Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 550 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, the importance of transparency in learning and teaching with Kerry Mandulak.

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. Kerry Mandulak is a professor at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon in the school of communication sciences and disorders. As her LinkedIn profile states, which I love this LinkedIn profile, by the way, Kerry’s with me now as I’m reading this. This is the best.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:05]:

Get ready. She is unabashedly enthusiastic, which I can wholeheartedly concur with, a holistic admissions advocate and outspoken implementer of inclusive teaching practices, and is a and is committed to curiosity, collaboration, and community building. Her enthusiasm comes through in her teaching and her podcast interviews when she gets to try to convince all her graduate students that her areas of specialty are the most interesting and all of her undergraduate students that speech pathology is the best career there is. She’s been leaning into the topic for today’s episode, transparency in learning and teaching, sometimes and I should say often abbreviated TILT or tilt, higher ed, and alternative grading as inclusive teaching methods that deeply align with her beliefs about equity and inclusion in the classroom and within her discipline. As a person with ADHD, having multiple things to hyperfocus on is a strength that she enjoys, And currently, she’s an enthusiastic novice birder, an enormous fan of college gymnastics, and a certified volcano naturalist and volcano ambassador for Mount Saint Helens Institute. Kerry, welcome back to teaching in higher ed.

Kerry Mandulak [00:02:34]:

Thanks, Bonni. I am so happy to be here today.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:37]:

This is one of those times where I feel like I’m gonna forget that we’re being recorded because we do talk regularly off the air. And I was always reading your bio, which I know you recently refreshed. I was sort of chuckling to myself because I was thinking how much you have influenced me in my life, both my teaching and also just my hobbies. So I saw I think maybe maybe you already heard this on an episode or something, but I saw this social media post that said, you know you’re getting older when you take a sudden interest in birds. And I was like, well, I’m both getting older, but also being friends with Kerry. That’s kind of like the, you know, one of the symptoms of becoming your friend. And then I also was so fortunate to be able to work with a young man who has ADHD this last semester, and I was I wasn’t trying to be like, I know exactly what this is like for you or, like, I know all the things that there is, but it was so cool just to be able to shift our conversations from ones of I’m I’m imagining he gets a lot of just people who don’t understand it or don’t, you know, don’t have empathy or those kinds of things. So I was kinda, like, able to really channel.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:43]:

You’re not the only person that I know with ADHD. I actually work with many people who experience it, but just you were in my mind just thinking about that that asset based mindset and the ability to hyperfocus. And so I would talk to him about his superpowers, and it was just so fun, you know, as we wind down our semester here to get to have him really begin to take the what we were learning on firsthand. So I’m so glad that you are back, and we’re gonna start with true confessions because, you know, why not just why not start with something that could potentially be embarrassing? Who knows? But I wanna we’re gonna be talking a little bit about habits, habits of teaching, of course. But before we even get to that, would do you have any bad habits either from now or from long ago that you’d like to share? Any bad habit?

Kerry Mandulak [00:04:30]:

Well, I think one of my bad habits is the idea that I will feel like doing this thing I don’t wanna do today, tomorrow. That is never true. So whenever I am I have that sort of you know, one thing with ADHD is it’s such an interest based. Like, our brains are really only wanna do the things we’re really interested in. And while I’m interested in a lot of things, I’m also not interested in a wide range of things. And so when I come up to a task where I’m like, I don’t you know what? I’ll just do this tomorrow. I have to say to myself, that is that is a no. Just do it now.

Kerry Mandulak [00:05:11]:

So I think I have worked on that habit quite a bit. And, especially when things start to pile up and it’s really hard to prioritize and sort it out, it’s very easy for me to escape. So I have the habit of avoiding or escaping, and I have to be like, no. Just do it now. And I have begun to flip to be like, if I do it now, I will feel better. So I’m breaking the habit. Not not a 100%, but I’m I’m I’m working on it. But I never want to I will never wanna do it tomorrow.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:42]:

So good when we can kinda start to look at that self talk. My bad habit, which I am also sort of working on, but also I will say sort of not, is that at least once a night, I will typically wake up, have to use the restroom in the middle of the night, and then I’ll come back to bed. And you know what doesn’t put you back to sleep?

Kerry Mandulak [00:06:01]:

To shine

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:01]:

idea. To shine a bright iPad in your face. That that doesn’t put you back to sleep, especially if it’s something that’s more stimulating, but, like, candy kinda stimulating, like, social media or stuff like that. That’s never a good idea. So I will say one much better practice is long form reading. If it’s in dark mode, I will find that that will often be a much better choice for me, nourishment wise. And I would say the best choice is I love the app Calm. Calm is a meditation app, and I bought actually, at some point, I bought the life lifelong membership or whatever it’s called, so I I would just can live the rest of my life.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:43]:

And Elijah Goldstein, Batman, his voice, his meditation, his go back to sleep. That I mean, literally, I it’ll be, like, 30 seconds, and I’m back, you know, sound asleep or whatever. So bad habits, easy to make a different choice, but, you know, some nights, I’m just like, oh, but the candy, the candy, the the equivalent of candy while I’m sleeping is one of those things. Alright. So bad habits, good habits. We certainly know that we can fall into different sorts of habits, and I know that that you’re gonna introduce us if for those who who haven’t heard of it like me. A story from Gretchen Rubin about habits and how we connect to lightning bolts. So please Well unravel it for us.

Kerry Mandulak [00:07:30]:

I will tell you that I have been a long time devoted listener and reader of Gretchen Rubin’s work because she’s so practical and concrete and has so many sort of tips and tricks for life. And I am like, yes. Thank you for making something complicated so simple. So I have followed her work for her for a long time. And as a person with ADHD, it is hard to establish habits. It’s hard to be consistent. So I’m always fascinated by people who can do that so easily. So she wrote an entire book about habits.

Kerry Mandulak [00:08:03]:

It took me a while to read it, but I got there. And she talks about how we form habits and then how we can change habits. And so I recently wrote a manuscript about TILT, higher ed, and how I use it in my teaching. And it was a tutorial article, so I was excited to kind of teach other people how to do this. It’s not something we talk a lot about in speech language pathology within the higher ed context. And I opened it up with a story, And the story was this idea that we can especially with our teaching, we have these things that we do all the time that are sort of second nature. We know that they work because they work. If anyone were to ask, sure.

Kerry Mandulak [00:08:46]:

But then you have those moments where something changes in an instant. And that’s the idea of when you have a lightning bolt. The lightning bolt is what changes your habits. And it’s like you can’t ever remember what you did before or how you did it before. It just drastically changes it. And I am a bit of an all or nothing person, a black or white kind of I see things. There’s nothing in the gray. Right? It’s just on the outside.

Kerry Mandulak [00:09:13]:

And so I had a moment with my teaching where kind of everything changed. And as one of my friends who I’m in a faculty learning community once said, she goes, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And sometimes once you see something with teaching and so I changed the way I thought about this class that I teach, speech science. And I’ll I’ll just give you a little bit of background. This class is the class that typically is, the least favorite class of all undergraduate speech language pathology classes. Right? You can imagine it has math. It has science and people coming into our field to, like, work with kids or work with people who’ve had strokes or are like, wait. I have to do math? Wait a minute.

Kerry Mandulak [00:09:56]:

And so they’re often not particularly enthusiastic. Well, here comes the enthusiasm. Right? And so I’ve taught this class. I had to teach this class as an as a doctoral student, my very first semester of my doctoral program. And I remember what it was like to be that beginner. I hadn’t taken it since my undergrad. They said, hey, Kerry. Can you teach this class? I was like, of course, because I’m a new doctoral student, and I will do what you want me to do.

Kerry Mandulak [00:10:24]:

And they were like, you know, harmonics and formants and logarithms and this, and here are my notes. And I just nodded my head very enthusiastically. And I was like, of course, I know that. When inside, I was like, no. So I don’t remember any of it. So I got into class, and I really had to learn it from the ground up. So I was learning, you know, as we do with the students. Well, here I am 20 years later teaching this class, and let’s say about it was probably about 5 years ago.

Kerry Mandulak [00:10:55]:

I was teaching it. Really loved it. I love to tell the students, don’t be afraid of it. We’re gonna do great. You’re totally gonna get it. And I was very confident that all students were gonna enjoy this class. The lightning bolt was when I was actually sitting in a faculty search for something no stakes. Right? But I was in a, like, a sample lecture that this faculty search candidate was offering.

Kerry Mandulak [00:11:19]:

And he said, hey. I want you to, like he was a science educator. He’s like, I wanted to teach you how to put light bulbs and circuits together. So I’m like, here’s some light bulbs. Here’s a battery. Here’s some wires, and I want you to configure this so the light bulb turns on. And I was partnered with someone in my college who is a known audiophile, like a known electrical amazing he’s also an elementary ed teacher, but also and I was like, oh my gosh. How do I do this? How do I how do I put this together? And I’m sitting with Mark Bailey, who’s super smart and who knows all these things.

Kerry Mandulak [00:11:56]:

And I’m gonna look dumb in front of him. And and the the self talk that was happening in a no stakes situation was astounding. And I said to myself and, again, here it was. The lightning ball just got came out of the sky and hit me. And they’re like, what if students feel like this in your speech science class? When they come into your class and you’re like, you got this. No problem. Log of rhythms. And they’re like, oh, like, what if they had bad experiences with math or with science, or they know the person next to them is so much better at this than them, and they know they don’t have those skills yet.

Kerry Mandulak [00:12:33]:

And the the lightning bolt was like a lightning bolt of empathy. So that it came in, and I was like, what if students enter my class feeling like this? And that’s when I was like, I have to change how I approach this. And I had learned about tilt higher ed through a lecture that I sorta had gone to, and I was like, that was interesting. Filed it away. And now I brought it back out. And I was like, I have to be more transparent, more welcoming, more teach in a way where students feel safe not knowing things and are willing to work together to help each other and to be more in community while they are in my class. And I was like that I was like, never again will I think any other way about this class. And that’s that was the lightning bolt, the lightning bolt of empathy.

Kerry Mandulak [00:13:25]:

That’s what we’ll call it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:27]:

Yeah. I almost feel, though, that I wish I wish I was more of a linguist, but but you were empathetic in the beginning, but but it was a a little bit I don’t wanna put words that aren’t there, but surface level. You know, treating all of the students as if a pep talk would would suffice for any limitations they felt coming into the class. But I mean, you still seem as if encouraging, you know, that that you cared, but but Yes. So what what tell us a little bit more about how that empathy changed. How how did it become more rooted beyond just that surface level of cheer cheerfulness and encouragement and patting them on the head as they as they came in?

Kerry Mandulak [00:14:11]:

And being like, it’s okay. Well, I learned about this cognitive bias called the curse of expertise that I hadn’t because I I didn’t have words to kind of explain that I had this, like, you know, level of confidence. And and I guess knowing the information so deeply and having it have been so many years, I sort of forgot about that experience I had when I first had to teach it. And I think that was the place where I had to make that shift. And while I’d always been a welcoming teacher, I think, what it also encouraged me to do is to say, this can’t just be my classroom. I can’t be the only one who teaches speech science this way. I need to tell more people about it. And that’s really what that kinda, like I was very committed to, like, spreading the word about this.

Kerry Mandulak [00:15:07]:

Because in speech language pathology, it is a it’s a highly competitive field to get into graduate school. And it’s always been sort of touted that way. Like, that’s like the the stories is that, like, it’s so hard to get into grad school. You have to get all As and all of your undergraduate classes, and it creates this environment of competitiveness and anxiety with the students. And so I wanted to change that also. Right? It’s like, we can teach this in a way where different types of learners can be successful. And I think that we, as a field, have had many of sort of the same types of students coming through, the same types of students being successful. And on at the same time that I was having this lightning bolt moment, I was also studying and investigating and examining holistic review for graduate admissions, which is really to increase the diversity of cohorts of students.

Kerry Mandulak [00:16:07]:

And I was like, well, we can’t increase the diversity of students in our classroom if we keep accepting the same types of students. And the same types of students kept being successful. So that’s what really emboldened me to look at inclusive teaching in general, and TILT was something that really made sense to me. I was like, I can be more transparent. I cannot assume that students are coming in with a certain type of knowledge. I can think about or, like, certain experiences with math and science. My dad was literally the most like, I come from a family of enthusiasts. Right? But my dad couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about math.

Kerry Mandulak [00:16:45]:

I loved math because he loved math, and he taught me math. But not everyone has that. Right? So I think that taking that experience and being able to translate it for all different types of students that they could feel like they could come into this classroom and be like, hey. Multiple types of students could be successful here. And that way, I was also facilitating their success to get into graduate school, which is this other research that I was doing along kind of parallel to this. So sort of opening my eyes is actually more than just admissions. It’s about undergrad teaching. And then, also, could we do tilt in graduate coursework? That’s a different story.

Kerry Mandulak [00:17:22]:

But it wasn’t something that was really being talked about in my field. But once I get the idea and I’m ready to talk about it, everyone’s gonna hear about it. Well, thank you. And after just getting back from my national conference, I can assure you people also heard a whole lot about alternative grading as well. Yeah. So

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:42]:

I wanna hear more about TILT and have listeners get to discover more about it, but I wanna be I wanna begin at the end. Would you turn

Kerry Mandulak [00:17:49]:

Okay.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:50]:

In your article to the appendix? And would you read for us, but also talk to us a little bit about why you find it important to share what commitments you’re asking students to make and then to articulate what commitments you make to them?

Kerry Mandulak [00:18:06]:

Sure. I think I really, one of the acknowledgments that I make at the end of the paper is to one of my colleagues who’s, at the University of Minnesota. His name is, Ben Munson. And he and I and a number of people were having a conversation over email about language we put in our syllabi. And I’ve always, you know, considered the syllabi to be the sort of contract between student and teacher, and these are the things I’m gonna promise you that we’re gonna do, and this is what I expect of you. But his was so him. Like, I know him, you know, well, and I I was like, oh, this is this is Ben Munson on paper. And so I was like, I could do that.

Kerry Mandulak [00:18:49]:

I could be more of who I am in the classroom on paper in my syllabus as the first place that I change, like, how I approach teaching. And I definitely was a person who was using a lot of, like, requirement language. You will do this and attendance is required. Even though I was also the first person to be like, okay. You have a doctor’s appointment. No problem. Like, I was a very flexible, responsive teacher, but on paper, it didn’t quite look so. So that was part of my switch is that I was like, oh, I can actually just be who I am also in the syllabus.

Kerry Mandulak [00:19:23]:

So I changed from just having expectations for the students, you will do these things, to also saying, and you can expect this from me. Because we’re in this together. It’s a mutual respect situation. So what I wrote in my syllabus is the statement oh, this is so in the paper as a tutorial, I said, I try to make the syllabus inviting and a place where mutual respect is offered. So I included in this tutorial a part about expectations. And so I said, number 1, my expectations for you in this course are the following, taking an active, engaged, and intentional stance. I’ll read the abbreviated version here. Keeping up with the course schedule.

Kerry Mandulak [00:20:10]:

So asking questions, communicating proactively, participation in online activities. So this was for a course that I teach asynchronous. It’s fully online. So completing assignments, feeling the freedom to contribute your own thoughts and experiences with speech science and acoustics. It’s everywhere. I hope you feel a sense of belonging in the class that allows you to participate fully. And then I wrote, number 2, what you can expect from me. Sincere appreciation and willingness to understand, all caps, where you are, and then note then normal case, right now in 2024, metaphorically and literally.

Kerry Mandulak [00:20:51]:

So flexibility with due dates when needed. No justification or apology is required. And in quotes, I wrote, everything is figureoutable. That’s something that Marie, Forleo said. When it comes to my stance with class, patience, encouragement, and support to remind you that you are not your grades, that you can be, quote, good at math or science even if you’ve had experiences in the past that have led you to believe otherwise, and to help you practice understanding and learning new material. Mhmm. So that’s what I hope that they see that I’m ready and willing to be there for them. And when I did make that initial first switch to being more myself in my syllabus, I had a student at the very end of the semester.

Kerry Mandulak [00:21:42]:

She made a meeting with me, and I had not talked to her all semester. Again, online asynchronous course. And I was like, oh, no. I’ve really done it. What have I done that she wants to meet with you at the end of the semester? And she was like, doctor Mandelak, I just have to tell you, when I read your syllabus at the beginning of class, she goes, I cried. She’s like, because I didn’t realize, like, how it was so different from anything she had read. And she’s like, I just got to come to class every week, and I just got to learn. And I just got to relax.

Kerry Mandulak [00:22:12]:

And I just got to, like, be in the content. And she didn’t have to worry, and that was the first time that she’d ever had that. And I was like, oh, well, this Zoom call is going better than I thought it was going to. So I was like, wonderful. But that’s even if it one person feels that way, I feel like I’m totally satisfied. That’s what I want my teaching to be.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:34]:

There’s so much unlearning that has to happen in order for there to be a shared understanding. It’s really sad that the past experiences, you know, so we have to that’s what that’s what this particular body of research is all about. You’ve talked about how we might see tilt, and for listeners who this is new to, transparency in learning and teaching. You’ve talked about what that might look like in a syllabus. Tell us what it might look like in, say, an assignment.

Kerry Mandulak [00:23:03]:

So for assignments, I I think something that really resonated with me about TILT is this idea of the purpose. Like, why why do you have to do this assignment? Why does this contribute to your learning? And then also that connection to, like, what what does it do for you in your future career. And sometimes for a clinical program, like a clinical degree, it can be hard to understand why do I need to learn basic acoustics of sound, right, or some of these topics that seem like very much more basic science. And so for me, it also made me think, what is the purpose? Why am I having them do these things? And so for my assignments in speech science, it’s really all about practice. Right? So we learned this in class. The purpose of this assignment I have weekly assignments that are iterative. They’re, you know, given every Thursday. You come back on Tuesday.

Kerry Mandulak [00:24:00]:

The purpose is to practice. The purpose is to try this out. The purpose you know? And then I try to be as clear as possible about the tasks. Again, the curse of expertise is like, of course, they know they should do this. But, again, it just helps me be intentional to think about what are the tasks that they need to do to to complete this and not in a narrative paragraph. I want it to be like a to do list because that also helps my brain. And then what does successful work look like? I used to really be of the mind that I couldn’t show anybody successful work because then they would just copy it or then they would just but it turns out that’s just not how it works. Like, students hand in all different types of things.

Kerry Mandulak [00:24:43]:

So to either be very clear about where how and where they get the points that are the final grade or what does a successful piece of work look like. And so that for me was also, again, it’s just that lowering of nervousness about, am I doing it right? Do I know what I’m doing? Do I you know what? Just that cycle can you can go down that spiral really quickly. So I want students to not be ruminating at home being like, what does she want? It’s like, oh, this is what she wants. She wants me to follow these tasks, and this is how I’m gonna get my grade. And this is what I need to do to get, you know, the work done. Because I know what that also feels like. It doesn’t feel good to be wondering and trying to read someone’s mind. I was like, don’t don’t worry about it.

Kerry Mandulak [00:25:30]:

That probably won’t happen. So just I’m just gonna tell you it exactly. It’s kind, and it’s clear. Brené Brown says, I think, clear is kind. Am I right? I don’t know.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:40]:

No. No.

Kerry Mandulak [00:25:40]:

You’re correct. Yes. Yes. Am I the correct attribution of that quote? But

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:45]:

Yes.

Kerry Mandulak [00:25:45]:

We say that a lot around here in my program because it it’s true, and it feels, it feels better when we can be clear and then kind with each other.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:56]:

Talk to me more about practice. I Mhmm. I think it’s so vital, and yet I’m hearing so many people just really struggle with whether you’re trying to teach someone to write or trying to teach someone a new skill that there are so many opportunities for artificial intelligence or other means to interrupt those opportunities to practice. So how is or is not your changing about practice opportunities evolving? I I don’t is is it evolving, or have you are you also similarly confused in what this is all gonna look like?

Kerry Mandulak [00:26:34]:

I I think that I have the a little bit of the, luxury in this class is that when we start, we’re doing a lot of drawing of graphs and making, you know, the science visual, like the data visual. So I think that the the I you know, it’s hard to you can’t put a graph like that to chat GPT. Right? So I’ve realized, like, I recognize that privilege and that luxury I have. But for me, when I have to practice something and not when I’m trying to get it perfect. Right? Perfect is the enemy of us all. So I think allowing students to, like, practice, if you complete it, then you get full credit. I do also have the lecture of having small class sizes at Pacific University, which is why one of the reasons why I chose to work here is that I can look over each student’s shoulder and be like, okay. Can I can I take that one? Let me show the rest of the class.

Kerry Mandulak [00:27:31]:

Or, actually, can we can I show this work that’s not quite right? And it’s okay because we’re just practicing. Practicing feels so much safer. And then everything that we practice is on the exam. So there’s no surprises on an exam. For undergraduate students at a school that is we have we have, I think, over quarter of our students are 1st generation. We are an APC serving institution. We are an emerging HSI. I want to be engaging all of these different types of inclusive teaching, but, like, the idea of practicing and working together and collaborating to get to learn more, I think, or to learn in different ways, I think, is that’s what I’ve adopted.

Kerry Mandulak [00:28:13]:

And I, actually, I like to be involved in it. Like, I like to be able to be, like, involved in their work and not just evaluating it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:21]:

Yeah. And that you may you alluded to alternative grading approaches earlier, but how freeing when Yes. You you’re saying you don’t have to be perfect. This is practice, but your grading approaches are in alignment with that. I suspect you have to continue to reiterate that if it’s not something that’s widely used.

Kerry Mandulak [00:28:43]:

Yes. Absolutely. And I I am beginning to have opportunities to talk more and more about it at my university, but just also so within my own kind of smaller community here just at Pacific, but also having just been at our national conference, having just presented about it, continuing to do that sort of conversations about resistance because I’ve been there. I I have been there, but now I’m further along the journey. And I was like, hey. Come on. Catch up. Catch up.

Kerry Mandulak [00:29:15]:

Let me tell you. It works out okay. It’s not a risk. Students still do good work. The focus is on the learning, but I think that it does take students some time to trust you, that you’re like, wait. Is this really how this is? Or I really can ask questions about this, or I really can revise this and resubmit it? I’m yes. Let’s keep learning. You don’t have to get it right the first time because that’s that’s the hard part.

Kerry Mandulak [00:29:42]:

That’s and I think that’s where where it aligns, not with lower expectations, which is something I’m also addressing with my larger discipline. But, it’s not about lower standards. It’s different. And the focus is in a different place, not on the achievement, but on actually what they’re learning. Because I want our students to go out into the world and be the very best, you know, dedicated speech language pathologists that there are.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:09]:

You’ve shared a few aspects of transparency in learning and teaching. You’ve talked about TILT working to make learning processes more explicit, more accessible. You’ve talked about fostering that confidence, and you shared about that sense of belonging and welcome. One thing that hasn’t come up as much yet I would love to have you share about is how it helps with metacognition. How does the role of metacognition play in Tilt?

Kerry Mandulak [00:30:40]:

Oh, yes. I am I am consistently also trying to impress upon students how how important reflection is on their learning, about thinking about it, about revisiting, because students often want to just sort of move on. But the thinking about how they were successful or how maybe they weren’t successful to get certain things done, I do a little bit more with that at the grad the graduate level than I do at the undergrad level. But I think the thinking about how we for me, the metacognition has come around the idea of rigor. Right? So I think the competing intellectual and logistical rigor and trying to decrease logistical rigor while increasing or holding steady the intellectual rigor, I think, for me, that’s been a place where I’ve had to do some metacognition work. But for students, the benefit of thinking through it, talking through it, especially students who are neurodivergent, I I tell students first day about my neurodivergent status, the things I am good at, and also the things where I struggle so they know to send me a reminder email or they know so I’ve done I try to model some of that reflection, but also have students think through their bad habits, maybe. Right? Back to habits. Right? So thinking through that, what helps them be successful, what doesn’t.

Kerry Mandulak [00:32:12]:

Survey I sent out at the beginning of the term is, like, what’s your favorite class? What’s your least favorite class? Why do you think so? And, also, what do you care about right now, and how can I help you be successful? So that they’re thinking about it straight from the top, the top of the class. And I’ve often had students who say, thank you for asking. Because I think I’ve read a statistic once that how what low percentage of students think we actually care about their money, and I was like, oh, well, I have to change that. So, that’s a way for me to show care, but also to get them to think back about what has worked for them, what hasn’t so that we can continue to, like, lean into the strengths or to try to work on some of the places where they maybe have developed some bad habits or just habits that aren’t serving them, I should say.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:02]:

I’m going to link to the article to the tutorial that you wrote. Are there any other resources that you wanna point people toward who want to learn more about TILT and how it could impact their teaching?

Kerry Mandulak [00:33:14]:

Head directly to the website. Do not pass go. Whatever those monopoly phrases are. Right? Just go straight to that website. I think it has, the amount of resources there are, I think, all like, really where to start. But I would also recommend, the book that Marianne Winklevis, Allison Boyd and Suzanne Tapp wrote. It is, edited collection about transparent design in higher education, teaching, and leadership. The amount of pen marks and dog eared pages here, this has also been an incredible resource for me.

Kerry Mandulak [00:33:53]:

We’ve done faculty learning communities here at Pacific around transparent teaching. We had a grant where we got to mentor 20 instructors every year to change courses to transparent design. And so I’ve been deep in this work here at Pacific, but I think those two particular resources distill it down to a place that’s so accessible for a new person in that has never heard of TILT to someone who’s been teaching something like I did for however many years, and it’s like, how can I make these changes and why? That’s where I would go.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:27]:

Thank you so much. This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. And something you said earlier was really making me I I I must just be in the mood right now for things that are just those gentle reminders that we don’t have to be perfect. So I have a little project for people who both wanna focus on gratitude, but who want to do it in such a way that it doesn’t need to be perfect. So my recommendation today is to make a gratitude zine. If you’ve never heard of a zine before, it’s basically like a tiny magazine, but it’s one that you can print out and then you fold, and this is not complicated folding. This is a watch in a minute and a half video, and I made my zine in a relatively short period of time. The template that I used comes from Austin Kleon, and I’m just gonna share with you some of the pages.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:21]:

So I got to do a little self portrait on the front. I’m gonna show it to Kerry because I know she’s gonna really appreciate

Kerry Mandulak [00:35:27]:

Oh my gosh.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:28]:

Kinda forgot to put my glasses, but yes. And then you put your name, and then you open it up. He this is his words. It is possible to have everything and feel nothing. It’s possible to be alive and feel dead. Here are some exercises that help me cultivate gratitude and be awake to what’s good in my life. So then on the next page, there’s a quick ten things we get to list. I am thankful for, and he says at the bottom of this empty list for us to fill in, a simple list of 10.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:05]:

You can do it. Mundane and boring is good. So on this particular day, at this particular time, I just went as fast as I could. Ice tea, LaCroix, Luke and Dave taking the trash out, learning about Obsidian, that note taking tool. You see it comes up a lot. Hearing students say our mind is for having ideas, not holding them, a la GTD. Wicked movie, Hannah’s small acts of daily kindness and help. Dave setting up the humidifier for me, unprompted.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:42]:

Books. That was what I was thankful for. And then you go to the next page, and he has it structured where you can say, thanks to this person who taught me this. So I have just three quick reflections. And then I’m flipping over the page. What do you love to do? Not nouns or verbs or objects. Oh, sorry. Not nouns or objects, but verbs that give you joy.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:06]:

So I’m gonna put in the show notes a place where you could go to download the template, to print it out, do the little folds, and then if yours is like mine, it’s not gonna be perfect. This is gonna be a little crooked and you’re not gonna care about that and it’s just gonna be a little fun, just a quick thing you could do. I think mine took me about 6 minutes 6 minutes of cultivating gratitude. I cannot say enough good things, and then I came down here and got to have this wonderful conversation with Kerry. So she is gonna close us off with the things that she would like to recommend today.

Kerry Mandulak [00:37:38]:

I buddy, first, I wanted to say I’m really grateful for the opportunity to, I’m glad you got on board with Merlin App and Berning. But that makes me very happy. We’re close to the same age, so we are at the age where this appeals to us. So to us. That’s not my recommendation, although I managed to slip it in there.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:59]:

Yes. Yes. You do.

Kerry Mandulak [00:38:00]:

I have two things. I’m gonna start with 1 from the conference that I was just at. You posted a pic or maybe you send it to me that you were like, this is the face that I think is a very Kerry face, and it was the face of me hugging someone I had just met for the first time, but that I have known for a year. So she’s part of my faculty learning community, and she’s a person where we realized we were both weird in sort of the same ways. And we were so excited for our weirdness to collide in person. And we had been talking about giving each other a long, awkward hug at the conference when we met. So my recommendation is if you’re gonna hug someone, if it’s okay with them, it’s okay with you, really give them a good hug because a good hug makes a big difference. Again, I’m an all or nothing person.

Kerry Mandulak [00:38:47]:

I’m not gonna give you a nothing hug. It’s gonna be an all hug. And I got to hug a lot of really good friends and connections and people I haven’t seen or people that mean a lot to me at this conference, and it was just it really filled me up along with, you know, presenting and sharing information, all the professional things we love to do. It’s the personal connections that really make a difference. So if you’re gonna give a hug, give a good one. That’s my first recommendation. My second one, because she said I could do 2, is the book A Bit Much by Lindsay Rush. I found Lindsay Rush during the pandemic when I was doing a lot of scrolling on Instagram for information about all sorts of things and feeling sort of alone.

Kerry Mandulak [00:39:30]:

And she just started writing poems, like, 3 or 4 years ago. At the age of 37 is when she started. And this book is a compilation of her incredible Instagram account. And her Instagram account handle is a is a little irreverent, but I’m gonna say it. It is all one word. No spaces. Mary Oliver’s drunk cousin. And that made me laugh a little bit.

Kerry Mandulak [00:39:58]:

And so I just started to read. And what she initially started writing poems about was she would see a kind of fantastical, that’s a word, a fantastical, like, headline that just made her laugh in the newspaper, and she would write a whole poem about it. But she’s also then, you know, written a lot about just, like, strength and resilience and, again, being a bit much. Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit much, so I think that resonates. But here’s the poem that I wanted to share with you. And the title is, about £500 of pasta was found along a stream in New Jersey. Some people might remember that news story. It was in USA Today on May 5th 2023.

Kerry Mandulak [00:40:43]:

So here’s the poem. And do you think your dreams are too big, too strange, too, forgive me, impossible? If if a quarter if a quarter ton of noodles can swim upstream, so can you. If spaghetti and macaroni and ziti can beat the odds, they’re not alone. And if this unexplained carby miracle puts a fire in your belly to follow your whimsy down to the river for a nonsensical feast, you don’t need to think too too long or hard about it. You just have to bring a fork. You just have to show up hungry.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:26]:

Love it.

Kerry Mandulak [00:41:27]:

I love pasta so much, so it also you know? It resonates for me on many levels.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:32]:

Oh, I love it.

Kerry Mandulak [00:41:34]:

Her book is just super fun to read just in, like, little bits and pieces, and good for her for, like, having a whole new career at the age of 37 and writing poems that are really funny but also really touching.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:47]:

I am a huge lover of pasta as well. I do have to be cautious because I have some blood sugar challenges, and it is so fun because they opened up a somewhat new Italian restaurant near us, and they’ve got a wheat pasta that I don’t even feel like I’m having to do any, like, any like, make the healthier choice. It’s so good. And it every time I test my blood sugar when it’s over, it’s all I just I’m so happy because I can keep doing that meal, and they have the best Caesar salad too. It’s so good. And that’s just fun when when you find something that you love that much, but also that works for your for what you need to nourish your body. It’s so fun. Oh, it sounds so good.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:28]:

More poetry.

Kerry Mandulak [00:42:29]:

Absolutely. More gratitude. Love poetry, so I thought I would bring a good poem to read.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:34]:

I’ve got poetry to read. You’ve got a gratitude zine to make. And, Absolutely. All of us have a lot more we can do around transparency in learning and teaching. Thank you so much for this generous conversation.

Kerry Mandulak [00:42:46]:

Thanks, Bonni. This was really fun.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:50]:

Thanks once again to Kerry Mandelak for joining me for today’s episode. Today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed 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. Thanks to each of you for listening. Now is your moment. If you’ve yet to sign up for the weekly emails from Teaching in Higher Ed, you could get the most recent episodes show notes as well as some other goodies that don’t show up in those show notes. Head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:27]:

Thanks 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.