getting out of quicksand
some days, i feel sticky, heavy, sluggish. the reasons change, and sometimes i can’t pinpoint the reason at all. but when the heaviness descends, it activates a whole sequence of things:
aversion to the important tasks i have that day
aversion to any planning at all
guilt about not working when other people “have it worse”
shame about my own inability to “be resilient” and bounce back
feeling like i have to “catch up” the next day
avoiding my desk because i have so much to do
REPEAT
it’s a tough way to feel - especially when you have things that need to get done. but it’s also a normal way to feel when you’re confronted with a lot of insecurity and loss and fear and sadness and grief. so, i have a two pronged approach to it:
accepting that heaviness is part of the cycle and i don’t need to “fight it” all the time. i will literally put my hand on my heart and say: you are allowed to feel this way. this is allowed. there is nothing to fix here.
figuring out what i can do, and doing that on purpose.
the dual approach means that i’m not forcing myself to move out of a feeling any faster than i naturally would, if i move out of it at all. i meet myself where i am, and work from there, instead of hoping that a magical new to do list will reinvigorate me and i’ll be even MORE productive than i was before.
there are a few things though that support me when i’m in the second phase - trying to figure out what i can do.
try doing something that moves my body - if i’m in my bed doom scrolling, it’s really hard to get out of that mindset. even if i move to my desk, i’m still likely to be consumed by the heaviness, just on my laptop and not my phone. so if i wake up feeling heavy, i try and shift to do something physical. a workout is ideal but lol that doesn’t always happen, so i will also clean up dishes, pick up clothes from my floor, start a load of laundry, clean a toilet, stand up and work on a puzzle. anything to get the body moving.
start with the easiest thing - easy wins feel good. checking things off the list feels good. the hard thing is normally the hard thing for a reason - warm up to it. and even if you never get to the hard thing, at least you did get some things checked off.
pick a task, any task - sometimes i will run my finger up and down my to do list with my eyes closed and just pick something to try. you could work from the bottom if you normally start at the top. sometimes a random chance helps shake up the energy a little.
try a new workspace - couch office isn’t my preferred working space, but if the choice is between nothing and couch office, couch office it is!
work on a long term project that isn’t urgent - sometimes we need a little hit of creativity, and projects in the planning phase can often give us that. try it.
set a timer and try again later. sometimes i just need the morning off - i decide to try again at noon, or 2, or at 4 pm. be present for the time off, and be open to the idea that you might be feeling differently when you try again.
the heavy feeling is a lot like quicksand - the more you fight against it, the quicker it draws you in. the more you tell yourself that you can’t have any feelings, the more you’re going to feel them. but if you take a few deep breaths and stop thrashing, it makes it easier to find your footing. you can be where you are without it pulling you under. and eventually, something, someone might come along and throw you a rope to get out of it - and that person could even be you.
You need to address Charlottesville in your classroom
For years, I worked at a Teaching and Learning Center, observing teachers, building workshops, and giving instructors places to learn and grow as instructors. One of the most common concerns that came up across the disciplinary spectrum was how to effectively address the "real world" in classrooms, or whether you should just stick to the subject matter at hand.
Let me state it as clearly as I can.
YOU NEED TO ADDRESS NATIONAL EVENTS OF SIGNIFICANCE IN YOUR CLASSES.
The rest of this post goes through the research that supports that declaration, as well as strategies to use in your own classroom to discuss unsettling, difficult, or controversial things. I know, from both a student and instructor perspective, that these conversations can feel awkward, hard, uncomfortable, and maybe even unsafe. Many instructors receive little to no training on how to weave these topics into a class. This problem is even more pronounced in fields, like STEM disciplines, that can appear distantly related to current events. I offer these strategies in the hopes that more instructors will feel empowered to have these difficult conversations, and more students will feel visible, seen, and supported because of it.
A BIT ABOUT MY TRAINING AS AN INSTRUCTIONAL CONSULTANT.
I am, as usual, completely indebted to the University of Michigan's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) for training me as a teacher, and heavily influencing my own teaching and consulting philosophy. I am deeply committed to the idea of inclusive teaching - which briefly stated means that I strive to address and incorporate the variety of needs, backgrounds, learning styles, and abilities of all my students. Put another way, I do not expect that my students stop being the complex, intersectional human beings that they are when they enter into my classroom, just as I do not cede my own complexity when I step behind the podium. I'm drawing heavily from their website here, and will be linking to their resources directly - but I'm not sharing anything that I haven't used as an instructor myself, and supported other instructors in using across a wide range of disciplines.
ACKNOWLEDGE THE INCIDENTS, AND REFER STUDENTS TO THE PLACES ON CAMPUS AND BEYOND WHERE THEY CAN FEEL SUPPORTED.
This is the key intervention, and the bare minimum, of outreach that instructors need to incorporate into their classrooms. I acknowledge that not every instructor has the luxury to scrap a day's worth of programming to facilitate a discussion on a topic, but almost every instructor I know has the ability to open class with a short statement, or send an email, or post on a course website.
Research indicates that students find it helpful when instructors acknowledge that a traumatic event has occurred. For more, see this paper on how instructors responded to September 11th and Hurricane Katrina, and how helpful their students found those interventions to be. Faculty and instructors are the parts of campus that have the most day-to-day contact with undergraduate students, and students reported that instructors who addressed the events, offered support in the form of campus resources, and information about national resources and charities were very helpful. Most helpful was acknowledging that focus and attention might suffer, and verbally reminding students that material would be covered again, or that extensions could be given.
This is not to say that you need to change your course planning, provide direct emotional support, or engage your students in a lengthy discussion. By simply acknowledging the events and reminding students of the resources available to them, you make your classroom a more inclusive place.
PLANNING FOR A DIFFICULT DISCUSSION
If you feel called to discuss difficult topics in your classroom, there are a variety of techniques and strategies that you can implement to make sure that all students feel safe and supported. CRLT has a lovely guide that walks you step by step through this process, but I'll call out a few of the most important points below.
Decide what your purpose for having this discussion is. Are you having this conversation to draw links between current events and your course material? Are you sharing information that is not circulating regularly in other venues? Are you hoping to build your students' skills in critical thinking, or civil discourse?
Decide on ground rules. These rules can be set by you, or if you have time, you can set them together as a group in class. Many instructors also have ground rules for discussion in their syllabi - this can be a great time to reiterate those.
Give everyone a focal point. Especially in instances where reporting or writing about a topic might be biased, providing everyone in the group with the same text to read and discuss can help to ground the discussion in specifics, rather than in impressions or subjective stances.
Build in ways for everyone to participate. Not every student might feel comfortable sharing verbally to a large group. Try using a Think Pair Share structure, where students discuss in small groups before reporting out, or provide notecards or paper for students to contribute anonymously, or non-verbally.
SPONTANEOUS DIFFICULT DISCUSSIONS, OR HOT MOMENTS
Despite our best intentions, sometimes difficult conversations or "hot moments" can come up in class discussions. Again, CRLT has some really great handouts and general discussion on this topic but here are a few really important things to know.
Give yourself a chance to process what has happened. There is no universal rule that you must respond to every comment or question as it happens. Count to ten to yourself, as you decide whether this is something you want to address on the spot, later with individual students, or something that you'll come back to at a different time.
Give your students a chance to process what has happened as well. If a difficult idea or comment has been made, it can be really helpful to give students a minute to process what has happened as well. A quick "minute paper" where they respond to the incident that is never collected can give students a chance to process their responses before moving on to a whole class discussion. Questions could be "Why is this topic so difficult to discuss?" or "What do you feel you cannot say right now?"
Depersonalize comments as much as you can. Rather than continually referring to what Student X said, or the comments that Student Y has made, try rephrasing to center around the idea, not the speaker. Referring abstractly to the "debate about {blank} topic" or "the use of x word in y context" can help reduce defensiveness and redirect to the ideas, not the speakers. You can also add in other perspectives that have not been brought up to expand the conversation even more.
THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE WHEN ADDRESSING DIFFICULT TOPICS IN CLASS
You are not there to impose your views on your students, or required to give a soliloquy about current events with your students. You are there to give your students tools and support to make sense of how their educational lives intersect with their personal lives. Even if all you do is acknowledge an event and direct them to resources, you are still drawing connections between the educational space and the rest of their lives. As long as you proceed with that directive in mind, you can't get too far off the path. These conversations are hard for all of us, but the more you can help to draw connections between your class, your subject, and your discipline, and the lives your students live, the more you will help them create an integrated, critical view of their position in the world.