Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 577 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Teaching and When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom with Jessamyn Neuhaus. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning Maximizing Human Potential. Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. What if moments that go most wrong in our teaching are also the moments with the most potential? Jessamyn Neuhaus joins us to talk about embracing snafus, dismantling super teacher myths, and building agency in ourselves and our students, even when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Jessamyn Neuhaus is the director of the center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. She’s the author of Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers and editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. Jessamyn Neuhaus, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:01:42]:

Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:44]:

I love that you start this book with telling me and anyone else who reads it that we’re actually normal. Could you please, for anyone who hasn’t heard the news today. Cause I feel like sometimes we need daily hourly reminders tell us how normal snafus are.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:02:02]:

Well, humans got a human and human beings make mistakes. We make mistakes as part of learning and we make mistakes just being in the world. I think that academia generally attracts people with perfectionist tendencies. And then there’s also systemic aspects to academia that make a lot of people working in it feel like there is a perfect ideal. I see that discourse reinforced unconsciously and not intentionally in a lot of scholarship of teaching and learning and advice about teaching, college teaching. And so I really wanted to write a book that underscored and emphasized the reality of teaching and learning, that things sometimes go wrong. I’m very fortunate at this point in my career to have something of a platform. I mean, I’m not a mega, megawatt star like James Lang or even you, Bonni, but I do have some pull and sway and seniority.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:03:21]:

So when I was thinking about what book was going to come after Picture Professor, I just thought about what’s the book? Geeky Pedagogy was the book I wish I could have read before I started teaching. Snafu Edu is the book I wish I could have read right at a little before midpoint in my teaching career, when I had racked up enough missteps, mistakes, messes, things that had just gone wrong to. Well, I won’t say lying awake obsessing over them, but that was what I was doing. And so the book is really aiming to kind of help people break out of that and reframe what happens when things go wrong. And I’ll just add that sometimes it’s not. Sometimes there is no positive outcome when something goes wrong. Sometimes things just get messed up because again, people are human. And so sometimes there’s a mistake, there’s a misstep, you or your students, and you just have to move on from that.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:04:33]:

But it’s not that there’s necessarily a positive glowing gold and silver lining to that. And I guess just one more thing I’ll add that snafus and the way I approach it in the book Mess Up Teaching and Learning. I really wanted to emphasize in this book, unlike my previous books and a lot of books and articles on teaching and learning, that these are things that we’re in it together with students, not affected the same way. Our unique positionality and identities, teaching context, those all make a difference. Same same for students. But the snafus that I delve into can interfere with teaching efficacy and with student success in learning.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:23]:

There’s another thing that you write about that I don’t want to take it too much beyond what you’ve written, but I’ve thought about it so much and that is this toxic positivity. And it’s something that I struggle with a lot, where it almost feels like sometimes we don’t have the permission to grieve or the permission to be angry or experience these feelings. And certainly you know how to navigate that in terms of disclosure and where disclosure is important. So how has toxic positivity been important to you, both in terms of this book, but also, you know, beyond that? Do you feel that tension of just, you know, a certain way we’re supposed to feel and any feelings like feelings that would seem to be very normal, but actually we almost get stifled, I guess, culturally speaking?

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:06:16]:

Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a huge, readily identifiable issue in published scholarship of teaching and learning advice about teaching? It’s more like this undercurrent that can creep in to the discourse. And I think it’s actually a sort of uniquely academic, intellectual way that shapes our research in and discussions about teaching. In particular, it’s kind of like the flip side of being so incredibly smart. And we’ve got these massive brains that we apply to our intellectual passions, our research and the scholarship of teaching and learning. That’s where its roots are in that kind of framework, that approach that really is highly intellectual. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I love that I want to live in my big brain. But when the rubber meets the road in teaching, if you’re reading articles, books that again and again, again are talking about, here’s what the research says, here’s the evidence, here’s the science of learning, and you do X, Y and Z because of this evidence. Like, that’s our, that’s our jam.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:07:41]:

We got evidence, we understand it, we can delve into it, we know the research, we apply it. But teaching happens with other human beings in a very, very difficult set of circumstances. Because even when everything is great, let’s say the whole world is perfect in every way and every single person in your class is ready and willing to engage and you’re in perfect health and they’re in perfect health. And even then learning would be really hard because learning how to do stuff is hard. And that, of course, will never happen. There’s always. There’s terrible things happening in the world, people’s individual life circumstances. There’s always struggles.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:08:29]:

And so that reality is often missed in some of our discussions about teaching, which very understandably we’re leaning into. We want the evidence, we want strategies, we want specific ways of understanding in nuanced and detailed ways what’s happening in the brain and what’s happening with the learning process. So again, I wouldn’t accuse any of my fellow scholars of teaching and learning full on toxic positivity. But I would say that inadvertently we have a subtext that teaching is somehow perfectible. Teaching and learning is somehow perfect, and it will never, ever be perfectible. Because of my positionality and like I said before, the platform that I do have, I thought it was an important message to underscore and emphasize to anyone who will read my book and listen to my melodious words that no, teaching isn’t perfectible. Human beings mess up.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:38]:

The clip that I show more than any other about teaching is from Mike Wesch, and it’s called the Sleeper. And the beginning of it, this part speaking of toxic positivity, this part makes me mad because he says in the credits it’s his first attempt at an animated as an drawn. And I’m thinking, how is this your first time, Mike? You make me so angry. But anyway, he sort of talks about in the beginning, essentially his role as he doesn’t say it’s superhero, but. But you get a superhero vibe and how he has all these pixels behind him of these screens almost just I don’t know if it’s superhero or mag, you know, all these things. And then yet someone in there is asleep. That’s the. Hence the sleeper.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:26]:

It’s a beautiful piece. I will link to it in the show notes for anyone who would like to watch it. But also, you’ve introduced this idea of this super teacher myth to me and also to teaching in higher ed listeners when you were on the show last. But I think we have to bring it back just in case. People are always joining to listen to the podcast for the first time. Tell us about this super super teacher myth, how dangerous it is, and what we might possibly try to do to resist it.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:10:57]:

Don’t even get me started on the super teacher myth. Nothing quite grinds my gears as much as this particular representation of teaching and learning. And as I discuss, I discuss it in the book that this myth, this impossible ideal, it’s bad for educators and it’s bad for learners, too. And it comes from some of my background is teaching history, pop culture and cultural studies. So I’m very interested in the cultural representations of teaching and learning and for college teaching and learning. Almost inevitably, the educator is a professor. Usually, not always, but usually a man, and often not always a white guy. And on TV, he’s usually being consulted by the FBI for crimes they can’t figure out.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:11:53]:

They need his expertise in criminal pathology to interpret. If there is any representation of teaching, it’s almost always lecture. Almost always lecture. Usually a big, huge hall, but even small classrooms. The dude is lecturing, but not just lecturing. He’s fascinating. The students are riveted. Nobody’s sleeping, nobody’s scrolling mindlessly.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:12:20]:

He’s not using notes. He’s not stumbling saying or. Well, he’s just orating. And this is where it hurts learners. And the students are learning just by sitting there being mesmerized and applauding at the end. I mean, I ask you. Applause. Come on.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:12:43]:

That ideal is in our heads. No matter how above the fray of mainstream representations we may think we are, that cultural discourse around teaching as the best teaching looks this certain way, it feels this certain way. It is immediately transformative. In that representation, there’s no grinding labor where you have to do something over and over and over again to learn how to do it well. That means teaching well or learning a New skill. There’s no very little representation of the hard work that students need to do. There’s no sense that engagement is really collaborative. My, my new colleague here at Syracuse, Ebony Graham, is my faculty developer specializing in students as partners.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:13:37]:

And she and I have been working on some stuff for our course Redesign Institute. We’re talking about student engagement. And she pointed out to me, engagement is not a top down thing you can impose. Engagement is a collaboration. It’s a collaborative effort. There’s nothing like that. The super teacher just magically creates it in his, usually, not always, but his with this power that he hasn’t. You don’t see him sitting in a seminar, you don’t see him in a workshop, you don’t see him reading small teaching, trying to figure it out.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:14:14]:

No, he’s a board teacher, he’s a genius. He can just do it. That ideal, as ridiculous as it can sound when we parse it out, I mean I. It’s really stuck in our heads, ours and our students heads. So it creates an obstacle, creates obstacles for us.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:33]:

And speaking of obstacles, one of the obstacles in confronting that myth for ourselves and in more of a collective way, is that you’re giving us this perspective that rather than thinking about the identity of teachers, our own identities as overly simplistic of a superhero, is to think about the reality of our identities as intersectional. Would you talk about how integral intersectionality is for understanding both snafus and how we might respond to them?

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:15:13]:

The first section of the book is titled Inequity and it looks at the ways that systemic inequities create obstacles to our success as educators and student success in the classroom and in college. I think one thing I’ve been harping on for a long time, and I noticed when I got into the scholarship of teaching and learning, is that context is so crucial and important. Absolutely not the first person to say that this is important field in the scholarship of teaching and learning. I do think one way I’m pushing it forward and contributing to the conversation is having us really think together, students and faculty. How does inequity interfere with our success? So for example, stereotypes and assumptions, biases about what academic expertise looks like, quote, unquote, what a professor looks like that creates different kinds of obstacles that faculty have to navigate depending on their embodied identities. Another big one with our context that actually affects the most people teaching in college settings is employment status. What kinds of inequities around employment, security, teaching loads, class size, how that creates different, not insurmountable, but creates obstacles to teaching success, then thinking about our students with the same complexity. What kinds of systemic inequities, in addition to everyone’s life circumstances might be interfering with their ability to learn and succeed might be snafuing their learning and their success in your class.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:17]:

It can be so helpful for us to think about that for ourselves. And, and that’s, I mean, part of why earlier when you were talking about this toxic positivity, and I was picturing in my head a recipe where it’s just like, oh, yeah, you just put all the ingredients in and then out is going to come, you know. And I always like to share the story of I’m not much of a baker, which you’ll tell in just a moment when I share that I was attempting to use some leftover bananas and make blueberry banana bread. And we didn’t have any baking. I don’t know if it was baking powder or baking soda. Whichever one it is that makes the. Makes it rise. And I was like, well, how important could this ingredient be? It’s such a small amount of it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:59]:

And. And proceeded to attempt to bake it without the ingredient that would let it rise. Coupled with the fact that I took the blueberries and I put them in a. Like a. I mixed them up, said that. That it just become a purple, like we’re no longer like any. Anything resembling blueberries. It was.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:16]:

It was an absolute disaster. But, you know, so, like, first of all, I didn’t follow the recipe right? And then second of all, I didn’t really understand the process by which the recipe might be executed. But we add into that these intersectionalities that different chefs, if you will, or bakers or whatever analogy I want to use, like, we’re not all able to follow the same recipe.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:18:42]:

Oh, my gosh. But it’s so funny, Bonni, that you say that, because with that particular analogy, my first book, my first dissertation, my first academic research passion was about cookbooks and gender ideology. What fascinates me about cookbooks and other prescriptive literature is looking as a historian looking back at the past, like, where did society decide this is the way to do it? This is the important thing. Follow these directions. So I researched marriage manuals, etiquette guides, classroom mental hygiene, films from the 1950s. And so that ongoing curiosity, the thing that made me the scholar first, that’s always been in my mind reading, scholarship, of teaching and learning. And it’s not as blatant or obvious as, like, how to. How to go on a date film from 1945, but there is a.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:19:43]:

Just like you said, there’s this kind of set prescription, these sort of guidelines that kind of suggest or at least reinforce for their readers this idea, oh, just do this and this. That’s the critique that’s been around something saying like best practices, there’s evidence based, research based things we can do that often improve teaching and learning. But do they fit perfectly every person, every time? No, they do not. You have to be able to adapt your context to what works for you, to your Persona, what works in your own individual teaching context. One of the very first classes I taught was a large lecture US history as an adjunct. I was 30 years old and little teaching experience and I was eight months pregnant. Those were all factors that I should have been aware might change my teaching practices and my interactions with students. But I just didn’t have that sense of what can I adapt? What do I need to be aware of, what kind of assumptions, biases.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:20:57]:

So the chapter, the section on inequity, two of the strategies are for our learners. We want to maximize ways that we can plan for learner variability. But we also have to plan for learner biases and stereotypes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:17]:

So the learner variability is so important. And I love that we are talking about a recipe because it isn’t like recipes should never exist. Then because of factors that you brought in and you have gifted us with some wonderful recipes. And throughout the work here you use the acronym stir. And so I’ll just tell the listeners stop for S, think for T, identify for the letter I and repair. Let’s begin with STOP because STOP can look so different for so many. I kept thinking about how much STOP has helped me so whether it’s my coffee Old’s sift model, which for listeners who may not be familiar with it begins with this idea of stopping before we repost some something that turns out to not be accurate that we have this visceral reaction to. And then I used to eons ago which is still cracks me up that I that I did this but I was responsible for teaching consultative salespeople which I never would have told you ever would have been part of my career.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:31]:

And it’s kind of surprising to me now but there’s so much consultative sales really really good stuff that’s problem solving and deep listening. And so I, I brought a set of tools that I didn’t realize but when I’ll give you a quick example and then of course I want to hear about about more about stir. But there’s this classic framework in this book and I’ll put a link in case anybody’s interested. It’s literally the favorite book I’ve ever read about sales and let’s. I didn’t have a lot of favorites, so it’s, it’s not a genre that I, that I found myself really wanting to read voraciously, but it’s really good. But he about your meeting with someone. You could even picture meeting with a student. Or maybe you’re on a job interview and the person that you’re speaking with looks at their watch and that can be, oh my gosh, did I just say something wrong? Or is that student bored? What? How dare them come to my office and have the audacity of being bored or whatever.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:23:26]:

And so we have to stop ourselves. And I remember this framework so well. Okay, stop. If I’m starting to feel this, any kind of emotions coming up. Okay, stop. And then you state what happened. I noticed that you just looked at your watch. Is there somewhere you need to be or something? And then you, so you stop.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:23:45]:

You state what happened. And then you pass it to them. And they called it the red light. So the red light, you stop when you’re experiencing this yellow light thing. And then so you oh, this yellow light. I don’t know how to interpret this. So I’m going to stop and then I’m going to state what I thought. Just noticed behaviorally, I noticed this thing happened and then pass it to them to let them turn it green or red because maybe they really are bored or maybe they really do have somewhere to be or maybe they had an inch on their wrist or they were just curious what time it was.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:24:19]:

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:21]:

Throughout this book, you give us so many of these scripts, but you allow us to think about using them on our own unique context, which is just so helpful.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:24:37]:

Yeah. So I mean, I have to start by saying I understand there’s probably already too many acronyms in the world. And we scholars of teaching and learning, we do have a weakness for a catchy acronym. It was so stir. It’s mostly just a way to frame just what you said to, to help the readers figure out what’s going to work for them and their context. And I agree that first one is probably the most important, the stop one. And I don’t think we’re well trained as smarty pants scholars to stop and ponder. Which is weird hearing myself say it, because that stopping and pondering is actually what we do in our work.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:25:22]:

But for teaching and interacting around our content, we’re really, well, most of Us as scholars are really well trained to be like steppy and reply immediately and show off how smart we are right away. So stopping. And then of course, all that emotional, the unhelpful emotional, but completely natural emotional responses that can come flooding in depending on the interaction. And what sets me off may very well not be what sets you off. Although I wasn’t in class yesterday. Did I miss anything? Seems to be a universal for educators. So this idea of having a script, that’s one repair strategy. I do offer some repair strategies.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:26:12]:

And it’s definitely not about having a long memorized speech that you have to use one single way every single time. It’s definitely not about you got to deliver content this way with a long speech. But this is going to be one of my recommendations. And I was really influenced by Chevella Pittman’s work around microaggressions and classroom incivility and the power of having prepared a short couple sentences that can come out of your mouth more proactively and not reactively and tailored to what works for you or your Persona and particularly for situations that are, you know, are going to be really, really difficult. So one example is unfortunately, that many of us have experienced, and maybe more so in the past few years, when a really terrible event happens, either, like locally, nationally, at another university, what are you going to say in class the next day? If you. Now let’s be clear. Like, if you are just so skilled that you can orate at the drop of a hat, no matter how stressed you are or how out of their minds students are at the moment, or how just like miserable it is, then sure, you don’t need to think about what you might say beforehand because the words are just going to come magically to you and everyone’s going to feel great after you talk. But I mean, if that’s you, like, congratulations, I guess.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:27:52]:

But most of us will stumble and fumble. Especially, I mean, actually in either case, if the class is really not connected to this event at all, your content doesn’t touch on it, or if your content is really relevant, what are you going to say? And the research shows that pretending it didn’t happen doesn’t work. Students are like, what’s going on? Do they not know about this thing? But also, it doesn’t work to go down the rabbit hole into it, especially if you’re uncomfortable about it. You don’t know how to. So preparing a few sentences ahead of time, maybe just acknowledging that it happened and that there’s some resources on campus and you’d Be happy to stay after class and be a listening ear if someone just wants to process a little bit. Something like that. So feeling more able and ready. Because then, as we all know, within minutes, something else unexpected will happen and you’ll have to respond, but knowing ahead of time, some predictable ones like that one.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:28:59]:

Did I miss anything? Like having at least not defaulting for me, defaulting to the snarkiest, most sarcastic response, which is not helpful when you’re talking with a student. So having that couple sentences in mind has helped me get the conversation started in a more productive and proactive way. Not reactive.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:25]:

I found myself. I mean, you would laugh if you saw my digital copy. Cause it just. It’s practically the entire thing is highlighted. I’m like, you’re defeating the purpose of your digital highlighter if you highlight the entire book. But I did find myself wanting to go back to practice things because not only do our intersectional identities and of course unique context affect this, but also the type of course that we’re teaching. I mean that both in terms of the literal type, of course, it might be disciplinary or is it, you know, how does it gear itself? But also for me, teaching asynchronous classes, boy, stopping is not a problem because I have all the time in the world. The goal there would be maybe don’t stop so long that you let yourself, let this live rent free in your head for that long.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:14]:

That sort of thing. And then also, I found it interesting when you were talking about that. Did I miss anything? I have this flash, so. So this is now the 20th year that I’m teaching in a higher education context. So there’s things like, did I miss anything? No longer has. I have no reaction to that other than, like, answer their question. I don’t like that. That’s long since, you know, gotten.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:36]:

But I was watching a video of Tressie McMillan Cottam and I. I might. Oh, man, I don’t know if I bookmarked it or not. She does these Instagram lives and so they kind of come, come and go. I don’t. I don’t always remember to bookmark it. But she. There was a phrase that I really used to be pretty prickly for me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:57]:

Early in my career, someone would come and maybe ask about changing a grade or turning in something late. And I had very different feelings about these things than I do today. But. But they would say, it doesn’t hurt to ask. And in my mind I would find that offensive. Like, well, of course it does. How dare you ask me. And she literally had had someone ask her if she would.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:19]:

I don’t know if it was guest speak in a class or this woman had written an essay and would she come to her class that she’s taking? I don’t remember. But whatever it was, it was a wild, you know, audacious ask. And Tressy literally says, it doesn’t hurt to ask. And I did it, like, because this young woman asked. I thought, oh, my goodness, what a different framing for it doesn’t hurt to ask. I had all these flashes of, you know, what would the world look like if more of us were given permission and encouraged to ask with boldness for things that, you know, I just thought, like, wow, you know, so we can. We can that stop. There’s, like you said, there’s so much that can happen in that stop.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:59]:

Both in the moment that is so beautiful and beneficial, but also over the span of many years to be thinking and rethinking about all the different ways that these things might be able to. To be interpreted in our responses. And I just really want to thank you for these scripts that you gave. As I found so many of them, I thought, oh, gosh, that is, you know, so similar to what I would want to say. And, you know, that one really fits with, with something I could see myself saying, but I, but. But, you know, it doesn’t work unless you actually practice. You don’t. You don’t read through a book like this.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:32:37]:

I know. I’m cured.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:39]:

I’m a superhero teacher again. Jessica, I’ve done it.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:32:42]:

You know, y. I used to feel like a dork, like practicing some of these, and some of these, it’s easy. I have some email ones that I can just type without hardly even thinking about it, just to get start. Just to start the conversation, practicing, you do feel like a dork until you actually need it. And I was just thinking that example is an interesting one. Doesn’t hurt to ask in the way that, again, our intersectional identities and teaching context would shape what kind of navigating we would have to do of that particular request. Certain people with certain identities will get certain kinds of requests more and more adamantly and with less civility than others. So responding to that in a positive way, like being able to more proactively have your response, knowing that it’s coming, and plan for whatever you might need to do to maintain your own pedagogical wellness in that context.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:33:49]:

Another one that came to my mind when you were talking was, this is also one of my repair strategies is apologizing now not everybody, not everybody teaching college has the same exact kinds of freedom or ability to apologize when they do something wrong. But for me, it popped into my head when you were talking about like, it doesn’t even faze me anymore because that is one. When I started, it was so hard for me, even like a minor mistake because I felt like I was giving up some of my power. I was showing weakness. And now I just have practiced it enough and done enough. And to be clear, I have enough privilege and employment security to do so. But it was so freeing because now when I mess up and I mess up because again, human beings mess up, I can just say, wow, I messed that up, I apologize, I’m sorry about that, and I’ll do blah blah, blah to fix it. And it’s not magic, but sometimes it feels almost magical the way it’s just like, like, okay, so now we can just move on.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:34:59]:

We can just keep going now. And it’s. And in general, again, this isn’t true for everybody. It was not true for every situation. But in general I have found that students recognize and respond to that and then I can see them doing it too, which can be really helpful.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:20]:

Yeah, I remember about that part of the book also thinking that particularly, I mean you mentioned a number of different examples that may require or invite apologies. But the. I think maybe my temptation could have sometimes been to prolong the apology. And that, that I, I thought, when he said that, I thought that comes from wisdom right there. This does not need to be dissertation length apology, even if it is something that you consider egregious. I mean we are going to make pretty egregious mistakes. I mean if we’re actually taking the kinds of risks that may foster incredible transformation so that, so that, that. But, but that sort of processing and disclosure would not be the best place to be doing that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:09]:

That’s a trusted friend outside that conference.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:36:11]:

Classic example is with names. Learning and using students names. It’s really hard. Shout out to Michelle Miller’s short guidebook on learning and using students names. It’s very difficult. One of the reasons it’s so difficult is because the opportunities for looking like a complete ass are pretty endless. So that’s why people avoid it. Not just educators, but students.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:36:37]:

People are nervous about learning and using each other’s names because when you get it wrong, it’s embarrassing. And it can be very tempting to start in on a long explanation or justification for why you messed up someone’s name. That’s not helpful. It’s not on them to absolve you of the difficulty of learning names. So saying, wow, I really messed up your names. I’m sorry about that. We’re working on learning and using each other’s names. I’ll keep working on that too.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:12]:

And then you can vent to your friend later on afternoon when you go for a little walk and talk together and say, then you can express all the embarrassment and how difficult it is. Yes, yes, yes. Well, this is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations, and I have two of them. They are both related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The first is from my one of my favorite satirical sites, McSweeney’s. The article is entitled Our University is Replacing DEI with Vibes and Vaguely Diverse Stock Photos by Carla M. Lopez. And it is just an absolute delight for the absolute absurdity of where we, at least here in the United States, are finding ourselves.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:02]:

And speaking of privilege, I feel privileged and honored. Honored and grateful for the fact that this podcast is done as an independent thing and has been for more than a decade now, such that I can recommend articles like this and not have to worry about what that might look like for others who may not have the same sort of privilege, et cetera. That felt really good just to, you know, be able to share these things freely. And my goodness gracious, do we ever sometimes just need to laugh? Because I’m not saying we need to laugh all the time, but some of the time we need to laugh. So the other one is also related to that same topic. And speaking of comedy, it is with Jon Stewart, of course, a famous comedian in his own right. Having said that, though, this is actually not a particularly funny interview. It’s mostly serious.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:52]:

In fact, it may even be all serious from my memory. And it is called DEI, you’re fired with Heather McGee. And Heather McGee goes and shares a lot of definitions of things, and it’s just a very good pragmatic look at some of the issues that so many countries around the world are facing today. I would recommend both of these, the first one for a laugh, and the second one for a little bit of a deeper look from an expert that I found to be quite enjoyable. And Jessamyn, I’m going to pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:39:28]:

Okay, so the first is an article that was published in the Scholarly Teacher by Chevella Pittman. It’s called 10 in the moment Responses for Addressing Micro and Macroaggressions in the Classroom. The second is a book by David Yeager called 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People. The third is another book about teaching. Must read. Many of your readers will have already seen this, but I want to emphasize again Critical Teaching, Defining, Documenting and Discussing Good Teaching by Claudia Happel and Lauren Barbeau. Then. Oh, I should have said my list is a mix of scholars, scholarship of teaching and learning stuff and also just products for fun consumption.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:40:16]:

So if you have seen me in person wondering how I got these absolutely gorgeous curls on my head, it’s the Dippity Do Girls with Curls Curl Boosting Mousse. I highly recommend it. If you are looking for a perpetual calendar, the one I have here in the Teaching and Learning center at Syracuse is the MoMA one for MoMA is the sliding Perpetual Calendar. It is super fun for people in dry climates or have suffered through the winter. Mrs. Meyer’s clean day Hand soap is the only soap that doesn’t dry out my hands too much. The Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education journal is I mentioned my colleague Ebony Graham and our students as partners. Emphasis Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education is one of the most important journals publishing research on students as partners.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:41:10]:

Pedagogical partnerships of course. A shout out to you for teaching the podcast Always Good with John Kean and Rebecca Mushtair. Another book. Again, many people have seen but just want to shout out to Elizabeth Norell, who is one of the early readers of Snapu. Edu gave me so much great feedback and her book the Present Authenticity and Transformational Teaching is a must read. I also just wanted to shout out in New York, State of New York if you are close to the Thrifty Shopper Thrift store. That is one of the best thrift store chains I’ve ever shopped in. And finally, one entertainment recommendation.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:41:54]:

The series. There was only two seasons of it, but it was perfection. It’s streaming on Peacock. It’s called We Are Lady Parts and I have the. I have the.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:05]:

I love it already. I don’t even know what it is.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:42:08]:

Season one trailer on YouTube.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:11]:

Oh, that sounds like so much fun.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:42:14]:

Yes. It’s about four Muslim women who form a punk rock band.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:20]:

Oh my gosh. So fun. Oh gosh. We’re going to give our Sierra Priest our podcast production support person. She’s going to have to do some heavy lifting here, but I think it’s going to be worth it to all of us.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:42:33]:

Oh no, I. I have the links. I will.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:35]:

Oh no. I just mean she makes beautiful graphics for them. It’s so much fun. She will be paid for her work and she also will enjoy it too. But yes, she’ll have a little, a little more than usual. But she is a teacher and I suspect that this hand soap for how much, you know, teachers need to wash our hands, she’s probably going to really appreciate that. I’m so curious what a sliding perpetual calendar is. I know what a perpetual calendar is, but I don’t know what a sliding one is.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:43:00]:

Well, it’s beautifully designed because it’s from the moment Museum of Modern Art, New York City and you’ll just have to click on the link.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:07]:

I’m definitely going to look forward to click I’m going to look forward to clicking on all of these links. And speaking of clicking on links, of course people need to go find Snafu. Edu Teaching and Learning. When things go wrong in the college classroom, I will have have a link in the Show Notes and find it in your library. Find it in a independent bookstore. Find it. And it’s going to be something that will be a gift that you can just keep picking up and returning to for Abundant Treasures. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:40]:

So glad for today’s conversation and looking forward to the next one.

Jessamyn Neuhaus [00:43:44]:

Thank you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:47]:

Thanks once again to Jessamyn Neuhaus for joining me on today’s episode of of Teaching in Higher Ed. 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. Thank you so much for listening. And if you’ve not yet signed up for the weekly update, you’re missing out on not having to remember to go to the Show Notes to get all those good links. They can be emailed directly to you. And also you’ll receive some other resources that don’t show up in the Show Notes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:26]:

So head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. You can start receiving those weekly updates right away. 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.