This past week I attended the campus presentation from Sarah Rose Cavanagh. She is a psychology professor and the senior associate director for teaching and learning at the Center for Faculty Excellence at Simmons University. Her research lies at the intersections of emotion, motivation, and learning. If you missed this presentation, here is episode 465 of Bonni Stachowiak’s podcast Teaching in Higher Ed, where she talks about her book Mind over monsters: Supporting youth mental health with compassionate challenges.
In her presentation and book, Cavanagh focused on issues relevant to student’s mental health. After interviewing many experts dedicated to supporting young people, she focused on the idea of “compassionate challenge”. Students need compassion, but at the same time they also need challenges to thrive in learning environments. Offering only compassion or only challenge is not enough to support student learning and to keep students engaged. “If you set goals that are not difficult enough, motivation dries up”. There should be no tension between compassion and challenges. While everyone knows challenges are necessary, it is possible to keep them both as priorities in the college classroom.
Ideally, we should design learning environments filled with compassion for our students, because by facing difficult pasts or currently going through stressful situations they have a need for compassion. Then, we need to help students take on challenges by facing their fears in a supportive way that does not stop their growth. Cavanagh told the story of a student who was required to give a class presentation, but as she started to present she was so anxious she felt she was having a panic attack. The professor understood the situation and was able to calm her down. Then the professor coached the student through the end of the presentation giving her pointers to keep her focus: “forget about the slides and just tell me the story of your research”. This is a great example of how to empower a student.
The last part of Cavanagh’s presentation was about faculty mental health. Faculty in higher education have many challenges and endless responsibilities with very specific deadlines. It is healthy to set boundaries with students (and everybody else) to be able to do activities to recharge. “For our students to be well, they need us to be well”.
Resources:
After a Tough Year for Classroom Innovation, It’s Time for a Reset – Sarah Rose Cavanagh
The Best (and Worst) Ways to Respond to Student Anxiety – Sarah Rose Cavanagh
Revisiting Mutualism: Loving Me, Loving You – Karen Costa
Recentering rest and joy in the teaching journey – Shalini Jayaprakash
Tips for Faculty: Dealing with Stress – Belen Garcia
Collective Care is Self-Care – Patrick Beauchesne
They Need Us to Be Well – Sarah Rose Cavanagh
Practices of Care – Shelly Jarenski
Photo by Izzy Majcher on Unsplash