[00:00:00] Bonni: Today on episode number 390 of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, music and academic growth with Joshuah Whittinghill.

[00:00:12] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

[music]

[00:00:21] 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. Today, I welcome to the show Joshuah Whittinghill. During the past 20 years, he’s been fortunate to have served students in various roles at Chico State, academic advisor, assessment coordinator for the educational opportunity program, coordinator for the campus’ writing center, and supplemental instruction program. Consultant to the faculty for the first-year experience program.

Currently, he is one of five information technology consultants in the teaching and learning program and a lecturer in the Department of Multicultural Gender Studies. In this episode, you’ll hear about Joshuah’s research on students’ relationships with music and the academic, social, and emotional development that comes out of these relationships. Specifically, you’ll hear about Music for Our Souls, a workshop designed to provide students, staff, and faculty with an opportunity to learn about or revisit academic, social, and emotional competencies outlined by the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning. Joshuah, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:02:00] Joshuah Whittinghill: Oh, hi, Bonni. Thanks for having me today. I think I’m one of those long-time crushers on the podcast. I’ve been waiting for years to try and get on here. I’m glad this worked out.

[00:02:10] Bonni: Yes, I’ve loved our ongoing conversations. It is one of those things sometimes takes a little while. I put people in my queue, but the queue is very long. This just seemed the right time though to have a conversation about music. Everything juxtaposed perfectly for today.

[00:02:26] Joshuah: It was me where I was going back looking for something on– I was looking for a certain topic, designing for learning or universal design for teaching, and I ran across an episode, and you mentioned in there, “I really would someday love to have an episode about music,” and I think that was way back in your double-digit episode numbers. It’s been a while.

[00:02:49] Bonni: Here we are. I know. Music comes up a lot on the show, but this is the first one we’ve done dedicated to music. Before we talk about your life in music, I would love to just hear about your life in school and education. I’m going to be very sarcastic here. If you’re reading the transcript right now, this is sarcasm, [chuckles] what you’re about to he. Yes, you have quite the stellar– 4.0 GPA. In fact even higher than 4.0, 4.427, right? That’s your background, correct? [chuckles]

[00:03:19] Joshuah: Only a small portion of it. It’s one of the things that got me to music. I’ll start in the beginning, I’ll even go into high school a little bit. Because I was one of the students, unfortunately, at one point where I was told, “Hey, you’re gifted. Now, you’re in this gate program.” I’ve seen a lot of articles by people in the last number of years talking about that was really a curse. I didn’t see it at the time, but what happened was work ethic didn’t really develop for me as far as education because I was told, “Oh, it’s so easy for you.”

Then high school came along, and I didn’t put a lot of effort in. I would still get pretty decent grades, but there was never any vision for after high school. It wasn’t talked about in my family of what that was going to be like. When I went off to college, it was just discovering on my own, and I was more of a lost sailor out at sea just cruising this fast ocean not really paying attention to any signs of what I should be doing. I lived with, at one point, seven different people, and they all went to a university, and I was at the community college in the same town. I didn’t really realize when I wasn’t with them that all of them were doing homework.

[laughter]

Joshuah: I was just doing other things along the way, and I just thought they were all doing the same thing I was doing because I was with them a lot of times. There was other hours where they were taking care of their school business. I was doing so poorly at one point that the community college said, “Hey, you might not be able to come back here.” That’s how bad I was doing. I can laugh about it now in a sense because that was, oh gosh, when I was 19 years old. It’s 30 years ago. I’ll share it. I’m 49 years old now. That was a couple of years of just flailing at community college, and then I decided to get away from where I was.

I thought a new start somewhere else will be different for me and not around the same influences. I moved to Chico where I still live, and it got worse, the community college there because I didn’t really know anybody. I didn’t have support of any kind. I was still on what they call academic probation. I ran into one instructor there and they said, “Hey, I’ll help you get through this class because all you need to do is get a C in this class, and you can then transfer over to Chico State,” and I said, “Okay, great.” I did that. I think I transferred over with exactly a 2.0. It was the first time in four years that I was not on academic probation.

I got to Chico state. The first year, what did I do? Straight Fs and Ds, the whole entire first year. It was not looking good, and that’s when I had a music professor at the time, I went to him and I said, “Here’s my situation. I am going to be disqualified from school.” He said, “You know what, work on the final. Redo everything. Go take your time. Do a good job on it. I’ll regrade it and see where you’re at.” It was enough where I got back off of probation at Chico State, and then from then on, I said, “Life is different. I have to do something different.” I changed a lot of my personal choices. Now today, it’s actually 26 years, 4 months, and 3 days that I’ve been clean and sober, working recovery and sobriety.

At that moment, all of a sudden, I was this 4.0 student. I was spending eight hours on the weekends each day doing homework, and studying, and researching, and hanging out with other people who wanted to study. That went well for a long time, and I graduated. One of my friends said, “Hey–” What I did was I studied music. I said, “You know what, I love music. I’ve never actually studied it. I’ve never been a good musician. I’ve never taken the time.” I said, “If I’m not going to do it now, when is the opportunity going to come up for me to study music from people who know what they’re doing?” That’s where I was with the music program.

I just jumped in full bore and was all about it, and it saved my life. Because if I was studying something else, I don’t know at the time that I would’ve really been embraced by what music did for me. I graduated, moved on and then I said, “You know what, I don’t know why I never studied English,” because really what I loved about music was the lyrics. Then I jumped back into school at that point and started a master’s program for English. Went about it slowly and started a family and those things. It took a number of years, but I did finish. I turned in my thesis the week my son was born, and it was a fantastic journey.

Then I waited another couple of years, and then I had another kid, my wife and I had a daughter. They both started going into elementary school. Obviously, they were getting older. Life at that time works, I think. They kept going, and I said, “I should probably know more about the educational system.” I work in it, in higher ed, but I don’t know about K-12 much. I jumped into a master’s program for education. I was doing that, and I loved everything about it and was learning and having great conversations with my kids’ teachers and about myself being a faculty and instructor of, “How do I improve now that I’m learning these things?”

I got close to finishing. I thought I was done, and a great friend of mine said, “Hey, what are you doing? Why don’t you go get your doctorate? You’re the kind of person that needs to be in a doctorate program.” I said, “I don’t know. Let me look into it.” It was a five or six-week period from when she mentioned it to me and when the application was due. I jumped in, did it all, and was accepted, and then was able to join a doctorate program at UC Davis called CANDEL, and it’s on educational leadership. As I did that, it was about a three and a half year process. When COVID hit, a month into COVID, my dissertation was published.

My diploma showed up in the mail, and it was just like a validation of all the transformation and change. Music was always the behind the scenes, if it wasn’t at the forefront of getting me through those times and being able to learn more about myself, learn more about that. It was really reinforced. My daughter was about 10 when I finished, and she made me a card. She said, “Hey, dad. Thanks for being a great role model. This is awesome. I’m glad you achieved your goal.” I thoght that’s more than the degree.

[00:09:58] Bonni: I’m hearing a good healthy tension in your stories between that long-term vision that propels us forward. Then you mentioned about the way that you described your story of addiction was a day by day. You gave us a day. Those two things can work in concert with each other. That’s part of what I’m hearing. Then also just this continued passion for music. Would you tell us about Music for Our Souls?

[00:10:33] Joshuah: Oh, gosh. Yes, definitely. One of the things as I was starting– It was even before the doctorate program. I was working on a program for students who were on academic probation. It was funny because when they asked me in my previous position, they asked me to take that role on because it was a program that existed in a certain way, in a fashion. I was given the materials and was reading through looking at it. I thought, “If I was on probation and someone gave me these materials, I would not really care about anything they’re trying to teach me,” because it was very data.

Just, “Here’s the numbers, here’s what you need. Here’s what you need to do. Now, go do better,” and I thought, “Seriously if that was me I don’t know that I would have even showed up to the next workshop,” for that is the way it was designed. I said, “When I was there here’s what helped me.” I really looked into how are we the vault evolving socially? How are we growing as people? That became so important and personal accountability and being able to reflect. I developed this program. After the first couple of years, students, I would notice they would come to the workshops. All of them would have some earphones, just about.

I started wondering, “Maybe they’re listening to music just as much as I do.” I started asking questions. Of course, most all of them were listening to music. Then I said, “What can I do about this?” Then I was introduced to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning or CASEL. I’ve heard a couple of your guests talk about CASEL in the past. I looked at their framework, and it has the very five specific competencies from self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building, and making responsible decisions. I said, “Does music play a role in this at all? If students are doing this because–”

I mentioned to you before this, it doesn’t seem a lot of our courses in higher education have a lot of social or emotional curriculum built in to discuss and help students on their journey while they’re growing individually and as a collective in different areas. I said, “Let me see what I can do.” I went into my dissertation doing research, and I thought, “Let’s see if I can put together this questionnaire that basically is just based these five areas and the number of characteristics that go along with each competency, and ask people to listen to a song, and see if the song does anything about these areas.”

For example, one of the characteristics around social awareness is empathy for others. Understanding other people’s experiences. This is one of the examples. I created a spreadsheet with all of these on there for folks. Then I piloted it with my dissertation asking students. At the end, a lot of students came back and said, “I did not realize music was doing those things for me.” That was powerful to hear that. These are students who some of them claim to listen to music 16 hours a day. They were saying I did not even realize it was helping me connect in these areas.

For example, if I can share one of the quotes because that is what really gets driven home because I love data. I love numbers, but they don’t mean much unless you hear and feel the people behind those things. One of them that I think is really powerful about self-management one of the students said, “I’m first-generation, and I want to get my master’s.

Now, when I get down or I feel I’m struggling or I forget why I’m here, I listen to songs, mainly rap songs, about people saying they are doing what they do for their family. Because I remember I’m doing this for my mom.” Then I was like, “Oh, I’m doing this for my family, so that I can take care of them one day.”

[00:14:43] Bonni: Would you share the one on self-awareness?

[00:14:45] Joshuah: Oh, sure, sure. These are just a few that were pulled out. Self-awareness the student said, “I listen to music to let out all my emotions because I’m someone who it’s very hard to show people my weaknesses, my emotions. I see them as weaknesses. I know that showing emotions is actually something that a strong person does. To be stronger, I usually just put certain songs on repeat to get better about talking about my feelings.”

[00:15:14] Bonni: Do one more. The one on social awareness.

[00:15:18] Joshuah: [chuckles] Sure. They’re all powerful in different ways. This one is on social awareness. My student, after listening to the song they picked out specifically for the discussion. They said, “Just knowing that musicians sing about things in my life like racism and poverty, and that other people can feel the same way I do, helps me feel I’m not going through things alone. Especially in this city how White and not diverse it is compared to where I’m from.”

[00:15:49] Bonni: Thank you so much. I’m teaching a personal leadership and productivity class and early on in the course to build community and also to get students reflecting about what they consider to be their current state of productivity. What’s working for them. What’s not working for them. They created a video called Three Artifacts About Me. I’m going to share one. I have permission from her to share this. Her name is Jackie Macias. I’m going to play it. Joshuah, I know you’ve heard part of it. I’ll play the full thing for you now, and then give everyone a chance to hear a little bit more from Jackie. Then I’d love to hear you comment on what themes that you’re seeing that she shares that also connect with the research you’ve been doing.

[00:16:32] Jackie: Hi, my name is Jackie. Here three out of three artifacts about me that helped me stay productive and organized. For the first one, I actually put an iPod representing music because I think music helps me be really productive. Sometimes I’ll be in my room, and I’ll just start playing some music, and I’m like “I’m going to clean.” I just always ended up doing that, even if it’s just around the house, and I’m listening to music, I like cleaning, helping out. It also helps me focus while I’m doing homework sometimes. I don’t put music with lyrics. I usually play one of those lofi stations on YouTube that are live for 24/7 because those are really calming.

It takes my stress and anxiety away. I like listening to that. Then I also put a picture of my family. Because although my family’s pretty loud around the house, they have helped me stay organized and productive with everything going on right now and having to do everything at home at least these past two semesters. They really let me have my own space and focus on school and everything. I really appreciate that. They support me in a lot of things, and that’s just one of the biggest things for me right now. Lastly, I also put a picture of these three paintings. I hang out with my friends a lot, at least this past summer, I did.

During school, I don’t get to see them as much. When I do, I really cherish it because we are calm and collected. I have fun. I think this is what helps me get a break from everything that’s going on. I feel it helps me stay productive because I feel it’s okay, like, “Let me take a break and do something fun and then back to work.” Sometimes you need a break, and you just can’t get burnt out because then it’s probably just going to lower the organization and productivity. I just wanted to include that in there.

[00:18:44] Bonni: What did you hear in Jackie’s story?

[00:18:46] Joshuah: Oh, gosh. Especially a lot of it I like the idea of the organization. She has different outlets. The music part is really fascinating because my latest study research I was able to do with a couple of other faculty really asked the question of students. “Do you listen to music when you study, read, or do homework?” To hear that, as she reinforces that, we had a pre-pandemic study with about 600 students and a during pandemic times with about 450 students. We have quite a few students for our sample from the second survey was around the country we’re able to send out to different campuses and some of our colleagues around.

The first one was strictly on our campus. We learned from those students about 90% of them claim to listen to music for at least an hour at some point in the day. That was just general music. What was fascinating was 75% of those 1,100 students said they listened to music for about four hours a day while they study, do homework, or read. Even more what was great about some of the things, the reasons they listen to music aside from to help with studying and focus is what Jackie said. We had first-generation students, and then we had non-first generation students. We had a good sample. Almost about half of our total sample was split 50-50 there.

For most of them, it came across with express feelings and emotions was very important of why listen they music. Relieves stress and anxiety was also one of the top ones. Jackie mentioned that. Listening to music helps her relieve her anxiety. Also, to get through difficult times. Whether Jackie’s talking about her cleaning as a distraction, maybe, and that’s what we’ve learned. Sometimes getting through difficult times was getting your mind on something. Students would play music for that to help, and reduce loneliness came up there a lot. Now, what was also fascinating, this is a little bit different from what she said, but our students who identified as male versus students who identified as female.

The male students said they listen to music to be creative and use their imagination on a higher level than the students who identified as female. We had other gender identities that people chose, but our numbers that were outside of male and female were very small in our respondents for this study. That’s interesting to see and hear. What I was able to do recently, it was really fun, was able to present at the First-generation Student Success Conference through NASPA, and I was able to present my workshop on Music for Our Souls. Because I thought, “Students, aren’t the only people. [laughs] There’s all of our colleagues.

I put the proposal in, was accepted, and then was able to start doing it with faculty and staff and get a different response from having more time, more experience in life. Even after that workshop, a lot of the faculty and staff also were just amazed and thought, “You know what? I’ve been listening to this song for 25 years of my life, and I didn’t know it was touching on these areas and helping me connect to certain things.” It sounds like Jackie is on her way with music. That was one of the things. My biggest question now, and what I’m trying to figure out and do with more people is get this workshop to other people to share it.

Because what are we doing then if we’re talking about– This phrase that we hear quite often is, “Let’s meet the students where they’re at.” If they’re at their AirPods or their earbuds or listening to music, how can we help them use that to be successful with personal growth and academic growth? I know academic is personal, but the separation of things happening that aren’t necessarily connected to their academics.

[00:22:56] Bonni: The other thing that she mentioned I found fascinating is the idea of being able to concentrate better with music that doesn’t have lyrics. Like you, I really enjoy thinking and reflecting on the lyrics of songs, but it can be incredibly distracting to me. That was cracking up because it couldn’t even be something that you would think. Couldn’t you just have that as a back channel and still be able to concentrate? I was thinking about recently, I had some exchanges on lyrics that we get wrong over time, and some people listening may remember this song from way back when I think it was the ’90s, George Michael had a song called Freedom.

The lyrics, I think some of them are pretty easy to recognize. One that I got wrong is I thought that he was saying at one point what I wouldn’t give just to butter your knees. [laughs] That is not at all the lyrics that he says. The lyrics are something like what I wouldn’t give, just my buddy and me, it was my buddy and me, and I thought it was butter my knees. Oh my gosh, how could you ever listen to that song and not be laughing at yourself when you get something so wrong? So many songs I associate with memories, and it’ll take me back into that time off and have a person that I associate songs with.

It was just impossible for me to ever think I was going to get something done. I do enjoy having something in the background, whether that’s some just noise just to get some of the noise of the neighborhood out of my ears and a little bit more able to focus.

[00:24:30] Joshuah: Definitely. I’m that person as well. I think it’s not always music. My kids and my wife and my partner will ask sometimes like, “How can you do that?” Because I’ll be in the room with them, and they’ll be watching a show. I’ll be there, and I’ll have one air pod in listening to something on my computer, and I’ll be reading an article at the same time and it’s like, “What are you?” I said, “I know I’m not learning as much as I can from all of them, but at least I’m getting the initial intake of these things.” It’s funny because she mentioned lofi was one of the reasons I started laughing because right before I logged in here, I pulled up some things to share.

I didn’t put it on my list of recommendations yet, but I pulled up a lofi station on YouTube because it is one of the great things that students introduced me to early on in some of my working with them and talking about what they listened to. Lofi was recommended by a number of students. I have to share a little more on the excited side I share is that I just heard about maybe four or five days ago that my latest article co-authored with two business professors has been accepted to the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice. That was fun.

In that study, instrumental music was about third on the list that students were listing. It wasn’t always lofi. They were very specific instrumental like classical or some people wrote Baroque, some people wrote Renaissance. They were listening to instrumental music for sure to keep lyrics out.

[00:26:06] Bonni: I am sure this is just a YouTube/Google search away, but I don’t even think I know what lofi music is. Is it easy to describe? [laughs]

[00:26:14] Joshuah: I can share my screen and audio.

[00:26:16] Bonni: Yes lets do-

[00:26:18] Joshuah: Do a little bit here.

[00:26:18] Bonni: -10 seconds. Something like that. Yes, that’d be great.

[00:26:21] Joshuah: Let me get a plan. Then I’ll share my screen and audio. It’s going to come up here in a second.

[00:26:27] Bonni: We’ll have an audible answer to my question. I suspect I won’t be the only one who wonders about this, too.

[music]

[00:26:49] Bonni: It sounds like lofi. [laughs] I like it.

[00:26:55] Joshuah: If you just searched on YouTube, you can just search lofi. Usually what comes up on YouTube quite often is lofi music for studying actually fills in, so that’s one of the things.

[00:27:11] Bonni: Interesting.

[00:27:12] Joshuah: There are numerous, endless number of options there. It’s just relaxing. most of them come with some anime cartoon movie playing of usually someone just sitting there with headphones, doing homework at a computer or at a desk or something like that. It’s usually the accompaniment.

[00:27:29] Bonni: Oh, that’s just fascinating. Well, this is actually the perfect time for us to transition to the recommendations segment, and you’ll see why in a second, Joshuah. He doesn’t know what I’m going to recommend, but he could probably guess. First off, I want to just refresh people’s mind that back when I had Marcus Croom on the podcast, he talked about– now I’m getting confused whether he talked about this after the recording stopped. He might have. I think it might’ve been after we recorded. You might not even have heard him recommend this. My memory is failing me at the moment.

He talked about recommending making a class-specific music playlist and that he likes to have students contribute to this playlist and everything. I gave it a try this time, and I was not disappointed because not only did I get introduced because it is a personal leadership class, I asked them to just share a song that is something that to you is representative of who you are as a person, what your sense of purpose is and all of that. I got some wonderfully eclectic songs, including that someone in the class included a song by an artist named Rick Astley, and it’s called Never Gonna Give You Up.

For those of you not familiar with this particular meme, it’s called being Rick rolled. Back when I was very early in my professional career in the ’90s, we used to play tricks on each other and try to get each other on an email to click on a link to take you to play this chorus of Never Gonna Give You Up, so I thought he put the song in there. I’m thinking, “What are the chances this is a person who–” I’m very similar in age to you, I just turned 50 in April. I’m like, “Who was decades younger than me. What are the chances that this young man knows what Rick rolling is.”

Sure enough, of course, he does. Then I promise this does not give anything away about this particular television show. I promise I’m not a fan of spoilers. On the second season of Ted Lasso, the television show, which airs on Apple TV+, they have literally an entire episode that has to do with being Rick rolled, and it is both funny, and sad, and sweet, and everything in between. Again, I’m not ruining anything other than to say– I don’t know if there’s a resurgent of Rick rolling or if it’s been with us the whole time, and I just didn’t notice. My first recommendation is make a class music playlist.

Do it. See what songs they want to contribute. I had an absolute blast. Their playlist is so good. I listened to it all the time. I also did want to recommend the playlist from Ted Lasso specifically. There is one from Season 1. This’ll be in the show notes. There’s one from Season 2, the music from Ted Lasso. They really do such a great job of soundtracks for that. There was that survey that used to be on the– Oh gosh, I’m trying to remember the name of this talk show. It was famous for interviewing celebrities. Oh, Inside the Actors Studio. At the end they would have a survey. One of the surveys was, “What profession would you most like to try other than your current one?”

I’m almost like, “I want to be the person that makes the soundtracks for movies, for television shows.” [laughs] I just think that would be the greatest profession in the world, but I’m going to keep going with my recommendations. Because also, on that television show, and again, I’m not giving anything away from the show you couldn’t see in the previews and stuff. There is a playlist from two characters who are romantically involved, and one of the characters makes a playlist for his girlfriend, and it’s called Roy Is Sorry For Not Understanding Keeley Playlist. [laughs] It took me back to songs from decades ago.

Sade Adu was one of the ones that comes up. I can totally remember these songs from my youth. Then a couple of other ones. There is a wonderful television series that actually, I already recommended many, many moons ago, but they have a great soundtrack. The television show is an HBO show called The Righteous Gemstones, and that soundtrack as an absolute hoot. There’s a book that’s called On the Come Up and the book has its own playlist of music. There’s some rap and hip-hop music. They actually have a playlist that I’ll link to as well, I recommend that as well.

My final recommendation is an episode of This American Life. It’s their episode 746, and it’s called, This Is Just Some Songs and it is a great listen. This American Life is always so good, but it’s just a great lesson for people who love music. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s definitely worth the listen. All right, Joshuah, I’m going to pass it over to you for your recommendations.

[00:32:20] Joshuah: Oh gosh. I love the playlist part because that’s one thing I have also been doing for a number of years. I learned about so much music. Even after studying music and doing my own all the time of finding new stuff, students amaze me, bands and artists I’ve never even heard of. I’ll be listening to it in the car. My kids are like, “Dad, why are you listening to this? This is our music.” I explained to them and they go, “Oh, okay, that makes sense.” A lot of it is great music though. It’s really fun. One of the things that I found interestingly in one of the last couple of class playlist that I did, I put songs on there to begin the playlist.

That way they see my taste, and I said, “Don’t look at mine, just obviously put your own songs on there.” I had put a song on there by a band. One of them just came up to me after, and he goes, “Hey, you really like that band?” I said, “Yes,” and he goes, “Oh, yes, that lead singer is my uncle.” [laughs]

[00:33:17] Bonni: Oh my gosh. That’s so great.

[00:33:18] Joshuah: I was like, “Whoa, okay.” That was a really small world connection. It was a great band and everything.

[00:33:26] Bonni: I have to tell you one other story just because you shared that. I used to be a camp counselor way back in the day in my college years. Every summer, that’s what I would do. Sometimes the students would try to play tricks on me and say, “Oh, you should say this word in Spanish.” Since they knew I didn’t speak Spanish, they would try to get me to say curse words and stuff. I will admit that I fell for it at the time. You get to be a certain age. A young man in the class had recommended a song. It was all in Spanish. I go to Google Translate to look up the lyrics. The chorus was one that was all about living life for today.

It really resonated with me. The verses were all about partying up at every single which way that you could imagine, some of the things I’d never even heard of before and all this. I do work at a religiously-affiliated school. I very carefully put in my response to the guy’s discussion posts, first off, how much I loved the song. Because by the way, it is an awesome song. Second of all, I said, “Boy, really resonated with me the part that you said. The chorus that really resonates, that’s something I struggle with. I struggle with living life for today. Thank you for this reminder. As to the verses, I can’t really say that that’s going to bring a lot of fulfillment in one’s life. I have found a lot of emptiness in those kinds of activities in my own life.”

Because you never know if somebody is trying to play a trick on you. I think it’s fun to let them know that we do have a sense of humor. I find it quite funny if they were trying to play a trick on me. I think that’s funny. On the other thing, you never know when someone might be reaching out for some help, or it might be helpful for them to know how empty lifelong partying can be, that kind of things. [laughs]

[00:35:12] Joshuah: Right, exactly.

[00:35:14] Bonni: Yes, anyway. Thank you for that.

[00:35:16] Joshuah: Yes. I have a list here of things to recommend. One of them is a podcast called Dissect and the host is called Kushner, and his podcast is a serial podcast where each season he dissects and an entire album from a specific artist. I think Season 9 is rolling out, and it’s already been out for a little while now. The whole thing is great, every season. Most of it is rap, hip-hop, R&B-based artists. Then I had a note for a very specific would be the Lauryn Hill, Episode Number 7. It’s a song, Everything Is Everything. It’s a message that she wrote to youth and developing and working through difficult times in the world.

Also, in the middle of it, she compares and contrast, but asks people, “Do you know the struggles of sister Betty?” She’s referring to Betty Shabazz who was married to Malcolm X, and you see a lot of Shahbazz high schools around the country. That is in part of this educational connection as well in that song, but it’s a wonderful song. The whole series of Dissect is great as well. For education and talking about social, emotional development and growth, there’s a TED Talk from educator who unfortunately passed away.

She was working in Pennsylvania, Rita Pearson. If you haven’t seen her TED Talk, it’s great it’s called Every Kid Needs a Champion. It really is talking about our support as instructors. She was working K-12, but as you mentioned a minute ago, people may have a cry for help or try to reach out. They just don’t know how to. In higher end, we are seeing, obviously, more and more in the recent years students working through anxiety, stress, depression, and to the point where we started with the articles and discussions and even some of the students talking about, “Hey, we’re not really millennials or generation whatever. We’re generation anxiety.”

Her TED Talk is really great about what we can do as far as compassion, and sympathy, and empathy for the students we’re working with. The I mentioned CASEL earlier, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. It’s a wonderful resource. Their website has all sorts of resources as far as curriculum pedagogy and ways you can implement it. It is K-12, a lot of the focus. I’ve just taken a lot of it and just implemented it into the courses I teach. It is coming around a little bit more. If it’s something you’re interested in trying to implement into a course you’re teaching, that is a great resource.

Then finally, as far as for just the joy of being a kid and looking at things through kids’ eyes sometimes and connection to that, there is a writer, William H. Hooks, who wrote a number of different books, all young adult and children’s books. A lot of them are about 30 to 45 pages and nice. They’re very beautifully illustrated, by Brian Pinkney. The one that my kids really latched on to is called the Ballad of Belle Dorcas. A lot of the stories that William H. Hooks wrote are all from stories he heard living in the Carolinas. This one is a conjuring story about a conjure woman who can help a free issue woman and her man that’s a slave be able to escape into freedom, but it has its costs. That’s a great book to read. I think I should stop there even though my list just keeps going and going.

[00:39:16] Bonni: Oh, this has been such a great conversation, Joshuah. I’m so glad that you reached out such a long time ago, and we got to have some conversation over a number of years. Congratulations on your podcast. Would you like to share just quickly about the podcast before we close in case people can listen? I’ll include that in the show notes as well.

[00:39:33] Joshuah: Yes, that’d be fantastic. Thank you. I’m always having a hard time in that tight rope of self promotion and that. I also want people to learn about it because the podcast I reached out to Bonni for some feedback, even maybe about a year and a half ago, I had been trying to do a podcast for a couple of years. Then my mission kept switching of what the podcast will be about. I finally was able to land on a thing because I also needed a co-host. I really didn’t want to do it alone, sense of what the topic was going to be and everything. Our podcast is called First Generation – One of Many. We have a website, so you can check out the website and see the information there.

We have all of our episodes up, we have the transcripts, we have recommendations. We actually formed our podcast similar to Bonni’s outline here. It has been fascinating. We get a lot of great discussions. We bring in first-generation students and alum and talk about their experiences with different aspects. We have things from scholar-athletes to identifying as a Hmong woman. We’ve had topics on sense of belonging, some topics on the discussion of equity, diversity. It just ranges. Our latest episode was the College of Agriculture. It’s a great resource. Our mission was to really help provide a voice for first-generation students and alum.

Also, then be providing resources for faculty, staff, and fellow students who are working with and working for first-generation students. I appreciate it if anybody wants to check it out. It is fun. We just posted an episode about an hour ago, our latest one that went out today was actually the one that got posted today is about basic needs.

[00:41:15] Bonni: Thank you so much for today’s conversation. I hope this is just the beginning of a continued conversation or I should say the continuance of a continued conversation. Can I say that? [laughs] I really enjoyed today. Thank you.

[00:41:28] Joshuah: Thank you. I did, too. Thank you so much.

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[00:41:33] Bonni: Thank you to Joshuah Whittinghill for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you’ve been listening for a while and have yet to sign up for the weekly update, I highly encourage you to do so. You’ll get all of the links to the great stuff that Joshuah recommended and the other resources from the episode and also some things that don’t show up in the show notes. You can head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe for that once a week email, and thank you so much for being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community. I will see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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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.