[00:00:00] Jeff Hittenberger: Today on episode 400 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, I turn the tables on Bonni, and help her reflect on what she’s learned over 400 episodes of the podcast. Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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[00:00:20] Bonni Stachowiak: Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

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[00:00:49] Jeff Hittenberger: Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m, Jeff Hittenberger. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve of our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives so we can be even more present for our students. Bonni, thank you for inviting me to be part of this 400th episode celebration.

[00:00:29] Bonni Stachowiak: I feel like we should have a cake or something. There’s no cake. We just had a sandwich, but we forgot the cake, but I’m so glad that you’re here, Jeff. I’m so glad.

[00:01:24] Jeff Hittenberger: For the 500th, we will have the cake.

[00:01:27] Bonni Stachowiak: Good. The kids will want to be here for that one too.

[laughter]

[00:01:31] Jeff Hittenberger: Bonni, we have been friends and colleagues for a long time, and I am hugely grateful to you for the gift you have shared with us in this podcast. It is a delight to be with you to celebrate it. I wanna start with a question about you. What makes you tick, Bonni? Tell us a little about your story. How did you become Bonni Stachowiak?

[00:01:55] Bonni Stachowiak: First of all, I’m not entirely sure. One thing that comes to mind is a conversation that we had when we hired our library leader most recently. This would’ve been something like August or July of last year and everyone, we had those little box of cards where you get those reflective questions. One of them came up was, what was your first job? What does that say about you today? My first job, scooping ice cream for Baskin-Robbins. It really says a lot about who I am. I think some of it says a lot about my strengths. I think it says a lot about my strengths when the volume gets turned up too loud on them.

I used to like to- and it’s funny because people think this is competitive. I am achievement oriented, but I used to try to serve more, twice as many customers as anybody else. It wasn’t like down with the man, like I’m going to beat you, but it was more- it was a game that I played in my own little brain of just to pass the time. That felt like we were moving milestones because we were getting people what they want. The other thing about that first job that I think says a lot about who I am and what makes me tick is that I really did care about the people.

There was a woman who taught acting at the local junior college, and I knew what she wanted. I’d see her getting out of her car. I would recognize her car. I knew what she wanted. I think she had one or two dogs and I knew the dog’s names. It was also two people would come in and there’d be a whole family. I really appreciated that at the time. I’m not sure I could do this anymore today, Jeff. At the time I could remember everyone’s order. I would attend to them, be fully present for them. Then they would only have to tell me once. I don’t have to come back and go, “Did you want nuts on that? Because you already told me if you’d like nuts on that.”

Again, when I think about those stories and my colleagues when I share that just laughed at me because when the achievement orientation, especially during a pandemic, it’s turned up too high they call that over-functioning. I do try to celebrate those parts of me that care about other people and that do like to make meaningful progress toward a goal.

[00:04:13] Jeff Hittenberger: I have certainly seen that quality in you over time, and something about 31 flavors too speaks to me with this podcast. You certainly have offered us many, many flavors over the years. I deeply appreciate that. What started you on this podcasting journey? How did you decide to start a podcast focused on teaching in higher ed?

[00:04:39] Bonni Stachowiak: My husband, Dave, had a podcast about leadership. It’s called Coaching for Leaders. It is also still around. He was three years ahead of me. We both met getting our Master’s degrees in organizational leadership and then eventually years after that went on to get our doctorates. Early in our relationship, we’d have a lot of vibrant conversations about leadership, and he knew that I yearned to have vibrant conversations about teaching. It’s something that captures a lot of my imagination even still to this day. There really wasn’t as much of an outlet for that. At that time in our university, there wasn’t really formal collaborative professional development.

We had funds that we could go out to our disciplinary conferences, but even at the time, I didn’t know about disciplinary-specific conferences about teaching. They existed for sure, but I didn’t know about them. I didn’t really have an outlet for it. There weren’t that many colleagues that loved to talk about teaching, at least not that I had met or got to spend a lot of time with. He kept urging me. You got to do this, you got to do this. There were podcasts at the time that would talk about policy. I have, and probably to a fault, been less interested about policy discussions than I am about teaching discussions.

[00:06:00] Jeff Hittenberger: Well, there are a couple things that come to mind as you talk about the origins. One, just knowing you and how important your relationship, you and Dave have this wonderful mutually supportive, mutually empowering relationship that I have huge admiration for. It’s wonderful to hear how important that was to the start of the podcast. The other thing is the tradition has been that people come right out of a doctoral program into teaching in a university classroom, often without being equipped for the actual instructional part of it.

What I hear you saying is that that’s part of what you faced or noted at least in the beginning of your university teaching career, is that there wasn’t a great conversation, engaging faculty in the discussion of, how can I be effective at helping students learn the things that I know about, because I don’t really have either experience or instruction in the pedagogy of conveying that in a way that students can gain the knowledge and learning that we hope that they have. How did you begin acquiring the understandings of teaching and learning that ultimately would be foundational to this podcast?

[00:07:23] Bonni Stachowiak: The first book that I read about teaching was Ken Bain’s book, What the Greatest College Teachers Do. For those not familiar, that was the first and one of the few longitudinal studies about college teaching excellence. That was really formative to me. I can remember reading about these amazing teachers and then also de-think- creating significant learning opportunities, and just that there were– It really opened up my imagination for different ways of assessing, and assessment as both a means for measuring learning, but more so assessment as a means for actually facilitating learning. Those were some early books that I remember reading.

Also, I think that it wasn’t going to last very long, this paradigm, even if the podcast had never come in to play of just, these are amazing people. That whole model of when you walk into a room and make a lot of assumptions about people, like that– These were incredible people. My gosh, I’ve been doing it almost 20 years now, teaching in this context and now I get to see when they have babies. I get to see often times that they might get married. They might change careers entirely. It’s so fun to think about, wow, I could see you- why this would be an interesting profession. I’ll get an email. Hey, would you write a letter of recommendation? They were my student 15 years ago. Oh, that’s so rewarding.

I think that I was probably destined for a different paradigm than the one I had first started to see in those early, early years. The podcast to me was an accelerant to my learning, such that to have a conversation on average every single week. Now, sometimes I do two in one week and publish them over time. Since June of 2014, every single week, Jeff, every single week an episode has aired. That’s a kind of discipline that I feel grateful for. It’s pretty flabbergasting just to think about the generosity with which people have given of their time. Again, not just to me, but to this whole community, but boy, that caught me up quick. Now I’m just on fire for how much more, you know, could we all collectively begin to learn and wrestle with together?

[00:09:53] Jeff Hittenberger: That really is amazing, Bonni. Thinking back across your teaching career, you began to develop this depth of understanding of the teaching and learning process, implementing new ideas in your classroom, experiencing deeper connections with students and seeing them learn and grow in ways that went beyond what you might have experienced earlier. You sort of came to recognize perhaps there’s a community of people out there who would embrace a conversation about this kind of exciting teaching learning. How long did it take you to start finding that community of people who were interested in this topic?

[00:10:41] Bonni Stachowiak: Remember that Dave had had his podcast for three years by that point. I knew more about podcasting in general from his lessons. We are geeky enough to have actually gone to podcasting conferences. A couple of times, that kind of thing. One of the things they tell you about podcasts in general is that you should have an number of episodes in the queue to start. Some people who have decided to go back to the very beginning and start listening to June of 2014, they get the early impression that Dave’s the only person who’s ever on the podcast because he was on the first seven or eight episodes.

I guess- how long did it take? The very first episode was with a couple of librarians, and sadly one of those has passed away and the other recently retired. It’s a bittersweet thing, thinking back to their generosity. They talked on the podcast about personal knowledge management, and that was something I had done a lot of reading and thinking and practice on. That was a fun early conversation to engage in, and then another early guest was James Lang. People probably know his name even if they’ve never heard this podcast before, but not only was it so pivotal for me to meet him, but also how generous he was in recommending other people for the podcast, and he was generous to me.

He was generous to the listening community. I’m also now- I can see he was generous to some of those people who were also early in their own research journey around the scholarship of teaching and learning. Rather than, here’s the most well known person on such and such a topic, he would lift up the voices that maybe people hadn’t heard of at that time. Certainly looking forward to- all these years now they have heard those names, but that was a pivotal time for me. I picture- they don’t do this anymore, but somebody for a while on LinkedIn used to have a way of visualizing your network on LinkedIn.

I found it fascinating to look at, clearly I spent 10 years, 11 years with this organization and you’d see this bubble and all these nodes and all of the connections there. There’s this now higher education bubble. I tend to stay places a long time in case you haven’t figured that out. By the way, there’s some interesting bubbles from the early- just a couple where people have crossed over from computer training into higher education. In fact, I got to connect with someone from decades ago at a recent virtual conference that I spoke at. When I think about if I could build a network and think about James Lang’s node would be so big because there’s all these arrows pointing out.

I’m very grateful to him, but it was kind of- for a while there I got into practice, at the very end I’d be nervous. Oh my gosh I’d be so nervous. Really really hard work to do. I felt so vulnerable. It was not a comfortable thing for me for sure, but I’d forced myself at the end of every conversation to ask if any names came to mind that people had of other people who would be good for the podcast. I don’t even have to ask that question any longer, because I’ve got a Trello board, Jeff, just ridiculously long with incredible people that I hope to get to speak to for the podcast. That’s not a problem anymore, but at the time it was really fun to be in introduced to all these different aspects I’d never thought about teaching before.

[00:14:15] Jeff Hittenberger: You tapped into a community of people who really cared deeply about teaching and learning in higher ed, and over time, that community has just continued to grow through this process of networking and relationships that you’re talking about now.

[00:14:29] Bonni Stachowiak: The other thing that I didn’t realize at the time though, here I’m just terrified. Just terrified for being found out of like- you know, I don’t want to waste my time with you. I realized that at the time the book publishing industry hadn’t really caught up with how to market books, especially not niche books, those kinds of books about teaching and learning an specifically in a higher ed context. I quickly did discover that I feel like I’m just fumbling along, I have no idea what I’m doing, but actually there weren’t really that many people having sustained conversations about teaching growing an audience over time, such that I could get over myself a little bit and- not always but most days, well people would love to come.

Of course if you write a book on something you care about a topic, then here’s an audience that’s growing thousands and thousands of people that, well of course they would want to come and talk about the book. They would feel honored in many cases. Then I would find out through- because they would become friends with me, and say how nervous they were to come. To try to realize that sometimes I still think so many of us just get this perception that everybody else in the world knows what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who are just, oh wow I don’t know what I’m doing.

Then just to recognize– I really think we’re just all just continually trying to figure stuff out. No one really has it all together, as much as they might appear from a distance, and so that was something that slowly would start to become calming. Although I won’t kid you, it just depends on the kind of conversation as to what my levels of nerves might be, but yes, I did. I did find that those book publishing things I could have a greater appreciation for the ways in which a podcast and more non-traditional forms of scholarship could be a really good avenue for people, and that’s been really fun too.

Now it’ll get to, hey I find out that Kate’s going to come out with her book on kindness in our teaching, and then already- oh hey, when it comes out, would you be willing to come- oh of course, I can’t wait. Now I’ll reach out and go, oh I can’t wait to read that book, and would you want to come on and- it smooths out those conversations.

[00:16:40] Jeff Hittenberger: That’s awesome. I’m struck by the courage that it took to launch this, the vulnerability that it took to engage in these conversations, to invite people. I’m very interested in your comment on the fact that your guests felt a certain amount of vulnerability too. No matter how much expertise they might have, they’re putting themselves out there, but they’re tapping into a larger community as well by sharing through the podcast. What’s really amazing to me, and this I’m sure would be true for a lot of people in your listening community, is to think, to start a podcast is one thing but to sustain over seven and a half years and 400 episodes, how in the world does that happen?

[00:17:25] Bonni Stachowiak: Well back to the Baskin-Robbins story. I think it is one of my strengths to decide and be intentional about what’s important to me, and then to be consistent with that. I do think, Jeff, that there may be a tiny problem with my fascination with streaks. I also wear an Apple Watch. If those rings aren’t getting closed, I start to get- I got more than a year. We’ve been talking about COVID a little bit, if I decide I’m going to get COVID here at some point then it’s- probably not going to get that streak to continue there. I don’t want to treat life like it’s an all or nothing thing.

I do sometimes wonder, I’ve got a fellow podcaster, Katie Linder, and she now has decided that every holiday season she’ll take off two or three weeks and then in the summer she’ll take some time off too. I have started to- I decided I’d go at least to 400 and then I’d start asking myself some questions of how important is it really that you maintain this kind of a streak, but I don’t think it’s terrible. Something motivates you but just to not take it too seriously, but how on earth did I do it? I decided that it was important. I also decided that every episode wasn’t going to be exceptional. That to me if I tried to do that to myself, I just don’t think I would be able to have any sort of a consistent pattern.

Trying to be humble, recognizing that you don’t have to be just exquisite, oozing every single episode, but also that different episodes would speak different things to other people. There was an episode that happened where someone at the last minute couldn’t do the interview. That’s actually happened. As you can imagine that’s happened a lot over the years. I just asked Dave at the last minute, “Hey would you just come? Let’s just do something on course evaluations,” or whatever. It was a last minute thing and it turned out to be a really very well listened to in terms of the metric of downloaded, which is not that interesting of metric, but I heard from people- I got emotional on that episode.

I showed a lot of vulnerability and they were just pouring out to me saying, “Thank you so much for sharing the pain that you experienced.” It made me feel more like I’m not alone in the pain that I’ve experienced sometimes from this particular type of an instrument. That to me, to take the pressure off and go, they’re not all going to set off fireworks. I think that’s the only way you ever get a book written. I think it’s the only way that you ever do anything with any consistency is to recognize that, realistically speaking, it’s just not possible to expect that of yourself or of a craft like this.

[00:20:16] Jeff Hittenberger: That strikes me as also meaningful in thinking about our teaching, not putting the pressure on ourselves to think, hey, I’ve got to be brilliant every time I go into class. Then it starts to be that it’s about me being brilliant rather than about the learning experience, which is going to be some days I might not be super on, but I’ve done the preparation … create a learning environment where students can still learn and somebody might tap into what happens in that class more than when I’m at my most brilliant. The consistency that you have given us, and as a listener to the podcast, I think there’s so much variety in the kinds of episodes and even the nature of the conversation.

It lends itself again to our Baskin-Robbins, 31 flavors, different listeners are going to tune in to different kinds of guests and different kinds of conversations. What you have now offered is a library of 400 episodes that people have access to, that your website is a wonderful way for people to access different themes and different kinds of episodes, and pick stuff out that speaks to their particular need at this particular moment or what they’re interested in. Your consistency over these 400 episodes has created a really a library of really rich resources of many, many different kinds of- a four-year community. I really, really appreciate that.

[00:21:42] Bonni Stachowiak: When I was talking earlier about that graphical visualization of the network connections, similarly, I think about that in terms of this body of knowledge that you’re talking about. I didn’t plan this, and there were some iterations along the way, but when you talk about being able to search, I love the fact that the transcripts, they’re all searchable. You can go and through search engine optimization, whether it’s looking for a person’s name or looking for a topic, or even just a phrase or whatever, I love that that’s out there for discoverability.

The other thing I think about though, in terms of searching, that a lot of people don’t realize they think search is the answer, like Google is going to get us the answers that we need. By the way, that’s a very interesting way of coming at information, but to me, there’s also the element of discoverability. There are categories at the top of the website when you go to the podcast page, and then the taxonomy, that was not built from the beginning, obviously. To be able to go, oh, these kinds of things, or at the bottom, I’m looking at this episode and at the bottom, it says, here’s some other related episodes. Now, those related episodes are through an algorithm.

I don’t know how good the algorithm is, but to me it’s better than nothing. Then I do hand curate now, the way I’ve been doing the weekly emails for a year now. I hand curate through my own brain, because I can remember all 400 episodes and I go, oh, you know what? This reminds me of this one and this other one here. I feel like I’m getting both directions, whether I’m hand curating or whether it’s some kind of an algorithm that’s saying, these are probably related, based on the analysis that’s done through the technology.

[00:23:28] Jeff Hittenberger: Rich, rich resources. In thinking about these 400 episodes in these seven and a half years, what have been some surprises during that time?

[00:23:38] Bonni Stachowiak: This makes me think a little bit about an author, who is one of my favorite authors. Sadly, she passed away. Her name was Rachel Held Evans, and Rachel Held Evans is someone who wrote a lot about Christianity and specifically questioned some of the tenants that certain types of people that follow that particular religion take for granted. I think sometimes, we’re not allowed to ask questions, at least not out loud, that kind of thing. She was someone who boldly would do that, if in case someone’s not familiar with her work.

I liked that about her because I think whatever it is that we believe in life, boy, I think we should be able to ask questions and should recognize that any belief system, any values are rich and vibrant with questions. I just loved her courage, because she did suffer consequences for that, and lose book contracts and publishers. They wouldn’t sell her books in certain publishers. All this to say she had hanging up right next to her desk, a sign that said show up for the work. After she passed away, I’d see a photograph of her. That just resonated so much with me.

My friend Shannon that I work with, she got a sign for me to hang up in my office that says show up for the work. That’s just been bubbling around in my mind. Also as I mourn her death along with so many other people around the world, because show up for the work, to me that means show up– Talking about consistency there, but the work, the vulnerability. I think it’s really hard maybe for people to appreciate the vulnerability that I feel when I sit down and have a conversation, and just trying to settle my mind and try to be more at peace, but it doesn’t always come to me.

I can remember when I saw Peter Kaufman’s tweet, I didn’t know who he was, and I see his tweet, basically he’s dying. I mean he’s dying of cancer, and I have no idea who this is and I instantly go and I’m following the links and learning more about his work. He’s got a blog post about what he learned from his dog, about learning and about how to be a human and blogging about- he was a sociologist. Blogging really about the sociology of death and about- people always try to make you feel better. Trying to fix his grief as he grieves the loss of his teaching career and ultimately the loss of his life.

Jeff, I knew I wanted to talk to him. I knew he’d written a book about compassion in teaching and I thought- it was one of those things where I knew I wanted to ask him. It sounds weird, maybe, I knew he was going to say yes. I knew it before I even asked him that he was going to say yes. I knew that would be one of the most awkward conversations I was going to have, ever. It turned out by the way to not be. I think I feel in some ways I was equipped a little bit to be able to have those kinds of conversations, both– I took a sociology of death when I was in undergrad, so I’m sure I know everything about it and I just- but I mean to be present for another human being, that I felt like I had been decently equipped to be able to do that for him and allow him to share and have that legacy.

What am I surprised about? I’m surprised about how hard it is to show up for the work. Then I’m also surprised about, oh my gosh, how rewarding it is to show up for the work. Just this morning, I was feeling discouraged and I don’t even know if people are going to ever hear this part, because I messed up or the computer messed up, depends who we want to say messed up here. There was an interview that I recorded with three people and I still don’t know as of you and I talking today, if they’re going to come back and re-record or whatever. It’s the second time in all of these years that it just, it didn’t work.

That’s a short version of the story, and I literally just wanted to cry. I’m so sorry. Wasted your time during a pandemic. Ironically, they came on the show to talk about resilience and trying to unpack that word and like how hard this all is. Would you like to do it again because I messed up, or whatever? I just literally- just having one of those mornings where I thought, oh, I’m so embarrassed, I’m embarrassed and I’m ashamed and I failed. I don’t like this feeling. Then I got an email from someone who had gotten my weekly email and said, “I’m just so thankful for this.

You nourish me every single week with this. Thank you so much. Thank you doesn’t seem like enough.” I thought, oh thank you, because I needed to hear that. Showing up for the work, it’s really hard and I fail and I know I don’t get it right. There have been times that very publicly I haven’t gotten it right. That’s gone out to so many people, but my gosh, just to hear a little tiny slice that it mattered to someone, showing up for the work matters. Oh, so incredibly hard. The richest of all rewards.

[00:28:50] Jeff Hittenberger: What strikes me is how much deeper this goes, in terms of your connections with people and the relationships that arise out of these conversations, you could look at the title and see. Teaching in higher ed sounds fairly technical and an area of expertise for somebody, but you might not recognize that that’s going to lead you into relationships that go to some of the deepest places of your humanity and the humanity of your guests. That’s pretty rich. Tell us about some of your learnings. What have been some of the learnings of the last seven and a half years and 400 episodes?

[00:29:34] Bonni Stachowiak: You began today’s episode with the refrain, which has not changed in all of these years, that it’s both an art and a science. Obviously, it didn’t surprise me that much because I put it in the first show, but it just continues to surprise me. It continues to surprise me the extent to which there’s this incredible abundant research that is showing what a difference things make, whether it is culturally responsive teaching, or whether it is retrieval practice. There’s so much we are able to know about teaching and learning, and yet there is so much we are not able to know.

We’re not able to know it because it is so complex, but we’re also not able to know it because every person is unique. Every class is unique, and that I just find fascinating. It continues to surprise me and delight me with almost every conversation, just the extent to which- you you’ll never finish exploring that. You’ll never finish having conversations and being both challenged and encouraged that teaching is both an art and a science.

[00:30:51] Jeff Hittenberger: Beautiful. That’s part of what makes it such a rewarding calling, if you will, is we’re on this journey with our students, constantly discovering new things about ourselves and about them. Every new class and every new student taking us to places that we might not have anticipated before.

[00:31:12] Bonni Stachowiak: You said as we were getting started that you and I have been friends and colleagues for years now. What people won’t have known, because we didn’t read your bio in the beginning of it, that you have just recently returned to teaching after many ways of being in leadership positions. By the way, let’s not kid ourselves. You’ve been a teacher every day of your life, probably, but in terms of that official role and the extent to which you get to practice it, your own version of the art and the science. That’s been so fun for me, just to get to have those conversations with you, and seeing you both see it with a new delight and a familiar delight.

You spoke about Dave and my marriage. It reminds me that way of marriage. When you’ve been married to someone for a long time and that you still can be just absolutely delighted by them. I see you just with a childlike love and a very mature love all at the same time, of just this beauty that it is to get be any part of being a teacher and a learner. It’s so fun. Thank you. I’m so glad you were able to be a part of today’s conversation.

[00:32:21] Jeff Hittenberger: I appreciate you saying that, Bonni. One of the things that I see in you as a dean parallels that comment. In my view, an educational administrator at any level is most effective when they have the heart of a teacher. That teaching and learning passion still is central to them even if they’re not having the opportunity to be in the classroom right now. You have modeled that. You model it as a dean, that passion as a teaching and learning person is still central to your interaction with everybody, students, faculty, colleagues, and so on.

Bonni, where are we in this domain of teaching in higher education? There has been this lively conversation around this topic in recent years. You’ve been a key player in advancing that conversation. Is your sense that we in the sense of faculty and administrators in higher education in the United States are trending toward more effective, more inclusive, more empowering teaching?

[00:33:30] Bonni Stachowiak: Yes and no. We absolutely are having some incredible people come in and ask important questions, and challenge assumptions, and want better. At the same time, I’m completely dismayed with wanting to control what gets taught. Your background’s far more in K-12 than my ever has been and I’m just going, “Oh, my gosh.” It certainly is happening in higher education. I just feel that there’s more of a myopic view right now at what is allowed to be taught in classrooms. Oh, then also the other thing that– I don’t see too much of it because at the university where we work, people are not required to go to the workshops or whatever that we deliver.

I get to talk to people who love teaching and love growing our art and our science together in community. The extent to which people want to take their own power and their own privilege and just continue to expand it and say, “Buck up. You better–” My friend and a colleague at EdSurge, Jeff Young, he’s working on this great podcast called Bootstrap. This whole, like, “Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Some of this, Jeff, I had some of these assumptions coming in. I’ve shared before, in the podcast, I have vivid memories of my mom coming up when I was early in my college days with a credit card.

Back then, you’d walk into a physical bookstore and we’d load up all the books, every single book that was assigned for every single class. She would take the recommended reading and start loading up her cart. We would check out of there with, I’m sure what was a terribly- but I never knew. The credit card got– I never knew how much those textbooks cost. When I came into teaching, because that early, again, we’re talking almost 20 years ago now, but it was, “Oh, they’re not buying the textbooks because they’re lazy, and because they just want to eat sushi and they want to drink Starbucks coffee.” There was a lot of assumptions I had there.

It’s funny because I was just going for a walk with our kids and I was talking about basic needs. By the way, poor kids have to hear some of this stuff from their parents. My son said, “Mommy, don’t you have to have money to go to college?” Of course, you might have those assumptions if that’s how you went to college, and if you didn’t have to have some of those kinds of struggles. I hope we’re bringing more awareness. I’m very grateful for just one example, the real college surveys and study, and some of the scholarship around that, and the work that’s gone on there.

I think we’re getting better, but as we get better, so does the resistance to want to keep things as they are and keep excluding people. Keep making sure that the powerful have more power and we don’t have to acknowledge some of the disparities that exist. How’s that a halfway answer to a question? I don’t know. I’m hopeful and I’m devastated all at the same time.

[00:36:40] Jeff Hittenberger: On the one hand, it feels like we’re opening doors. We’re inviting students in. A greater variety, greater diversity of voices at the table. On the other hand, there are those who feel threatened by that, perhaps are somewhat resistant to the change that that represents. There’s constantly that tension.

[00:37:06] Bonni Stachowiak: We had a mental health workshop at our institution two days ago as of this recording. I really thought it was a very respectful conversation about the person who runs our counseling center saying, “Our jobs as faculty are to–” The way he said it may make people bristle, but bear with me, was to create stress for students. I went, “Excuse me. What is this?” What he meant, anytime you learn, you are stressed. Anytime you change, that is a stressor, and how wonderful that stressors can be as we stretch and we grow and we are transformed.

There is a beauty in not wanting to protect people from transformation, and yet, is it transformation or is it just devastation, when you think about- … work of Tressie Cottom McMillan around the cost of, especially these for-profit entities, where they’re racking up all these loans and not providing people with the support that they need in order to persist in their learning. It’s definitely a nuanced thing. I know, for myself as a leader and as a teacher myself, maybe I don’t want to fight this with all the aggression in the world. Maybe I could fight this by helping us see what we do share in common.

It helps a little bit settle the thing of, “We’re not saying lower the expectations.” We’re saying provide, equip people such that they might be able to not just meet those expectations, but I would even say, when we do that right, exceed them in ways that goes beyond even our imagination as having conceived of whatever the measure is in the first place. A lot of messy thoughts around hope and despair, all mixed together.

[00:39:15] Jeff Hittenberger: No, it’s a powerful vision. It seems to be that COVID, and the last two years of the COVID experience have added to those stresses for our students and for our faculty. What are your observations about how this COVID experience factors into the issues that you’re describing?

[00:39:41] Bonni Stachowiak: It is getting the vast majority of us to rethink things. Not all of us. Some people are hanging on strong, but the vast majority of us are really asking, “What do I really need for someone to get out of this class?” I love the idea that comes from Dan Levy’s teaching, where you have these airport ideas and he talks about five years out, you run into this former student in an airport and what do you want them to remember about your class? COVID has necessitated us asking the airport question with perhaps not knowing that that’s really what we’re asking.

COVID has, it has also created in some healthy ways and in some devastating ways, broken down some barriers. Everything from people becoming more human, I’ve shared that I know more of my students’ pets names, the dogs names than I ever have in my teaching. Yet, I also recognize, people who- it feels very invasive to have a presence in their home, or their lack of a home, students taking the class out of their car, or in the parking lot of the Starbucks, or the table sitting outside it because they can’t even go inside to stay warm. Breaking down barriers, some of which we should celebrate, and some of which we should mourn.

[00:41:10] Jeff Hittenberger: What are your thoughts, Bonni, on how we as faculty, and how administrators or institutions can support each other, can support faculty through the challenges posed by COVID?

[00:41:27] Bonni Stachowiak: When I think about what leaders might reflect on or might do better by in terms of COVID, it’s hard because we’ve failed. We have failed, we’ve made poor decisions, we’ve thought in dichotomous terms, we have not shown the kind of empathy that I know we’re capable of showing and yet, I think back to an episode long ago with Robin DeRosa, who told those of us who have this heart of a teacher like you spoke about earlier Jeff, you got to get into leadership, because how is it ever going to change if you’re not willing to get in there and make those mistakes.

We make mistakes in our teaching all the time, I help people realize that we make mistakes in our teaching. It’s safe there though, it’s safe and so- anyway. I want to be careful giving advice I guess, because it feels like it’s so easy to just assume you would have been able to do better and it’s just a devastating time. It’s really hard so I’m thinking about the email that I sent out in the last week where I shared- I like to collect a lot of different things and provide that, and one of them was a poem that I heard on the On Being podcast.

It’s by John O’Donohue, and just like I talked about with that episode, where I shared about course evaluations and was pretty raw and just so surprised and delighted how many people I heard back. Jeff, I heard back from more people than I have ever heard back on any email I may have ever sent. This really resonated. I think part of why it resonated both for leaders and also people who are not in a formal leadership position. I happen to think we’re all leading but not a formal leadership.

It was just the idea we need to be reminded to be gentle with others, to be kind, and we need to be gentle with ourselves. I’m just going to read a little bit of this blessing, a poem from, again by John O’Donohue, For One Who is Exhausted and I’m not going to read the full thing. I’m going to read a portion and then I’m going to invite people to go to the recommendations links and check out the full thing there, and then I’ll pass it over to you Jeff, for your recommendation.

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,

Time takes on the strain until it breaks,

Then all the unattended stress falls in,

On the mind like an endless increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim,

Things you could take in your stride before,

Now become laborsome events of will,

Weariness invades your spirit.

Gravity begins falling inside you,

Dragging down every bone.

Draw alongside the silence of stone,

Until it’s calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease,

Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually you will return to yourself.

Having learned a new respect for your heart

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

[00:44:55] Jeff Hittenberger: That’s beautiful, Bonni. Thank you so much for sharing that poem. I just want to thank you again for the gift that you’ve shared with all of us with this podcast and with the community that you have been building. In terms of recommendation, something that has been really helpful to me during COVID is walking. I have walked more during the last two years than probably at any other time in my life. There’s something about walking, not hurrying through the walk and not really doing it to get my heart rate, up but just walking and noticing and finding the most beautiful place- doesn’t have to be the most beautiful place in the world, but the most beautiful place around, available to me at the time.

Sometimes it’s just a walk around the campus, and being able to take in the world. I do love the whole step counting thing because it allows me to keep track of, am I doing enough walking to feel good and to process my day. It’s actually also during the walking times that I listen to podcasts such as yours, and On Being that you mentioned, and there is just a real refreshing that comes with that that I would highly recommend.

[00:46:23] Bonni Stachowiak: Well, Jeff, thank you so much for taking over the host role today and for being my friend. You’ve been a leader to me so many times and continue to teach me so much, and I’m just so grateful for today’s conversation.

[00:46:37] Jeff Hittenberger: Thanks so much Bonni, celebrating with you, 400 episodes.

[00:46:41] Bonni Stachowiak: There we go. Thanks to everyone for listening to today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. If you’d like to check out the show notes, it’s going to be an easy link to remember, teachinginhighered.com/400 as Jeff just said, and if you’d like to not have to remember to go check out those show notes for the great things like the poem I just read and the other recommendations that have come up, please feel free to sign up for the weekly email. You can do that at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Lots of great episodes to come, and just thank you so much for being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community. See you next time.

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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.