenics. Acton so I’ll I’ll tell you a few little details from this project in a second, but based on this, these origins, neurotypical doesn’t just mean a a diagnosis. It means somebody who doesn’t fall into the norms of how society believes people should think in think and act and behave. And, of course, those norms are ever changing and completely socially constructed. So you can you can actually see a link to the archive site if you go if you go to the book chapter that that I’ll link to, but they had a couple of funny FAQs. One of them was, what is neurotypical? And then it says neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, dilusions of superiority and obsession with conformity. And this is kind of satirizing some of the less kind common descriptors of what autistic people are like. Also, of course, naming neurotypicality as a syndrome rather than Okay. There’s there’s neurotypical people out there. And then the second one being, how common is it? Tradically as many as 9625 out of every 10,000 individuals may be neurotypical. This is, of course, also sadderizing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:10]:

I could I cannot wait to visit this site love that. I love that that they can draw such a tumor from such, terrible things. Yes. UM UW just have to laugh.

Sarah Silverman [00:22:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. You have to laugh sometimes. I mean, this right. And this this is drawing on the sort of panic inducing messages that were being sent out of tragically how many people are kind of, quote, stricken with autism per year, entering the tables to say, you know, this I just gave a presentation yesterday where where I explained it this way, what if we talked about you the way that you talk about us? What if autistic people talked about the rest of the population, the way that we are talked about. It would not feel so good, but indeed. There’s many there’s many other FAQs. Another thing that I often share with people is that This spoof website also had a screener, like a little screening test for to find out if you were neurotypical or not. And if if you go online, you can Google and find all sorts of screeners for different, forms of neurodivergence. And I I’ve all like I said, I’ve been evaluated for autism, and it it does involve answering a lot of questions and a questionnaire about, like, different social situations and how you would react to them. And while you’re doing it, you’re like, this is truly absurd. Like, everybody in the world reacts to different situations in different ways depending on the context. Why are my answers on on this, the thing that’s going to kind of move the needle on whether I get diagnosed with something. So, anyway, they have a fake one with questions like a friend has brought to a Martijn? What do you do? Your computer won’t start. What do you do? Someone hands you the channel changer. What channel do you change the TV set to? Saturizing these kinds of psychological questionnaires to to to just show, like, if diagnoses are gonna be based on stuff as UM and variable as this, then 2 can play that game.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:06]:

Well, I would love to have you now move us into. You said you wanted to share a bit about what this tension between calling things normal or not is present in and gets reinforced in educational spaces.

Sarah Silverman [00:24:20]:

Yeah. This is often something that I ask other people. So I I could even talk for a minute or 2, and then I I could try asking you, which is once you once you start to think about normals, rather than saying, oh, how do I include? Neurodivergent students. If instead you start the conversation from thinking about, how is normal seed present in my classroom? Or my institution or my discipline. But and by that, I mean, who do we believe is the quote normal student or participant. And how does that person behave? And how is that expectation baked into the way we do things such that There are some people who are experiencing marginalization, struggle, need for accommodations. And I think that that’s that’s what neurodiversity asks us to think about rather than, oh, I know that there are some people kind of on the fringe. So I’m gonna replace whatever word I used to use for their diagnosis, do they experience with neurodivergent, and then come up with 5 strategies to help them to help to help support them. When I ask people how is normalcy present in your field or discipline, it it really comes quickly into that. And I think When I when I think about faculty development as kind of like my core discipline of the thing I’ve been doing the longest, I definitely think one element of normalcy that I see is the assumption that faculty this is very meta, but the assumption that faculty are nonddisabled or neurotypical. And I’ve I’ve done quite a bit of work trying to raise awareness about this. I’ve written a couple Martijn and then some presentations. It’s very rare that you even see mention of the idea of disabled faculty and most faculty development programs assume that faculty are not disabled. So that that’s my example. I don’t know what you consider to be your kind of primary disciplined or classroom environment. But I was curious if you have thoughts about this for yourself.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:24]:

There I’ve been fascinated, Sarah, during our entire conversation, which is surprise me because I also get fascinated by your conversations online. And what I kept thinking back to was when I took sociology classes in my undergraduate, which was more than 30 years ago. And because so much of that is the social norms you about things being socially constructed. And so everything from when I think about a classroom, I’m I’m I’m mostly teach these days on zoom. So there are social norms around cameras on or off. And so I’ve had I I have throughout all all of the teaching that I’ve done these past three and a half years, I’ve I’ve really it’s resonated with me the the advocacy to not want to control or police, whether people have to have their cameras on or off. And and so I have I have embraced that and and not forced I put in the air quotes because they can’t force anybody to do that. But some people think they can, you know, they they use their power and and and, coercion. But Then I I sometimes will hear students say, well, I’m so sad because I really want I literally have had multiple students put this in their comments. I really wanted to turn my camera Bonni. Because I feel like I can connect better that way, but nobody else had theirs. And so I just recently started my semester and more than half the students by their own I certainly didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even invite anyone to turn it on. I just didn’t mention it all more than half of them. So I just when you were talking, that was instantly what I thought of, because, of course, if I’m in a classroom, who sits in the front of the room. What rows did they sit in? And so I’m thinking about physical proximity things in a classroom, But then I was thinking about teaching a lot on Zoom online where some of those similar dynamics come and just how contagious it is because I think they I didn’t tell them they had to turn their camera on. I feel like there’s plenty of other ways we can connect. So if I’m teaching to a a screen of of all grayed out screens. That’s totally fine by me. We can we can connect in other ways, but just fascinating that this time, more than half, and just I know that social norm is so, so very powerful for all of us, but sometimes we tend to think as faculty. Oh, no. We’re above that. We don’t We don’t get influenced by social norms. It’s just those students. Right. Yeah.

Sarah Silverman [00:28:39]:

And what that makes me think about is that UW I think you’ve you’ve pretty conclusively shown that it’s it depends completely on the context Dekker the majority of students will want cameras on, want cameras off, how does that affect Others, there’s always going to be some people who cannot or will not, for whatever reason, turn it on. And some people who are like this, the only way that I can do it And so part of what part of what I’m saying is how do we how do we not let normality, like, creating, like, a a majority and a norm control the classroom environment. And so so much of it is in just sort of saying these things explicitly. Like, you know, the character of our classroom, the the feel of it, the community is not gonna be dictated by who has their camera on and who has their camera off. Even so, you can acknowledge that the dynamics of the of the classroom will be changed and and shaped by it, but we’re not going to privilege one over the other. We’re Bonni create lots of participation and connection opportunities for everybody regardless of whether they have their camera on or off. And, yeah, I think that’s a really good that’s also a really good example of how when when you ask students to come in come into a space and say kind of what works for them, camera on or off being a good example of that, you can set everybody up for a much more inclusive and kind of affirming experience.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:15]:

Yeah. You you’re making me now think about that You you were talking about that it’s very rare that we see mentions of disabled faculty and that resonated with me so much. And and In that, in some of what we’re talking about, Sarah, it’s reminding me of a conversation from from someone from, I think, 8 or 9 years ago, Looking at so much in higher education, what we’re measuring, we think we’re measuring learning or we think we’re measuring commitment or we like, we we ascribe all the wrong things, but what we’re really feebly attempting to measure is civil attention.

Sarah Silverman [00:30:53]:

Yes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:54]:

And as far as I know, civil attention is going like, that’s I see some of that with normalcy and the and the norms like, what does it look like to, quote, unquote, pay UM attention? And, you speaking about this broad movement, a coalition that that that sometimes there’s that we’re not gonna show up in the ways in which you are attempting to have UM show up in these norm, I say normed in air quotes but people can’t send my air quotes. But, yeah, anyway, it’s such a fascinating thing. What a great question.

Sarah Silverman [00:31:22]:

Yeah. And another Another question that I ask people who I’m I’m speaking with about this is in a lot of ways, it’s true that only some Only some people, perhaps a minority identify with neurodivergence as an experience. Right? But I do think that it’s possible if we are wanting to wanting to be moved or informed by neurodiversity for for everybody to think about, what are the ways in which the way that I think and behave when I felt that those were accepted or celebrated in my social context. And what are times when I feel like those have been Martijn or size blind, basically, not valued based on the social context. And I think that’s a really useful reflection opportunity also for for especially educators who want to be informed by ner by Neurodiversity. Is, I think, really important for us as teachers to recognize how much we have been normed over the course of our educational journeys, especially for those of us in higher education, we have likely pursued multiple degrees to to end up teaching in higher education, and there’s so much norming in in higher education almost to an absurd an absurd extent. And so I I definitely do think it is in it is important to — reflect on your own educational journey. And even UM sadly, you know, Acton not taken parts of you parts of yourself that you cut off learning opportunities that you didn’t take because of the the effects of norming in in the educational system. It can bring up a lot of emotions but I’ve also worked with people who have said, you know, that I really do feel like that set me up for success to not just kind of continue this cycle of Oh, well, that option or that route was never available to me. So I’m not gonna make it available to UW. If you know what I mean.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:22]:

Oh, yeah. When you were talking about Norman, There this is my such a lay person’s example, but there’s norming that’s the actual analysis tool, but then there’s also compounded by or exasperated by the forced norming. Only this percentage of people get to have this or this percentage. And then and then that forced norming, of course, bringing out all the bias season and all of that. Before Sarah and I get to the recommendations segment. I just wanted to take a moment to thank today’s sponsor, and that is TextExpander. Text expander is an integral part to my computing life. All I need to do with Text expander is set up these very easy to set up what they call little snippets. Short snippets that I can type that expand to either longer Bonni of text could be a collection of paragraphs, sentences, or sometimes something hard for me to remember. Like my work phone number. I use TextExpander all the time. And recently, in fact, we started using it in groups. They have teams where you can have consistent language across an entire team of people and also be able to quickly find what you’re looking for. We recently held a bunch of different faculty and academic staff events, and it was so nice to have little text expander snippets for all of the frequently asked questions that UW might be receiving during that time. For us, it was a lot of links. So lots of people asking for links for things. We wanna be able to send them out easily and text expander made that great for us to be able to do. So if you head on over to textexpander.com/ podcast, you can take advantage of a 20% off of your subscription and also have a chance to learn more about how text expander can help you be able to type less and say more, have the information that you need, right, at your fingertips, and save a whole heck of a lot of time. Thanks once again to TextExpander for sponsoring today’s episode. And now, Sarah and I get to share our recommendations for today. I wanted to share a recommendation today that that doesn’t have to do with what we’ve been talking about. But actually UM some episodes back, my colleague David Rhodes was on the show, and he recommended a television show that has had 3 seasons. And and he actually had recommended to me. I think maybe even for a year back from there. And so I’ve heard him say it a bunch of times. And yes, David, I did not listen to UW. However, many times you told me, and then ended up getting ill recently. And so I did was looking for television shows and to binge watch. And that was the one that I chose. It’s called Happy Valley. It’s a Yorkshire based crime drama that centers on the both the personal and professional life of a police sergeant whose name is Catherine Cawood, and what how David described the show when he when he was on Teaching In Higher Ed and recommended it. He talked about how for him, it really just allowed him to completely take him into another place. And and it really relieved stress for him because it was all absorbing. And I will tell UW, David, you were right. I completely lost all sense. I was just captivated by this drama. And in fact, David is gonna be going to visit the place where Happy Valley was filmed. It’s just a beautiful lush green valley. I mean, it’s so, so, so UW. So David, we’re all looking forward to hearing how that trip goes and getting to see some photographs there. And then the second thing I wanted to recommend is from a totally different place too. Can tell I’ve got sort of randomness going on in my in my recommendations today, Sarah. Speaking of Sarah’s, Sarah Elaine Acton, was a presenter in the My Fest, which is called Midyear Festival, series of of ways that people can connect. And she offered a conversation about academic integrity and artificial intelligence through the lens of equity. I have long admired and learned from Sarah Elaine Eaton’s work, and it was just fun to get to hear her sharing in that context. So some of it presenting. And then there are some people offering comments and questions on the latter half of the video. And so I’ll be posting a link to that video for today’s recommendations and also to the Happy Valley for anyone who wants to completely go away in your mind to another place. For a bit. And, Sarah, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend today.

Sarah Silverman [00:37:48]:

Well, thank you. Okay. So I figured, first, I’ll do some points based recommendations because I I know your listeners are from all over, including North America, but probably even even not in North America. But Okay. So I I live in Connecticut. So I wanna offer 2 Connecticut based place recommendations, in case you are here or driving through or passing through. So I Bonni recommend possible UW book space in New Haven. It’s kind of new bookstore, but it’s not just a store. It’s also, like, community space that focuses on writers of color, queer writers, and is also just like an amazing community place for kids to hang out. They have a great dog in there. And they also are kind of sponsoring or providing space for the first I think 1st mural of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, the abolitionist writer and professor who is from New Haven. Also, Connecticut, if you happen to be traveling through, I wanna recommend Hammonasset state park, which is a beach on the Long Island sound, but kinda getting close to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s this really cool place with the kind of peninsula that jots out from the regular shoreline of Connecticut. So it feels it feels like you’re kind of far away. And I think it’s free for Connecticut plates and a very low charge for other license plates. And then my other recommendation is actually this blog post that I’ve read and recommended before, but I keep coming back to it I’ll give it to Bonni to put in the show notes. It’s called Bonni plane language by Kelsie Acton, and it’s on the critical design lab Kelsie. And it just it just talks about how oftentimes in lots of fields and especially academia, we’d cherish our jargon — and our specific terms and what would it look like to really commit to using as plain and accessible language as possible. And the author even goes into like, well, what’s lost also when you stop using your Martijn. Sometimes that can be difficult, but to really think about the ways that more people can be brought into a conversation by using plain language. It’s something that I’m always trying to do better with, and I think that this blog post just really spells it out really well. So I wanna recommend that to everyone as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:18]:

That looks so that sounds so good. In the last 48 hours, We’ve had conversations where I work about leaving off modifiers that was the problematic use of at risk students UW there’s a article that I read or what if we just said students? Why do we need this? Why do we need this modifier there? And then an a colleague had sent in about some sort of a I actually still have to figure out what it was, but some sort of a form or something that gets filled out or evaluation. And and the use was a modifier saying minimum standards. And they’re like, why does the word minimum need to be there? Why not just standards or expectations? So this sounds like a a really good thought piece to and especially, Sarah, you’ve keep coming back to it. It must be really powerful, so I’m looking forward to reading that. And now I just wanna go to Connecticut. So That’s — Yeah.

Sarah Silverman [00:40:59]:

You should come to Connecticut. Everybody can UM, and I’ll I’ll give you coffee or your drink of choice and my my front porch.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:07]:

Oh, that sounds lovely. Sounds lovely. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for accepting the invitation to come Bonni. And I was so nice when I reached out to UW. This is how I’m trying to introduce myself and you’re like, oh, I already know. Your podcast. So I’m so glad we got to have today’s conversation and just that, you’re so generous and and, such a person able to invest in these necessary conversations. Thank you so much for your time and generosity today.

Sarah Silverman [00:41:32]:

Thank you, Bonni. It was a it was a real honor for me as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:37]:

Thanks once again to Sarah Silverman for coming on today’s episode of Teaching In Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Pod production support was provided by the amazing Sierra priest. If you’ve yet to sign up for the emails from me once a week, They’ll come into your inbox. They will have the most recent show notes so you don’t have to remember to go look them UM. And you also will be able to get other resources that don’t show up on the normal show notes ahead over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thank you so much for name, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching In Higher Ed.

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.