Several colleagues emailed me the Inside Higher Ed essay, “Ratings and Gender Bias Over Time.” Though many of us already appreciate the ways gender bias operate in student opinions of teaching, what this article discusses is how women faculty members are harmed over time. Reflect on this: “Our findings show that women are rated significantly […]
What does belonging feel like? When a student walks into our classroom, how long does it take for them to feel: This is a good space for me. Or: This is a space where I won’t be comfortable and will never be able to take down my guard. Emerging from this long pandemic, I think […]
Good teaching involves tact and practical wisdom. It is often challenging to discern when a student–or a group of students–needs to be pushed harder, and when they need more support. Recently, I’ve struggled to balance an understanding of, and appreciation for, how much students have been through these past few years against a worry that […]
As we enter the mid-semester break, I write to offer two suggestions. First, now is a good time to think about soliciting informal feedback from students about the course. If you feel that aspects of the course aren’t going as well as you’d like, ask the students. After two years of hybrid learning experiences, I […]
NPR recently reported that the Covid pandemic may have a lasting impact on our personalities. At the start of the semester, I was optimistic that our students would have a more normal college experience than they’d had these past three years. While many signals of normalcy are reappearing on campus, all is not well. To […]
In a previous post, I offered some initial reflections on feelings of overwhelm I am noticing in students, colleagues, and myself. Recently, Inside Higher Ed released a report by Kristi DePaul called “The Engaged (and Supported) Professor.” The report itself is sobering, but also likely not surprising to anyone who has been teaching through the […]
This semester, I am teaching a course on what schools can do to support the mental health and social-emotional well-being of students. We recently finished discussing The Age of Overwhelm and are in the middle of Set Boundaries, Find Peace. I believe my students are taking away a lot from these readings. Students are more […]
In my previous post, I mentioned a strategy I recently used because I worried my class was getting into a slump. Almost every class will have these. Some are predictable–when the campus has a major event over the weekend, or when a break is approaching–but others are more difficult to anticipate. Regardless, good teachers develop […]
The semester has become very real for students. Managing a more active post-Covid social life with a full academic (and athletic) schedule has led many students to feel overwhelmed. While it can be frustrating to stand in front of a group of students who seem tired and who may have put your class down their […]
A question that many of us may have, especially those of us teaching in the humanities and arts, is about trigger warnings. If some of the content we are going to teach has the potential to trigger a student in a way that shuts them down, thereby keeping them from learning, don’t we have an […]