Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:01]:

Today on episode number 578 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Learning to Teach, Design and Rest from Nature with Karen Costa. 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.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:35]:

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. What a treat to welcome back to the show Karen Costa. She’s a Faculty Development Facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma aware teaching climate action, pedagogy, and course community design. Karen loves guiding learners through fun, interactive and supportive learning experiences. Her first book, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, focuses on helping faculty and teachers make creative use of videos in their classrooms. Her second book, Open Minds: Designing and Teaching for ADHD Students, is under contract at Johns Hopkins University Press. Karen is involved in various learning design initiatives including as a facilitator for the Online Learning Consortium, Online Learning Toolkit, and Lumen Learning.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:47]:

She spent four years as a regular writer for Women in Higher Education. Her writing has also appeared in Inside Higher Education, the Philadelphia Inquirer on Being and Faculty Focus. Karen graduated from Syracuse University with a Bachelor’s in Sociology. She holds a Master’s in Education in Higher Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a CAGS in Educational Leadership from Northeastern University. Karen has a Professional Certificate in Trauma and Resilience from Florida State University, a Trauma Informed Organization’s Certificate from the University of Buffalo’s School of Social Work, a Certificate in Neuroscience Learning and Online Instruction from Drexel University, and a Certificate in Learning Experience Design from the University of Central Oklahoma. And today we’re fortunate to be able.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:47]:

To hear about more ongoing professional learning.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:50]:

That she’s been doing in biomimicry. Karen is a certified yoga teacher and Level one Yoga for Arthritis teacher. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:02]:

Karen Costa, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Karen Costa [00:03:05]:

I’m so happy to be here. I’m a repeat customer and that is one of the It’s a really cool thing for me because I’ve always admired your work. So I’m very happy to be here with you and to learn with you today.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:20]:

I appreciate any time I get to talk to you and it’s one of the places where I can go to feel like we’re in solidarity together. Just this real spirit of solidarity and comfort and challenge simultaneously and Just such a joy. And I’m going to invite you to take us somewhere. You’ve talked about nature as a teacher. Would you take us somewhere that nature has taught you something?

Karen Costa [00:03:50]:

Yeah. This is a great way to start. And the only challenge of this question is narrowing it down because there’s been so many great places and moments that I could mention. But I’m going to keep it real simple and bring folks into my backyard, into my little garden. And I always like to meet people where they are, including myself, and sort of normalize the frustrations and limitations that we have in life. So I do not have a green thumb at all. Gardening is something I’ve tried and failed at many times. I don’t know if it’s something you can win or fail at, but things have not survived under my watch, let’s just say.

Karen Costa [00:04:41]:

But a few years ago, I really recommitted to, to spending more time in nature and with my garden. And a couple summers ago, it was a really, really tough summer for me and mental health and life challenges. And one of the only things I could do, quite literally when I wasn’t just in a lot of sort of life pain, was go into my garden and water my flowers every day. And it was such a consistent thing to know that I was responsible for these plants. And they would shine, you know, back their beauty on me. There would be bees swarming around them. It was very grounding and it gave me that, that daily task to keep me going through those difficult times. And there was very few other things I could do that would sort of ease that pain I was feeling.

Karen Costa [00:05:41]:

And my garden was one of them. So there’s a ton of research on this. I wasn’t imagining things. There’s a ton of research on our mental health and well being and what green spaces can do for us. And that’s one of the ways my garden has helped me. And since then I’ve been even more intentional about spending time there. This year, my challenge is native plants. If folks want to search, I’m sure we can link to it the Native Plant Trust.

Karen Costa [00:06:10]:

It’s to focus on finding plants that are really made for your area, your soil, your climate, and to support the entire local ecosystem. So it’s, it’s a little bit of a challenge for me. The next level up in my gardening journey. I just bought three new native plants. I went to some woman’s house and they were in her driveway. It’s like, it’s kind of like an underground community, at least here in Massachusetts. And I’m really excited to see how they go. They’re supposed to bring pollinators.

Karen Costa [00:06:42]:

They’re supposed to work together. More lessons will be coming to me from my garden.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:47]:

You mentioned the word cyclical and it reminded me so much. A group of us from my university were at a conference and our provost took the group to lunch on the final day and invited everyone to share, where’s your favorite place in the world? And every other person had some place they had traveled to. They just seemed so adventurous. And I could have picked an adventurous place that I’d been, but I decided to pick my backyard. There’s nowhere that I would rather be. And we live in Southern California and, you know, we, you know, by comparison to other people who also live in Southern California, we would have a decent sized backyard. But to anyone else, almost anyone else in the world that doesn’t live in this kind of an environment, it would seem quite small and not glamorous. You know, some people, like, actually a friend is going to be moving to Montana and just sent me pictures.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:42]:

Two and a half acres, let’s just say that’s not what’s happening here. But I love this cyclical nature of it. And as I go through stages of grief and sorrow and anger, it truly feels like company to me. But the company changes over time. And there’s and I and Kerry Mandalak. When she came on the show, she introduced us to an app, the Merlin app, through the Cornell. And, and so I’ll often be able. Oh, the song is different.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:12]:

And right now we’re speaking in spring where we live, and, and the conversations change a little bit. And so there’s just been this bird and, and, and I, I often wonder, like, is it the same bird? Or like, it just seems like the same bird. But I, I just don’t know enough yet to, to have a sense of that. But the other day my husband was out there and they actually got a video of this red chest. And then Kerry will send me from her backyard. She has a larger backyard, so she can have one of those AI powered cameras where it’ll identify the bird. And also motion detection so that she can send me little clips of who’s keeping her company too. And it’s just so nice.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:53]:

But yes, that cyclical nature of it, because I know that our lives are also cyclical. And there’s just something about noticing and wondering and experiencing the rhythm of that that has been so healing for me. And even when it’s not healing, it’s just a place where I can go.

Karen Costa [00:09:15]:

And be And I think the other lesson for me is that local angle. So certainly we don’t want to discount the many gifts of traveling the world, but one of the things in the biomimicry checklist, which I know we’re interested in talking about today, and one of the things that a lot of activ activists and writers are talking about right now is the importance of grounding ourselves in local action and local community when it feels like the national and global context is so overwhelming and so out of control. So there’s so much that we can do. There’s some climate activists that believe that one of the most impactful things we can do as individuals is to cultivate native plants in our yards or in a local, local community gardens. So that’s a great place for people to start if they’re feeling we. I know we’ve talked about climate action before. One of the smallest, closest, most local, powerful things we can do is to just get into, you know, touch and focus with our yard, with our outdoor spaces, if we live in cities with our local community gardens, and to spend some time there and see what comes of it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:30]:

You mentioned this checklist and I follow you so closely. Whenever I see you post in any of the various social media, my curiosity is piqued. And this was one of those times where I had no idea that this thing even existed. And the second I’m even through half of a sentence, I thought, oh my gosh, we need to, you know, I need to see if you’re available to have a conversation, tell us about biomimicry. What is it and what got you interested in it?

Karen Costa [00:10:58]:

I’m. I love when I talk to somebody about something that I am super passionate about and excited about, and they say, I’ve never heard of this before. It’s like, I don’t know if you can tell. Like, it’s just like, get in the candy shop for me because I’m excited to share with you, but I’m so excited for you because you get to, you know, go on this amazing journey. So I’m, I’m really excited to hear you say that. So biomimicry is. It’s a mindset and it’s also a design methodology. So the mindset is learning from nature rather than learning about nature.

Karen Costa [00:11:38]:

So most of us are familiar with learning about nature. So in K12, college biology, chemistry classes, we learned about nature. And biomimicry is different because we’re treating nature as our teacher or as our mentor, and we’re saying, what can we learn from the non human natural world. What lessons can we apply in our lives? Because non human nature has all of these wonderful gifts and all of this amazing design all around us that we can apply to our lives, that we can apply to design, to architecture, to science, and yes, in my example, to our teaching. So I got interested in biomimicry. I remember the day that this clicked for me. I was helping my son study for a third grade science test. So he’s a sophomore in high school now.

Karen Costa [00:12:32]:

So this is seven years I’ve been getting super curious about this. And I came across this concept called symbiotic relationships. And I read one of the symbiotic relationships was parasitism. And that’s when one organism is helped but the other is harmed. And we’re very familiar with that, right? Through things like viruses or speaking of spring, the bugs come out, right? We’re very familiar with parasite, parasitic relationships. But then the next flashcard when we were studying was something called mutualism. And I can remember the moment when I went, whoa, like what is that? Mutualism is when both organisms benefit. And in that moment I saw these, we were using flashcards because, you know, I’m a teacher and that’s a great study strategy to help him study.

Karen Costa [00:13:22]:

And I saw all like the totality of higher ed in these two flashcards. And I saw that so many of the conversations we have about teaching and learning, particularly in faculty student relationships, are based on that parasitic model, the assumption that we can, if we help faculty, we have to harm students, or if we help students, we have to somehow sacrifice the educators. And then I saw next to that mutualism, the possibility that both organisms in this relationship could be helped. And since then I’ve been, you know, preaching about and fascinated with mutualism. And I started doing more reading and I came across biomimicry, which is, there’s a book that I’m sure we can link to. The author’s name is Janine Benyus and she’s a scientist and she wrote an entire book. She’s sort of the go to person on biomimicry about this idea of learning from nature. Nature as teacher, nature as mentor.

Karen Costa [00:14:21]:

And then from there I studied with a program called Learn Biomimicry. I did they have some short online courses, but this past year I did their biomimicry educator program. So it was a six month intensive program where I studied biomimicry and developed a term long project, which is the biomimicry checklist for educators, where I have taken these still very Highly scientific concepts from the biomimicry field and translated them into practical strategies, mindsets, ways of being in the classroom that educators can use. And they’re all grounded in nature as teacher, nature as mentor.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:03]:

One of the parts of your learning that stood out to me so much has to do with resilience, burnout, and reconnection. How might it look like for us to learn from or receive mentorship from resilient ecosystems in helping us to navigate.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:26]:

The challenges in higher education?

Karen Costa [00:15:28]:

Yeah. Nature persists in the face of all kinds of. Throughout seasons after disasters, Nature and life will find a way. For me as a person who. I live in Massachusetts. So one of the best indic. You know, one of the best examples or lessons of this is the way that the seasons flow here. And we see in winter, everything sort of pulls inward, goes underground, protects itself, hibernates.

Karen Costa [00:16:03]:

We do have. In the area where I live, we do see the occasional bear. We don’t see them in winter. They come out of hibernation in the spring. You know, looking outside right now we just have a few buds of green on the trees. But before that, they had shed all of their leaves. So we, you know, we can look out into the natural world and see. No, nobody’s on all the time.

Karen Costa [00:16:24]:

So nature is really, really good at resting. I’m thinking now also of my. My Polish grand. She passed away probably 10 years ago. She lived to be 96. And she used to tell me. I’d say, graham, how did you. How.

Karen Costa [00:16:38]:

How are you so strong? How are you still going? And she would say, karen, when I get sick, I go. She would take. I’m sober, so I’m not recommending this, but she would take a shot of whiskey. It was called. I think it was called Manischewitz. It was a Polish whiskey. She would take a shot of whiskey, and then she would go in her room in the dark for 24 hours, and she would just hibernate. And she’d say, I would.

Karen Costa [00:17:01]:

I’m never. I would. I’m always better after a day. And I was. I always think of that because we tend to keep going. We tend to push through. She had learned the. I think part of her long life was that she had learned how to go into deep rest.

Karen Costa [00:17:15]:

And that’s something we see in the natural world often, too. Animals know how to hunker down. Animals know how to rest and heal, which we’re not. We’re not as good at. We, like our minds, want us to heal much more quickly. So then our bodies are able to heal. So for me, one of the lessons is to take. To take time away, to take time off to whatever extent.

Karen Costa [00:17:35]:

That’s. That the. Our ability to do that obviously varies. For me, I’m planning time off in July. Leading up to our talk today, I’m. I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed. This is my. This is my busiest season.

Karen Costa [00:17:49]:

The next couple weeks. I’m. I’m overextended. I’m not proud to say that, but I overextended myself. And I already. The requests for meetings for July have started to come in, and I have to fight that urge to say, oh, I can start my vacation a couple days later. I cannot. I will not.

Karen Costa [00:18:11]:

I have to go into a rest season. I just have to. So I’m saying that out loud to you to hold myself accountable so that if anybody sees me on the Internet in July, you can publicly shame me. But, yeah, resilience is born of rest, of hibernating, of knowing that we’ve got to kind of go down into the ground, into the earth, in those seasons of quiet and peace in order to begin again and rejuvenate.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:38]:

Something that I have found still wrestling, I just continue to wrestle with this, is to what extent should we see ourselves as different from one another when it comes to rest? I think sometimes I idealize other people. They seem so good at it, and they, you know, their way seems the right way to do it, I believe. And this may be a fallacy, but I really do believe I’m wired a little bit different toward not resting well on my own checklist of what resting well would look like. You know, I’m. I’m just. I’m not a very relaxed person by nature. And so I think I have the guilt and the shame that if my rest doesn’t check off the boxes of what rest is supposed to look like, then I’m not doing it right, you know? And I don’t know.

Karen Costa [00:19:33]:

I have so many ideas about this.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:34]:

Okay.

Karen Costa [00:19:35]:

I have so many ideas. The first image coming to mind. Let’s. Because we’re talking about nature’s teacher. I’m picturing a. Maybe you’re a shark, Bonni.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:41]:

Mm.

Karen Costa [00:19:42]:

Right. Because sharks, they’re. They’re sleep. They’re still swimming, you know, they’re still moving because they gotta get that oxygen in their gills. So sharks are very powerful beings, and they keep moving. So that’s something coming to mind for me. Another one of the lessons of the natural world is the. Is this question of diversity.

Karen Costa [00:20:02]:

And that word is in the news a lot Lately, it’s a word that means a lot to me for a lot of reasons. And one of them is that it’s just for very logical reasons. Diversity is the foundation of life. So diversity is how, like, why there is life on this planet, which is, you know, at the time of this recording, we’re it. And that’s a pretty amazing thing. And the reason that life has persisted is because it didn’t put all its eggs in one basket. There are, you know, millions of species and millions of expressions of life. So diversity is.

Karen Costa [00:20:42]:

Is strength for me. And when I app lends to this question of rest, that tells me that while there might be commonalities, like there might be certain foundations like that every, you know, we all need to rest in some expression, in some way that how we express that might be different. And for me, as somebody who, you know, is neurodivergent, my rest does not look like other people’s rest either. And I have definitely struggled with that. My rest is sometimes very active in that, like, I. My brain. My brain doesn’t really shut off. So, like, watching you, I’ve learned that, like, watching YouTube videos is a good way for me to rest.

Karen Costa [00:21:27]:

So, like, I’m still learning and my brain still has something because if I don’t give it something to do it, it goes to anxiety, and that’s not fun. So I got to give it something to chew on. Video games are one of the ways that I rest. That’s. That’s even though my brain is very active, it’s how my brain settles. I also am, you know, if I do like a workshop or a talk of some sort, that’s something highly social. My rest looks like crashing for an entire day after and like, needing absolutely no, like, dark room, very little stimulation. So, you know, my.

Karen Costa [00:22:03]:

I’ve. I’ve Learned. I’ve got 45 years it took me to figure this out that I don’t know. What do people do? Like, I guess, like, I think this is lovely. Like, lying on a beach and like, staring off at the water or something. I think that sounds lovely. I’ve seen people. I go to the beach.

Karen Costa [00:22:22]:

I like that. I’ve seen people do it. I have to bring like three books to the beach and I’m like, organizing the kids to play the different games. You know, it just looks different for me. So I. I hear that. I think the message is for people to. To get to know themselves, to trust themselves, and to experiment with different strategies.

Karen Costa [00:22:42]:

But yet what. What we see on the Internet of what other people’s expression of rest is, is not always what’s true for us. Like, I can’t, I don’t nap. Like, like, I think that’s lovely. And I think, you know, there’s, there’s an entire book. Rest is Resistance, I believe is the name of it, about the power of napping. And I think that’s so lovely and I, I love the message of that and it’s, it’s a deeply important message. I, My, my, like, physiology does not allow me really to take naps.

Karen Costa [00:23:15]:

So that’s not going to work for me. So I’ve got to find other ways that often include activity. But they are, they’re my expression of tune, you know, turning, turning down the volume as best I can. And you know, like I said, July is going to be interesting for me. I have to keep, I have to keep doing something. I’ll read a lot, I’ll take lots of walks. I’ll spend a lot of time with the kids because they’ll keep my brain active, but I won’t really like turn everything off because I’ve. For my brain that, that turns.

Karen Costa [00:23:46]:

The anxiety is just like, hello, it’s my turn. So, yeah, I’ve learned that I have to really balance that. I turn down the volume, but if I turn it down too much, things aren’t cute anymore.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:02]:

That is very helpful. Thank you for that. I’m. I’m already looking forward to listening back to hearing you say these things and enjoying looking at my notes that I just took on your examples. That’s very helpful. A related topic to all of this is just the pressure to produce. And I sometimes wonder how much of this is made up in my head and how much of it is actually real. I mean, I don’t think I’m a overly paranoid person.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:27]:

And, and so I’m wondering what does nature have to teach me about this pressure to produce? What can we learn from nature in this and wrestling.

Karen Costa [00:24:38]:

When I, yeah, when I heard you say pressure to produce, my, my hand went to my gut. Like, I really. This, this conversation is very fortuitous because the past couple of days I’ve really been in that feeling of there’s so many things I want to do in the world and I think that’s a great thing. Like there’s so many. Not only for fun and for creativity, but so many. There’s so many problems, right, that we want to address and so many areas of opportunity. And I. There’s not enough time for me to do it all.

Karen Costa [00:25:14]:

And I try. I. And I try to do more than I can. So one of the things that, as I was looking over notes, kind of thinking about what we might talk about today, one of the words that’s part of biomimicry’s life’s principles. So these are the six principles, or six. Some people think of them as like laws of life, or they’re sometimes referred to as operating principles for sort of like spaceship, planet Earth. And part of life’s principles is this idea of limitations. And we aren’t.

Karen Costa [00:25:46]:

I don’t think we’re too good at that word in higher education. We are. You know, I’m making generalizations here, obviously, but we’re a community of overachievers.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:00]:

And.

Karen Costa [00:26:01]:

I count myself among them. And this is why, you know, I. And I love that about us. You know, we love. I think folks in higher ed, we love to learn, we often love to read, we love to create, we love to talk about our ideas, and we love our project. We don’t like. I think this idea of limitations and limitations are part of their. They’re part of the operating conditions of this big spaceship that we’re on.

Karen Costa [00:26:31]:

When I see that word, I notice resistance come up in me. But I also know. So one of. One of my specific limitations is I live with a chronic physical illness, and it flares up at times, sometimes unexpectedly, and. And when it does, it’s a brick wall. There’s no arguing with it. You know, there’s. There’s no way around it.

Karen Costa [00:26:51]:

It’s. I just have to wait it out. And I’ve really had to work to learn to appreciate and accept that. And it’s. It’s not. It’s not an easy thing to do. So I think what nature teaches us is that limitations are a source of life. They’re a condition of life.

Karen Costa [00:27:11]:

They are, you know, sort of balanced with this expansiveness. Right? So when. And you can just, you know, I’m looking out at my backyard right now, you can see this balance of sort of limitations and expansiveness. And you can see all the different. The trees and the bushes and the flowers and the animals, they’re all sort of like, testing the boundaries, like, how far can I spread out? But I’ve got my. My friend over here. I’ve got to respect that space. They’re.

Karen Costa [00:27:37]:

They’re expanding and they’re growing. But within these laws of life, within these limitations and, you know, I think to bring this back to climate change and connect that to this productivity piece, this idea that we don’t. That we should be able to live without any rules, without any limitations that we can experience. Endless growth is part of our sort of socioeconomic system that we live in that has led us to the point we are at as a species. And we can see that, right? Like sort of that. That saying as above, so below. If we look at the state of the natural world around us and how this idea of no limitations is going, I think it reflects back to us as individuals, what that experience of, I don’t have any limitations. I can do everything.

Karen Costa [00:28:21]:

I can do everything. And it’s. It’s like this, you know, this sort of personal global warming that we’re. That we’re each experiencing, leading to burnout. Like these word choices are. You know, there’s a lot of overlap between the personal and. And the big picture going on here. So I think learning to live and to embrace limitations is a really big lesson.

Karen Costa [00:28:44]:

I. I say all this as, like, literally five minutes before this, I was like, kind of staring at my computer, like, oh, my gosh, I gotta do something differently. I’m not. I’m. I’m overextending again. What am. How am I back here? So it’s really nice for me to have a chance to say this out loud, to remind myself of the beauty and the gift of accepting limitations.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:09]:

I can’t tell you how helpful this is for me and thank you for your vulnerability there. As of this conversation, I am dreading. Maybe is not the right word, but I’m about to release an episode out.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:23]:

Into the wild in which I admit.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:24]:

Something that I really don’t want to admit, and yet I know that it will be healing for people. And it’s just real, but it’s just like saying the yucky parts out loud. But it’s just too easy to think, to look from a distance and have it seem like. I mean, I sort of. I. Karen, I feel like we know each other. You know, I would call you a friend, and yet I still would consider. Like, I thought you were going to show up with having this all figured out.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:48]:

And it feels so good that you.

Karen Costa [00:29:49]:

Don’T know this time. This, you know, it’s a. I was saying to somebody earlier today, this desire, this feeling like there’s never enough time. I think it’s a really lovely thing because I think it does express a certain engagement with life. Right? Like it’s, you know, this. This feeling of just wanting to do it all and partake in it all and experience it and read it all. I mean, oh, my gosh, the books I want to read. Forget it.

Karen Costa [00:30:18]:

Shows like, we’ve been talking, we have a lot of good shows going as a family, like how are we going to fit in? And the new Star wars show and, or, you know, there’s. There’s a joy in it. There’s like a deep hunger to experience it all. I think that’s a beautiful thing. And I think there’s gotta be that coexistence with. And there are limitations. And those limitations are not a bad thing. They’re there to protect us.

Karen Costa [00:30:44]:

They’re there to make sure we don’t, you know, the tree doesn’t spread out into the other trees, you know, area so that we can all flourish, that we can all find that space of mutual benefit. Limitations can be a very beautiful thing. I think they can help us be more creative, they can help us be more adaptable to life, and they can help us identify our priorities. That’s, that’s. I think something that, that’s going to be my next step is this idea of I can do anything, but I can’t do everything. And I’ve got to perhaps lovingly cast some things into the wind and say, I wish you the best, but there’s just something else that’s more closely aligned with my values. So, yes, I’m in that with all the rest of us, for sure.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:31]:

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I have two. The first one has been recommended in fact, Karen, two days in a row. I did two interviews and both people recommended this show. But since I can. I mean, I try to only recommend something once, but I can certainly recommend things other people have recommended.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:52]:

I wanted to recommend the residents.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:55]:

Have you seen it yet, Karen?

Karen Costa [00:31:57]:

No. Is that a medical show?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:58]:

No, it is a Inside the White House.

Karen Costa [00:32:01]:

Oh, I have seen it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:02]:

Okay.

Karen Costa [00:32:02]:

I had Medical resident in my head. Yes, I have seen it. It’s delightful. It’s got birding in it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:08]:

Birding. Birding.

Karen Costa [00:32:09]:

Yes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:10]:

I could not feel like I wasn’t planning on recommending this, but you’re just talking about all these things for those. This doesn’t ruin the plot for listeners that may not have seen it yet. The main character will be in the middle of attempting to solve a crime. And you know that if you watch the 30 second preview that this is about a murder that took place, in this case, the fictitious White House in the story. And she’ll just be in the middle of solving it and all of a sudden starts thinking about birds and talking about birds and looking for birds. And it’s like, I mean, it really is to me. I thought biomimicry. That’s what’s happening in that show.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:44]:

She’s learning from nature.

Karen Costa [00:32:46]:

Yeah. There’s a lot of lovely parallels as she’s out as she’s searching for the solution to this mystery at the same time that she’s searching for the next bird she needs to get on her list. And I want to emphasize it’s a cozy mystery. So if people hear murder, it’s. I am very sensitive. I can’t watch any of the scary shows. I used to. I’m no longer allowed.

Karen Costa [00:33:08]:

So I. This is a cozy mystery. So it’s. Yes, there’s a murder mystery involved, but it’s done in a very cozy, warm way. So I was able. My sensitive soul was able to watch it and enjoy it. So definitely I can recommend that as well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:21]:

All right, my second recommendation. I’m cheating a little bit here. I’ve recommended this song before. It’s called Don’t Lose Sight site. It’s by a band called Lawrence, and I like their acoustic ish version of it. But how I’m going to cheat is that I’ll just recommend their whole album that is called acoustic ish, an album ish. And so they have lots of acoustic versions of, well, acoustic ish versions of their songs. And they’re so much fun, such a fun band.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:53]:

And I want to just read some of the lyrics to Don’t Lose Sight, which is why I recommended it in the first place. Oh, such a long time ago. And I am just in a season where I need this so bad. So I’m going to read some lyrics and then I’m going to encourage us through them. So the verse one starts out with, are you kidding me? I’m getting sick of the industry. I’ve had enough of the make believe oh, please, oh please Am I lost or found? I’m getting sick of the ups and downs no need to give me the run around I’m out, I’m out. And then to spare us from getting banned in countries, let’s just say that this next one is a word that is like the word stuff but is, you know, in some countries considered to be a curse word. So I’m just going to say this stuff’s going to kill me but I won’t let it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:50]:

And I try to give them hell but they don’t get it so I tell myself when I sleep at night, night don’t lose sight baby, don’t lose sight and they try to give me up But I won’t Give in and this life will get you down But I keep living so I tell myself when I sleep at night don’t lose sight baby, don’t lose sight. And it goes through a number of other verses. And then toward the end, what I love about it is it kind of goes on this mantra of, this stuff’s never gonna change. It ain’t never gonna change. It ain’t never gonna change. And I feel just the rage as I listen to it, feeling so much like, relate, like I’m not alone in that rage and frustration in current circumstances. And yet it’s. It.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:42]:

It shifts then at the very end because it also says that stuff’s never gonna change, but also I’m never gonna change. And when I listen to the song on repeat, by the way, it generally shows up at the top of my list of so to in any given year, wanting to just root down in my values that are not going to change. And yes, it is unlikely that it’s all going to, you know, become unrecognizably good at some point. Those challenges are going to be there, but so am I, so are you, so are we going to be there in community, working in solidarity toward a better future. And I found encouragement in it and just wanted to share that. And, Karen, I’m going to pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend.

Karen Costa [00:36:28]:

Thank you, Bonnie. If you heard any scribbling, it was me writing down the name of that song to check out. We’re, you know, we’re all. I think we’re all really. I think we’re all going through it to varying, you know, with varying degrees of privilege and protection, but I think we’re all going through it. And, you know, I just want to remind people that even though we’re in this societal, you know, struggle and these societal conditions, that you. That you individually are still deserving of support, whether that be social support, spiritual support, medical support. Just because the world is really messed up doesn’t mean that folks are not deserving of that.

Karen Costa [00:37:09]:

So I. I think sometimes people hesitate to reach out for help because they’re like, it’s. It’s the system. It’s just everybody’s struggling. And. Yes, that’s true. And I want people to. To get the.

Karen Costa [00:37:19]:

The help that they deserve. Okay, so my recommendation, I actually changed my mind, Bonni. I had something in mind when we started, but I just remembered something else that I did in the past couple of weeks that was really powerful that I think will be so many of your listeners. It will resonate with. I took a writing workshop through an organization called the OP Ed Project. And it was a workshop called Writing to change the World. It’s a two day workshop. It’s live synchronous.

Karen Costa [00:37:48]:

It was about three and a half hours each day and it is the, it was the most well facilitated online learning, live online learning experience I’ve ever had. The facilitators are excellent. They are like seasoned, celebrated, award winning journalists who lead us through this very engaging, very powerful workshop on writing OP eds. And they give us these tremendous examples of OP EDS that have changed government policies, that have gotten huge grants, that have gotten people jobs, that have transformed people’s lives through writing an op ed, which is often, you know, about 800 words and they give you a really clear map as to how to do that. The cost is very affordable. But they do also offer scholarships. So there’s nobody, if somebody wants to do it, there’s an, there’s often an avenue to make that happen. It is a woman centered, woman led organization.

Karen Costa [00:38:47]:

Wonderful diversity within the facilitators and the students and the learners who are there. Highly recommend. I hope we can link to them. It’s an amazing organization. I think people need an outlet for some of that rage and some of that fear. And this is a really proven way to create meaningful change in our world. And writers out there, I definitely encourage you to check it out or if you’re writing, curious, Highly, highly recommend this organization and, and that writing workshop.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:24]:

Oh my gosh, that sounds incredible.

Karen Costa [00:39:26]:

I’m gonna, you would, you would love it, Bonni. Oh, I mean you, you would love it. And they, they operate on like, they don’t do formal marketing. They kind of operate on word of mouth. So like, if you, if you like me and Bonni and you’re hearing me say this and there’s a little zing, you’re like, you’re next in line. They’re like, pass the torch to the next person and the next. So I took that call very seriously. You would love it, Bonni.

Karen Costa [00:39:50]:

And I know people who love your work and listen to this would love it as well. And it’s, it’s a great, it’s a great way to, to make meaningful change.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:58]:

It sounds amazing. You were joking about scribbling down the name of that album and I, of course, you know, I feel like we’re already offline and I’m already going up and checking it out. I’m also going to put in the show notes for people who might want to get inspired by an Op Ed that I found Particularly powerfully powerful. It was written by a colleague of mine who’s been on the show. I know we have people listen who are Christians. I. I mean, I also know we have people listening who are not Christians. He wrote against Christian nationalism and it got published in a major outlet out here in Orange County, California, where I live.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:33]:

And I just think it would be inspiring and informative, again, regardless of one’s religious identities. But this is something that is not. Not a, not, not something that history would tell us is not a great idea. And he just does it in such a compelling way to write against that. And I think that might be, you know, inspiring to people just to get to see a. An op ed from someone who. This is not like their professional. That’s.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:55]:

That’s Karen, kind of the theme of what we’ve been talking about, where it’s like, it seems like, oh, you would only do that if you already knew how to do that. And it’s kind of like, well, no, any of this is accessible to any of us to do. Yeah. And this sounds like a wonderful resource to help us.

Karen Costa [00:41:08]:

Yeah. One of the things they do really well is to help you identify what your expertise is and areas that you can speak as an expert on. And they talk a lot about how women discount our expertise. So definitely there’s. There’s so many people we can reach through writing and through op eds, and they give you lots of examples of how to do that. So I hope. I hope the next person in line will. Will listen to that call and check it out.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:32]:

I’m so glad we got to have this conversation. And Karen, as always, I am so looking forward to the next one. And I suspect it’ be coming out of the blue where I go, wait a minute, I’ve never heard of that. Or perhaps I’ve never heard of that way of looking at something. Thank you so much for the gift that you are and all your contributions. And thank you in advance for the rest, the radical rest you’ll be taking in July.

Karen Costa [00:41:54]:

I promise I will. Thanks, Bonni.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:58]:

So wonderful to get to talk once again with Karen Costa for today’s episode. 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 not yet signed up for the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, it’s time to head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. You’ll receive the most recent episodes shown in Notes as well as some other resources that don’t show up in those show notes. Thank you so much for listening, 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.