Welcome to Week Six of Once More, With Feeling.
BE THE SPARK - Thoughts on Teaching and Learning
Three quick thoughts for you today…
Today at 3pm is the launch party for LiberatED, educator and activist Dena Simmons’ new endeavor which unites the aims of social emotional learning with racial justice and healing. Join in!
Yesterday The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice released a report that is perhaps our first evidence not on the wider question of how college students have been affected by the COVID pandemic, but rather how specifically have students who contracted COVID been affected?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results are dismaying….click below to read the thread.
I am participating in a Chronicle webinar later in August about what our students will need this fall. I will definitely be adding these concerns to the list. What else should I address? Let me know in the comments below or by email.
I was honored to be asked by Times Higher Education to write a (very short! 900 words is hard) piece on online teaching and chose to write about emotional labor in online teaching and how to reduce it while still being a responsive instructor. Check it out here.
HIVEMIND - On Social Neuroscience & Our Synchronous Selves
As the old saying goes, when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, and when you write a book about neural synchrony and emotional contagion, you see that theme everywhere you go.
Here, in Book Four of the Expanse series.
MONSTERS - Thoughts on Uncertainty, Anxiety, and Mental Health
My new book on student mental health taps three sources of evidence: Voices (qualitative student interviews), Science (from the literature), and Solutions (expert opinions on how we proceed from here).
A few weeks ago I introduced you to one of these experts, the psychologist and Dean of Research for Arts and Sciences at Tufts University Ayanna Thomas.
This week I’d like to introduce you to my friend and colleague Esteban Loustaunau.
Esteban is a professor of Spanish at Assumption University in Massachusetts, where he is also Director of a second year experience program and founding Director of the Center for Purpose and Vocation. A Latin American Studies scholar, his first book is Telling Migrant Stories: Latin American Diaspora in Film.
In the book interview we talk about purpose, vocation, and how one of the sacred obligations of higher education is to help students find their callings. That as their mentors and guides we need to help them realize that you don’t come to college to suffer, that it can actually be about finding a “horizon of significance,” a way that your skills can meet the needs of the world and you become infused with purpose.
You can read some of his writing on higher education here.
EMOTION & MOTIVATION - Feeling and Striving
One of the fun, if disorienting, aspects to writing a textbook is discovering how many of the concepts you thought you knew like the back of your hand are in fact not true, or are at least vastly oversimplified. (This happens because they get repeated so many times in such a variety of contexts that you feel they must be true—in a few weeks my intro psych students will know this as the availability cascade—which is another HIVEMIND phenomenon).
For instance, I’ve been buried deep in the literature on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the dichotomy isn’t really a dichotomy, extrinsic motivation works well for certain tasks and especially in early stages of new learning, and there may be a strong Western cultural bias in our formulations of intrinsic motivation (which emphasizes autonomy).
For another, did you know that Abraham Maslow didn’t portray his hierarchy of needs in a pyramid shape, and that the pyramid probably came from a Business Horizons article and then went viral? (Sorry, but HIVEMIND again).
And even Yerkes-Dodson’s curve of optimal arousal for memory and learning might not be safe?
Humbling stuff.
INCIDENTALLY - Midsummer Produce
My friend Heather and I like to banter about the fact that once July wraps up, she’d like to extend summer forever whereas I’m ready to pull on a cardigan, pour some spiced cider, and get back to school.
But where I can’t argue with her is about the glorious nature of produce right now, and how dinner every night can be just a series of vegetables with a little salt, fat, acid, and heat.
Here are two of my favorite new recipes in this vein. Sheet Pan Gnocchi and Roasted Carrots with Fennel and Mint. Or you could do like my mum always liked to do in August when it was too hot to cook—spread some pesto on some soft pitas, slice up some heirloom tomatoes on top of that, sprinkle some feta cheese on top and give it all a quick broil till the tomatoes start giving up their juices and the feta roasts a bit.
Stay tuned though, because in early October I’m sure to wax rhapsodic about fall cooking—soups and cinnamon and things pumpkin.
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Here is the full description for the Chronicle webinar—let me know in the comments what you think students will need this fall!
Supporting Student Learning in the Fall
As many colleges plan to reopen classes and campuses this fall, administrators and faculty members expect a tough reentry for students. After a period of living and working at a distance, it will require a period of adjustment for undergraduates. What does that mean for academic and student-learning outcomes? After a time when grades and testing were often relaxed, how can colleges best reintroduce educational norms, while understanding that we remain far from normal? How has the pandemic reshaped how faculty should approach assignments, assessments, and grades? Hosted by a Chronicle journalist, this session will feature an expert panel to discuss how to help students adjust to a more standard academic environment and educational experience.
Summer Plenty and Tackling Old Myths
Sarah, am I the only one finding this odd in the description of the Chronicle session? "how can colleges best reintroduce educational norms...." as if those educational norms shouldn't be completely interrogated in the shadow of the pandemic now that COVID-19 has laid bare all of the inequities inherent in so much of what we do and the spaces we inhabit. "Interrogating educational norms" is the session I want to attend! :)