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Course frame work: the cornerstones of kindness

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Course frame work: the cornerstones of kindness

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petra.metzger@protonmail.com

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https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/trauma-informed-teaching-and-learning/

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[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 335, Mays Imad joins me to talk about trauma-informed teaching and learning.

[00:00:12] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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[00:00:20] Bonni: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I am 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.

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Today's guest, Mays Imad, is a neuroscientist and professor of Pathophysiology and Biomedical Ethics at Pima Community College, the founding coordinator of the Teaching and Learning Center, and the Gardner Institute Fellow. Dr. Imad's current research focuses on stress, self-awareness, advocacy, and classroom community, and how these relate to cognition, metacognition, and ultimately, student learning and success. Through her teaching and research, she seeks to provide her students with transformative opportunities that are grounded in the aesthetics of learning, truth-seeking, and self-realization. Mays, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:01:38] Mays Imad: Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

[00:01:40] Bonni: I have really enjoyed getting to learn more about your research and about your work on trauma-informed teaching. Let's begin by having you share a little bit about how you first got interested in this type of pedagogy.

[00:01:54] Mays: Thank you. I teach a variety of science courses and a lot of times when I start the semester, I talk with students about the science of learning and how we could regulate our learning. I spend a lot of time trying to help students become captains of their own learning journey if you will. Over the years, I noticed that sometimes students would be taking an exam, and they would leave the exam and would leave pages empty.

Eventually, I did a focus group where I asked the students, "What's going on?" because sometimes I would run after them and say, "Just write anything. I know you know the material. I know." I did a focus group. I asked students what's going on, and there was a student that said to me that they freeze. Sometimes they see something and they freeze and just nothing could break that.

It was that moment that I had an aha moment that took me back to graduate school in my own journey as a student. I remember in graduate school, this was during the invasion of Iraq, where my family's there. I remember studying and being in study groups and so on and going to take the exams and just having that same reaction.

At the time when I was a student, I would often think, "Maybe I just became stupid. Maybe I'm not cut off for this. Maybe, maybe." It would take me all those years and for my students to point out to me that no, this was a traumatic reaction. I began to work with the students on the importance of recognizing when we have a reaction that blocks our ability to engage, to learn, to reproduce what we've learned, so that's, in a nutshell, how I became interested in it. It was my own journey but really amplified by students' experiences and students' guidance to help direct me in this direction.

[00:04:13] Bonni: What I find so touching about your story is that this is not the happy part, you experienced this trauma, and then all this time goes by, presumably you're gaining a lot cognitively and perhaps gaining some confidence in your own academic abilities after that point, but it comes full circle around to you becoming the student of students. That they could teach you something like that that you were unable to see with your own eyes is really a beautiful, touching thing.

[00:04:46] Mays: Absolutely. It's been healing. I remember the first time I had that aha moment and how I sat down and I reflected on how many times in graduate school I thought I need to drop out, maybe I became stupid then and how much I wish someone has said to me, "No, you're experiencing traumatic stress and trauma" because when we see that "The deficit is not me, there are variables that are impacting me. My physiology's acting up," we can have compassion for ourself. I always say that the students, working with my students, have been healing and very empowering.

[00:05:37] Bonni: Let's spend a few minutes now looking at two different types of trauma. Let's first look at, if there are any, the common types of trauma that our students may have experienced that might trigger a similar experience as you had, and then let's then talk about the dynamic of the COVID pandemic because that really, to me, and what I'm learning so far is that rather than it being an individual trauma, it both is, but it also is a collective trauma. Could we start with just some of the patterns that we might see of traumas our students that we would be teaching might have experienced?

[00:06:15] Mays: Yes, that's a great question. If we are to be honest with ourselves in higher education, we would know that our students were experiencing trauma and chronic stress before the pandemic. We know that trauma can be physical. Getting into a car accident can be traumatic. Witnessing someone getting into a car accident can be traumatic, but so is experiencing poverty and oppression, and uncertainty.

DACA students and all of the uncertainty and the marginalization and just this agony were undoubtedly experiencing traumatic stress but also their friends because when I see that my friend is experiencing oppression and I am unable to help out, that can also be secondary or vicarious trauma. We know, actually, research from, for example, Nadine Burke, who is the Surgeon General of California, who wrote the Deepest Well, and she did research.

She and others have done research on the adverse childhood effects. We know that a lot of our students were coming to us carrying the impact of adverse childhood effects. We also know that there's rampant loneliness and anxiety, and there's this obsession with perfectionism. The students were definitely experiencing, let's say, an above-average stress. When that stress is day in and day out, whether it's coming from socioeconomic factors or racial inequality, the day in and the day out, the chronicity of it becomes really overwhelming on our brains and our overall wellbeing.

Now, that's before the pandemic. The pandemic has introduced another set of challenges. A lot of traumatologists clinicians have been saying that all the ingredients that would cause somebody to experience a traumatic event are there. We are social creatures. When I see somebody at the store, I smile, and I want to chat with them. Now, what has happened is we have become just reflexively averse to being close to each other. There's also the uncertainty of what's going to happen.

What's going to happen in terms of income, in terms of health? Without any forewarning, we've been confronting the vulnerability, our vulnerabilities, our mortality. We're doing a lot of this in a vacuum, so yes, we're experiencing this collectively, but also, there is a social isolation, and that is on top of what was already there for a lot of our students and a lot of our colleagues. It's definitely challenging.

[00:09:34] Bonni: We have looked at some of the types of traumatic experiences our students may have and then the ways in which COVID has compounded those things. I know we have more to explore in terms of trauma-informed pedagogy, but let's begin with a definition. What can you tell us about trauma-informed pedagogy as a way of thinking about our teaching and a way of approaching it?

[00:09:59] Mays: In its simplest definition. Basically, it is a lens. I the teacher or as a faculty developer, I view my colleagues, they come to me with a background, with experiences, and those experiences are going to impact how they interact with the materials, with their classmates, with the classroom, their ability to engage, to learn, to thrive, their overall well-being. I recognize that, and I'm able to recognize when they are triggered, when they feel disengaged.

I also am able to recognize it in myself that we can't give what we don't have, which is why part of this trauma-informed lens is the well-being of the teacher as well. I recognize it in myself, I recognize it in the students, but I don't stop at recognition. At the heart of experiencing trauma is lack of safety, lack of agency, lack of feeling connected, so I'm going to be intentional as a teacher to help students feel safe beyond the physical safety, beyond the emotional safety, safety holistically.

I'm also going to help cultivate a connection between me and the students, among the students. I'm also going to help the students feel empowered, give them a voice and a choice. Those things, ultimately, will not only help the students feel engaged and learn but also, it can lead to recovery. I often talk about the concept that I've been working on, the learning sanctuary where the classroom, whether virtual or physical, can be a place where the students come in and learn to cultivate the world within but also connect with the world without. It is through that we can begin to grow and heal.

[00:12:13] Bonni: I was thinking back to the closest thing I think I've probably had to trauma, and that was that we had a very challenging time having children. There were many years of lots of medical adventures. At the time, I wouldn't have described myself that way. I would have thought that this was just normal. This is just a lot of doctor visits, but it's very normal. Then every year, we would go back to the doctor's office, we still do now.

They have Halloween little get-togethers. They call them the Miracle Babies, and the kids all come dressed up in Halloween costumes. It's adorable. I would give a hug to the doctor, and I would smell the smell of his disinfectant on his coat, and my heart rate would instantly elevate ... go, "Oh, okay" because I'm not literally afraid of him, but your brain doesn't work. It doesn't necessarily work that way.

The reason I bring that up is not to share a needless personal story but to try the best that I can to attempt to have greater empathy for students to try to think about what it would be like to have had that in my entire life. When you mentioned about experiencing poverty, experiencing racism, et cetera, and trying to really connect with what that might be, the other thing that, as you were sharing, I was thinking about, I know we exchanged a little bit about this over email,

I was joking. I don't know if you got my joke over email. Sometimes it doesn't land, but you said that these can sometimes be controversial things. There's two things I'd love to bring up and then hear your response to. I certainly won't be in support of either of these things but the idea that there are trigger warnings that we might give to students, for example, a student has been raped, perhaps give them a warning before you assign reading that depicts a rape scene, for example, just one of many.

There's that part of it and then there's this, that they're going to become too soft, that they just won't have the tenacity or the grit to keep going. Again, I'm not an advocate for either of those things, but I wonder, though, if you would share just a bit on your reflections and response to people who are concerned about either one of those things.

[00:14:32] Mays: Absolutely. First, I want to thank you for sharing this story, and I want to acknowledge that we can heal from trauma. I talk to the students about how trauma affects the brain and our body and our ability to learn, but the brain is also plastic and resilient and brilliant. Healing from trauma begins with the awareness. I think it's wonderful that you noticed that your heart rate goes u, and then you're like, "What's going on?" It's this "What's going on?" without judgment that can help us understand ourself and why our body is scared so we could negotiate with the brain to calm the body down. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:15:20] Bonni: Oh, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. I'm a big believer in naming things. Exactly what you said, you name it, how do you name it without that judgment?

[00:15:30] Mays: Let's take a backward design approach to this. I the teacher, my goal is to help the students learn and apply the material so they could go on and thrive in society and become a contributing citizen, and so on. I am interested in, what is the best, the most effective, humane, fun way to get to that, to get to my goal, to engage with students, to help them feel empowered and liberated, and so on?

Knowing what we know about the brain, knowing that we are not just thinking machines, but we're feeling machines capable of thinking, as Antonio Damasio says, we can't separate our feelings from our thoughts. We also know that we process information at an emotional level before we process it at a rational level. If I'm sitting in a classroom and somebody presents something that triggers me and I don't have the tools to negotiate with my brain because I just haven't learned, that experience can trigger me, and it can hijack my ability to engage with the material.

Then I is a teacher, what have I accomplished? Nothing. It's not about babying students, it's not about rigor, it's not about content, it's about being strategic. How can I engage them so they can engage with the materials? It's giving them the opportunity to pause and prepare for what's to come let's say if it's something that's going to be triggering. To your second question, that this trauma-informed pedagogy is going to coddle them, it's going to prevent them from having grit, on the contrary, it's actually going to help them empower the students to learn about the biology of learning so they could regulate their emotional response, so they could own their experience.

I often say I'm subject number one. I go back to my experience as a graduate student and how often my visceral reaction was "I think I became stupid" and then I look at my students and how often they say, "I'm sorry. I can't focus. I'm sorry." It's this self-blame, internalizing, it's a deficit model where in reality when you say to the students or yourself that "My brain is scared, my body is scared," that's not going to mean that okay, take the day off, but it's like, what can we do about it?

A lot of my students, overwhelmingly, they are earnest, they work hard. They don't want a free ride or no deadlines. On the contrary, when I say, "Do you want an extension?" they're afraid that they're going to fall behind. This trauma-informed pedagogy, really, it's a way to help the students regulate their emotions so they can engage with difficult concepts and learn and become complex problem-solvers.

[00:19:09] Bonni: Tell us a little bit about that two things are not mutually exclusive, this idea. You were already starting to introduce this, but we can both have a quality education while also utilizing this approach. Would you speak a little bit more about-

[00:19:27] Mays: Yes. When I know myself and when I know what triggers me and when I have that self-awareness, I can then learn to work with that so I could focus on the materials. That's me as a student. Let's talk about me as the teacher. I teach, for example, pathophysiology, and there is a lot to cover. The students are going to go become nurses and doctors. For me, I have 15 chapters to cover, I can't say, "Well, I'm just going to cover 5 of them." I have to negotiate with and really interrogate, what does it mean to cover 15 chapters for the students to memorize and regurgitate or for the students to perhaps go in-depth with 5 chapters, with me walking with them so they could learn how to, on their own, work through the other 10 chapters?

I think, with respect to this quality education vis-a-vis trauma-informed pedagogy, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the rigor, the content, assessment, and I often think about where this notion of rigor comes from, who dictates what is rigorous and what is not? The group of people who dictate it, where is that coming from? We haven't really interrogated it in a way that tells us that "Oh, it's evidence-based. There is a longitudinal study that shows the quality of life improves if you adopt this type of rigor."

Also, assessment, are we assessing so we could give a numerical number so we could weed out, or are we assessing so we could incentivize students to learn the material, to grab the challenge so they could learn it? I'll give you an example, and I've been using this trauma-informed lens before the pandemic, but I recognize that failing can be jarring. Actually, there's a form of loss. I, the students sit and I study, and I spend a lot of time, and then I take the exam, and I fail, and there is this experience of loss and even grief, and then there is no closure, oftentimes.

What I've done in my classes is if you want to learn it, still, let's learn it, and then you could retake a different form of an exam or you could- What happens or what has happened over the years is I've seen students get an 88 on an exam and come to me and say, "That 12 points, I want to get that." Not because they're competitive or they're perfectionists, but they want to learn what they missed.

That's not coddling the students, that's an approach that's empowering the students to say, "No, I'm up to the challenge. 88 is great, but I want to learn what I missed." It's empowering the students, it is taking away, it's helping them deal with perhaps the loss or the grief of what happened if they fail, and it focuses on learning, it's learning-centered. Are we compromising the rigor? Not really, because the focus is still on the material and on the students learning it in a deep and meaningful way.

[00:23:18] Bonni: Oh, I so appreciate you saying that. I'm reminded of a young woman, who stayed- I keep joking I have my main class via a web conference and then I have what I've started to jokingly call the after-party.

[laughter]

Essentially, what I started to do is be an audiobook for them if they'd like to stay around, and I share a few stories, and I also shorten some of the parts I think are less important for them. Anyway, she stayed after the after-party and wanted to chat with me, and essentially, she wanted to share that she had not finished an assignment on time. I have not been particularly strict about deadlines, so I was interested in where this conversation was going to go. She said, "I saw the clock, and I was surprised and embarrassed that I had forgotten about it."

She had something else that had happened or whatever, and then she said, "I could have done it. I could have just rushed, and I could have just not done a good job but done good enough that I know it would have met your expectations." I'm doing a version of specifications grading, and I think it's probably the closest although I don't tell them that's what it's called, but here's the bar, no surprises, and so there's nothing-

She knew she could have checked my boxes, but she said, "I just really wanted to learn from it" because they're all assignments where they're putting together tools that are around a book called Getting Things Done, so they're figuring out how to- In this particular case, it was for setting up a workspace, it could even be a workspace in transit that was a backpack, for example, but just a space that would help them be able to be at their best in an environment that they created for themselves.

She could have done it in 10 minutes before I was there, but she said, "I really wanted to do that. I really did." That's exactly what you're talking about where it's not about the grade, she knew she could have gotten the grade, but she actually wanted to create that for herself and then also have the learning, which is just so rewarding, so, so rewarding.

[00:25:16] Mays: That's a beautiful story. Don't we want our students to- This is an example of a student that is falling in love with learning and learning more and going deeper. Don't we want our students, who are the future of our humanity, to have that? You're telling me the story, and I just feel my heart just expand that you cultivate this environment where a student feels empowered to make the decision that "I want to go deeper. Good enough is not what I'm after."

[00:25:55] Bonni: Yes. I can't say that I accomplish that as often as I would like to but boy, is that an exhilarating feeling it actually happens that they do want to go deeper? I also don't want to necessarily put that entirely on me. I'm always working at becoming better. I love that Steven Brookfield talks about becoming, and he's been at this, he's written 30 books about teaching, and he's still is becoming, and I love that as a frame.

We do the best that we can and then we also recognize just the situation and how much students could potentially, in another time in their lives or at a time in our lives, really be able to go that deeper and right now, that it just isn't possible for them. It doesn't mean we necessarily have to have failed as a teacher when that doesn't get achieved, it's all this collective thing. If we can even just get them excited about learning in another class, it doesn't have to necessarily be that the world wraps around us.

[00:26:52] Mays: Yes. I remember a student who was a single mom, and she was working two jobs, one in the evening and one actually at the school, and she had almost a perfect attendance, but she would sleep in the class, probably catching up on her sleep, and she would email me and ask questions about the assignment, and she was not going to pass. I will never forget an email I received from her, and she said, "I know it's not me, I know I am capable, but the time is not right." I was and I am so proud of her for recognizing that it's not a deficit that she has, that the circumstances right now and this pivot in "I know I can do it, the time is not right" is really powerful. It's an internal shift about "I am capable" versus this deficit, self-image.

[00:28:00] Bonni: I wish I could go back, too. I don't often have students fall asleep in classes. I think I've learned some approaches to prevent a little bit of that, but oh, gosh, 12 or so years ago, I didn't have the greatest reaction to a young man, honestly, from my class, and I asked him to leave, and it was rather rude and embarrassing for him. I don't love that memory.

The only part I can take out of it is to talk about it, because I think we can learn from our own failures and also from other people's failures, so anyone hearing me tell that story that may have had similar feelings but just hasn't had it happen yet, not a good choice for a number of reasons. It's like so many things, whether it's academic integrity, whether it's falling asleep in class, any time, we make that about us.

"You fell asleep in my class," "You cheated on me." I look at the failures that I've had over the years, they're almost all centered on not being able to get out of my own context and understand others' contexts. It really comes down to that almost every time. I love where I am today, I love that I can hear you tell that story and instantly go, "Oh my gosh, she must have been so tired." She doesn't have to become a rude person in this story, and you don't have- just that it's so easy for me to enter into that space.

I also, of course, want to ask myself, and we should be asking each other, I must still be missing some of it, so it's that idea of becoming, where are we missing it that we aren't able to see how tired our students must be, of course, in another context, though? Let's look at what trauma-informed teaching is not. We've looked at what it is, could you share a bit about what it is not?

[00:29:58] Mays: Yes, of course. I think there is this notion that I need to be a therapist, a psychologist, that I am going to be a healer, and that is not what trauma-informed pedagogy is. You don't need to be a healer, you don't need to be a certified psychologist or a psychiatrist, we just need to be in tune with the context of the students we are inviting into our classroom and also to ensure their safety, their connection, their sense of belonging, their self-empowerment.

Also, trauma-informed pedagogy is not about telling the student, for example, "You can do it, you're resilient, pick up yourself by your bootstraps, you've got the grid, et cetera"

because in that case even though I have good intentions and I want to help the students and encourage them and so on, I'm also perhaps putting pressure on them. How do I know they can do it? That, inadvertently, will take away their choice and could put pressure on them.

There are examples of what to do and what not to do when you're using a trauma-informed lens. One of them is this, as said, that the teacher has to also be in tune with her or his or their own trauma and what triggers them. It's really important that when I use this trauma-informed lens, that I also ensure that I don't carry the burden, I am not solving the problem. The problems are sometimes too difficult to solve. If somebody is getting evicted from their home, I can't solve it. It's important to also protect my own heart that I don't, how should I say it, take on the emotions of the students. Then in protecting my own heart, I can continue to give, I can continue to help the students.

[00:32:11] Bonni: Oh, it's so important. Before we get to the recommendation segment, I would love to hear you reflect on some intersections, the intersection between equity, justice, and trauma-informed pedagogy.

[00:32:25] Mays: Yes. That is a great question, Bonni, when we use this trauma-informed pedagogy. I'm also going to challenge that we think about trauma-informed education so it's not just in the classroom, it is a school approach, it's an institution approach. When done correctly, and when I say correctly, I mean not in a way that we check a box. "We did this, let's go on to the next shiny object."

It is about restoring justice at the individual and at the community level. When a student has experienced trauma and they come to our spaces and we help them reclaim, for example, their sense of self or safety or connection, it is about starting that healing process. With respect to "What does this have to do with justice and equity?" we know we have overwhelming data that shows us the impact of microaggression, racism, poverty on the development of the individuals.

A lot of times, students come to us carrying all of that with them. I also want to say that we have data and research that shows the impact of trauma not just on individual, not just on generation, but also on intergenerational. I, the educator, if I am interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion, I can't separate that from trauma-informed education because for a student to thrive, we need to approach education holistically.

It is not possible for us to compartmentalize in a way where I leave everything behind, and I come to the classroom, and I just focus on that. If we want the students to integrate what we teach them in the classroom and with the real world, we also ought to keep in mind that they are coming with their world, with their background, and their context. I see a direct connection between trauma-informed education and justice and equity.

[00:34:56] Bonni: Well, I feel like I haven't timed my recommendations quite as well as I am today. I just pulled it up and went, "Wow, it's like I planned it this way, but I didn't."

[laughs]

[00:35:07] Mays: Oh, wow. Okay.

[00:35:08] Bonni: This is the time in the show where we each get to get to our recommendations. A lot of times I put them in, in advance. I just pulled it up and boy, does this fit? You're going to like this one. I think if you're not going to like it, you're going to think it is a very good example of all of the things that you've brought up for us today. This is a tweet from someone named Hannah, and she tweets, "My mom passed away last weekend, I emailed my professors to ask for a 24-hour extension.

Professor 1 only gave me 12 hours, Professor 2 told me to do the assignments for the week when I could and asked if I wanted to share my favorite memories of her instead." Be like Professor 2. I shared the story about the student sleeping in my class, so I certainly have failures and have moments I'm not proud of, but my goodness gracious if your student emails to say, "Mom passed away," assignments is the last thing that we should be thinking about in that particular situation. Be like Professor 2.

[00:36:11] Mays: Not even mom, if a student emails and says, "My bird passed away," there's a relationship there, and let's believe that the loss that they are experiencing has prevented them from doing the assignments. Let's honor the loss, and let's honor the relationship.

[00:36:33] Bonni: The next one is a little bit on a much lighter note. I want to thank Bonnie Powers, who emailed me, "By the time you hear this show, it will have been quite some time ago, but I've recommended a television show called Schitt's Creek before. I also then recently but not when you're hearing this recommended a humorous clip that looked at the Department of Education as one of the characters in that show versus teachers and this back and forth that was very humorous."

Bonnie Powers sent me a wonderful video that was put together by the cast of Schitt's Creek, I believe that it was possibly Teacher's Day. It doesn't necessarily tie to a specific day, but it's really just them celebrating teachers and professors. If you watch the show, you've got to go to the show notes, and you've got to watch it because it's just so much fun. I don't want to give too much away, but all the characters that you've come to know and love are there.

They also do a musical number, which is just so much fun, and there's a special musical guest that shows up. Thank you so much to Bonnie Powers for reaching out. I got it this morning, and you just totally brightened my entire day. It started out right just with getting to see that. I always love it when people share things. Speaking of which, Bonnie mentioned that she had a Wakelet.

Wakelet is a set of bookmarks that are done in a visual way, and I want to recommend that you go over and check out Bonnie Powers' Wakelet that she has from the Antioch University Academic Technology Support Services Department. There's a lot of really good resources in there for our teaching. Those are my recommendations. Mays, I'll pass it over to you for whatever you'd like to recommend.

[00:38:16] Mays: Thank you. The first recommendation I have, it is On Being. It is an interview with Krista Tippett with the late Irish poet, philosopher-theologian John O'Donohue. The title of the interview is the Inner Landscape of Beauty. That interview, I must have listened to it right now, I don't know, over 20 times. In it, he talks about the pedagogy of inferiority. What does it mean? He talks about beauty and our sense of beauty, but in it, he talks about, what does it mean to cultivate the home within for our students where they're able to see their own beauty reflected around them? I highly recommend that one. That one is just timeless for me.

[00:39:14] Bonni: Oh, it sounds amazing. I love On Being. I love a lot of podcasts. I just can't listen to them all anymore. With the commute time cut off, there has not been a space in time that I have managed to insert as much podcasting listening as I'd like to do. I'm so looking forward to listening to that. Thank you for that gift.

[00:39:32] Mays: Yes. I also want to recommend a speech that Dr. King gave to a high school, and it's called What is Your Life's Blueprint? In this speech, he talks about the concept of somebody-ness. He tells the student, "It doesn't matter what you do, do it with pride." I give this exercise, actually, to my students. I don't show them who wrote the speech and I ask them, "Please don't go google it just write about it." Then I have this activity, "Who do you think wrote this speech?" and they love it, they connect with it instantly because they see the struggle in the students that he was speaking to. Again, his advice is timeless.

[00:40:26] Bonni: That sounds like a wonderful speech and also one that would apply to the class that I'm teaching, so you might have just given me another great asset to add to that class in future iterations. That's so great.

[00:40:39] Mays: My last recommendation, it's the show Ramy.

[00:40:45] Bonni: It's so good.

[00:40:48] Mays: Yes. The show is witty, and you're crying in one scene, and you're laughing in another scene. He takes these really difficult concepts that I think or it's my experience that the Muslim community have struggled with, and he humanizes them. One episode, in particular, where we get to see the behind-the-scene life of his uncle and the uncle is sitting outside eating the cake and crying, that episode, I think, will stay with me forever because it just humanized the struggle of people who let alone the community doesn't accept them, they're having a hard time accepting themselves as well.

[00:41:38] Bonni: That episode and that character, in particular, it just was so incredibly powerful and then to be thinking back to my own family and some intergenerational stuff with regard to what I would most loosely try to describe as toxic masculinity, you're not allowed to cry if you're a boy or a man, all of this stuff, and it makes me so grateful for my husband because, somehow, he managed to get out of everything in life and realize that it is quite normal and beautiful to be able to cry as a man, as a person.

[00:42:10] Mays: As a person.

[00:42:11] Bonni: Yes, and then to know that our son won't likely have- I say he won't likely but then, of course, it's bigger than just our family. Our society, really, has still continued to try to tell people what amount of emotion is acceptable to bring, based on one's gender identity. Oh, that was such a powerful one, yes, such a powerful one. Oh my goodness, you have so many good recommendations for us. Mays, I'm so glad to be connected with you. I hope this is just the beginning-

[00:42:40] Mays: Me too.

[00:42:40] Bonni: -because I really have learned already in just such a short time so much from getting to study some of what you've written and some of your videos I will be linking to a lot of it in the show notes, too, so people, if they'd like to learn more, can go because you've got a lot of great resources out there for us.

[00:42:54] Mays: Thank you so much. I'm very grateful for your time, your stories, and your humanity.

[music]

[00:43:03] Bonni: I'm so thankful to Dr. Imad for joining me on today's episode. Mays, it was just a pleasure getting to know you, both during the episode and outside of it. I'm so glad to be connected with you. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you would like to receive the show notes for today's episode, they may very well be already in your podcast player, but if you'd like to access them you can head over to teachinginhighered.com/335.

You also can sign up for the semi-regular, I say with a little hesitation, update on Teaching in Higher Ed with the show notes of a recent episode and an article written on teaching or productivity written by me. You can sign up at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

[music]
[00:44:03] [END OF AUDIO] The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. 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.

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Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning, with Mays Imad - Teaching in Higher Ed

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00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 335, Mays Imad joins me to talk about trauma-informed teaching and learning. [00:00:12] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. [music] [00:00:20] Bonni: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed.

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https://www.compassionatemind.co.uk/

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The Compassionate Mind Foundation was founded as an international charity in 2006 by Professor Paul Gilbert and colleagues including Drs Deborah Lee, Mary Welford, Chris Irons, Ken Goss, Ian Lowens, Chris Gillespie, Mrs Diane Woollands, Mrs Jean Gilbert and other supporters.

The Compassionate Mind Foundation promotes an evolution and neuroscience informed approach to compassion which now forms the basis of a psychotherapy (Compassion Focused Therapy) and Compassionate Mind Training. The last 10 years have seen an expanding evidence base for both the therapy and Compassionate Mind Training for the alleviation of mental health difficulties and promoting wellbeing. It is now being used internationally in hospitals, prisons, schools and businesses. One of the greatest challenges facing humanity is how to stimulate compassion ways of thinking and problem solving for the benefit of all.

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Compassion, Safe Relating and World Change

Warm greetings to you all.

We have been working with Compassionate Wellbeing to collate and provide materials which we hope will be helpful during this difficult time.

Paul Gilbert is creating a new lecture series, entitled 'The Nature of Compassion, Fear, Safe Relating and World...

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The Compassionate Mind Foundation was founded as an international charity in 2006 by Professor Paul Gilbert and colleagues including Drs Deborah Lee, Mary Welford, Chris Irons, Ken Goss, Ian Lowens, Chris Gillespie, Mrs Diane Woollands, Mrs Jean Gilbert and other supporters.

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https://blog.mahabali.me/

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https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/

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We craft winning websites for all different types of businesses. Revolutionize your biggest marketing asset, your website. Craft CMS Partner.

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https://hybridpedagogy.org/pedagogy-of-kindness/

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This piece was revised and expanded for a book from Hybrid Pedagogy, Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Collection, available now in paperback and Kindle editions.

In the past two years, when I've been asked to sum up my approach to pedagogy, I've said "kindness."

I didn't always think this way. My graduate education encouraged me to think of students as antagonists, always trying to get one over on their instructors. I was urged to be on the lookout for plagiarism, to be vigilant for cheaters, to assume that the students wouldn't do the reading, and to expect to be treated as a cog in a consumerist machine by students who would challenge their grades on a whim. I was once advised by a senior graduate student to "be a bitch" on the first day of class so that my students never wanted that version of myself to show up again, advice that I dutifully repeated to several of the graduate students who came after me. I was a stickler for deadlines, and memorably once refused to excuse the absence of a student who was battling a burst pipe in his house when class was in session. I look back on that now and wince.

I gradually learned, through a great deal of trial and error, that this combative way of approaching teaching was counterproductive at best, destructive at worst. Students didn't communicate with me easily, since many of them didn't see the point. They knew (I realize now) that I approached them with suspicion, and so returned that sentiment in kind. It quickly became clear to me that I needed to build relationships, not defensively prevent them from forming, and that trust was a vital part of creating the circumstances under which learning could happen. There was no space for trust to grow in the learning spaces I'd been trying to create, and so I learned to ease up, to let go of rigid control I'd tried to impose upon the classroom, and to make room for the unpredictable and unexpected. I thought, twenty-three years into my teaching career, that I was doing a pretty good job. And then I went to the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute at the University of Mary Washington in the summer of 2017.

The entire Institute was predicated upon the concept of kindness. From the pronoun buttons available at the registration desk, to the probing questions of the session leaders, to the time people took, one-on-one, to talk about syllabi and assignments, there was an ethos of care running through the whole four days of my residency. I had signed up for the Intro track, and had expected to spend my time evaluating digital tools to bring into my classroom. I did do that, but first I was asked to think about why I needed those tools at all, whom they would serve, and how I would build in accommodations for students with disabilities. My fellow attendees and I were constantly asked to consider why we were doing things the way we were, and what subtextual messages we were sending to our students about who they were. I took a good long look at my syllabus, and realized I had communicated everything in it from a position of absolute authority. The language I used to describe the college's Honor Code, for example, expressed the suspicion that everyone was going to commit some awful academic offense at some point, and my attendance policy made no room for the idea that my students were adults with complicated lives who would need to miss a class now and again.

Why? Why did I posit my students as passive novices who couldn't contribute to their own learning? Why did I require students to jump through hoops to prove that they deserved an extension on a paper? Why did I dock points if my students missed three classes in a term? No one had ever asked me to defend my pedagogical choices before, and once they did, I found much of my pedagogy indefensible. I felt regret and no small amount of embarrassment. My teaching was undone by the presence of a question that was never articulated quite this directly but was everywhere around me:

Why not be kind?

And so I chose kindness as my pedagogical practice. Telling people this has often elicited a baffled response. Kindness is something most of us aspire toward as people, but not something we necessarily think of as central to teaching. In part this is an effect of the pressures that are brought to bear on our classrooms from outside them, symptomatic of a nationwide clamoring (in some circles, at least) for standardization, testing, and rote assessment. Instead of kindness, we're more likely to hear about standards and rigor. (The national professional organization to which I belong says that " good teaching entails accuracy and rigor," but never mentions compassion, for example.) And when we are urged to be kind within an educational setting, it's too often to make up for a lack of institutional support for students and faculty in need, asking a particular service of women and non-binary individuals of all races, and men of color. Kindness can be a band aid we're urged to plaster over deep fissures in our institutions, wielded as a weapon instead of as a balm. And too often people confuse kindness with simply "being nice."

But, to me, kindness as pedagogical practice is not about sacrificing myself, or about taking on more emotional labor. It has simplified my teaching, not complicated it, and it's not about niceness. Direct, honest conversations, for instance, are often tough, not nice. But the kindness offered by honesty challenges both myself and my students to grow. As bell hooks memorably wrote in Teaching to Transgress, "there can be, and usually is, some degree of pain involved in giving up old ways of thinking and knowing and learning new approaches."

Yet in practice, I've found that kindness as pedagogical practice distills down to two simple things: believing people, and believing in people.

When a student comes to me to say that their grandparent died, I believe them. When they email me to say they have the flu, I believe them. When they tell me they didn't have time to read, I believe them. When they tell me their printer failed, I believe them.

There's an obvious chance that I could be taken advantage of in this scenario, that someone could straight-up lie and get away with it. But I've learned that I would rather take that risk than make life more difficult for my students struggling with grief and illness, or even an over-packed schedule or faulty electronics. It costs me nothing to be kind. My students have not, en masse, started refusing to meet deadlines, but the students who are struggling have had time to finish their work. My students have not, en masse, started skipping class, but they're not required to undergo the invasive act of telling me personal details about their lives when they can't show up. My students have not, en masse, started doubting my abilities or my expertise, but they have stepped forward to direct their own education in meaningful and exciting ways that I could not have thought of.

That's believing students. But what about believing in students?

Believing in students means seeing them as collaborators - believing they have valuable contributions to make to the way in which syllabi, assignments, and assessments are designed, and life experiences that should be respected in the classroom.

In Fall 2017, I asked both classes to give me questions about the topics we'd be covering - American Indian history in one class, and the history of gender and sexuality in the U.S. in the other. I was then able to craft a syllabus for each class that wove together my own sense of important historical context together with answers to the questions they had posed. The students were offered a sense of ownership in the course, and I was alerted to things I might not otherwise have considered - basic terminology around which there was confusion, for example, or, say, a strong interest in understanding changing concepts of masculinity over time.

I drew on the wisdom of teachers who had gone into this 'kind space' before me, and made significant changes to the way in which I graded work in those classes. Rather than distributing a finished list of grade requirements, I shared some suggestions, and refined those with my students' input until we'd reached a consensus about meaningful assessment. When my students turned in a paper, they also filled out a self-evaluation of their work that asked them what they'd do differently next time, how pleased they were with what they produced, and what they learned about themselves. These adjustments are possible in any class, be it one like mine, with twenty-five students, or a much larger lecture course at a different kind of institution. Both approaches give students greater ownership over their grade and the way that it's awarded; grading becomes, to whatever degree possible, a collaborative venture. In smaller classes it's possible to go further; my students and I sat together and talked over the answers on their self-evaluation, and I asked my students to give themselves a grade. Together, we entered into a conversation about why that grade felt right to them, and why it did or didn't feel right to me, before reaching a consensus on what grade they'd earned.

I've also begun to think of my classes in terms of universal design. For many years I taught with the idea that there was a well-established, academic norm that was fair and impartial, and my job was to make accommodations available for those students who had particular disabilities, or faced particular challenges in meeting that norm. I no longer believe in such a practice. My job, as I see it now, is to make my classroom accessible to everyone. I've begun the long work of redesigning my lessons and assignments so that everyone is a full participant, and no one needs ask for extra time or a note-taker, because those needs have already been addressed. Because I don't believe students with disabilities should have to out themselves, I no longer ban laptops in my classroom, or have quizzes that some students have to take across the hall to get their necessary time-and-a-half. Instead I've experimented with take-home quizzes, options for students to record videos as well as write papers, and final project guidelines that allow students to create anything that will demonstrate to me what they've learned over the term. This, too, is about belief in my students, and believing that by designing my class to accommodate all types of learning I'm demonstrating something important about the ways in which we should be creating a more just world.

I feel more comfortable as a teacher now than I ever have. The subconscious sense that students were antagonists lingered inside me for a long time - long enough that it has been a marvel to teach these past two academic years and experience a teacher-student relationship without that default expectation. I was less stressed; I didn't have reservations about walking into the classroom. My students rose up to meet every new challenge I presented to them, and vocally affirmed that they appreciated the new approach to grading. Crucially, they articulated that when I looked them in the eye and told them what they had done well in a paper, they believed me, whereas when the same info was written at the end of a paper, they didn't. They saw it as pablum - something that I had to write before I delivered the bad news of what they could still work at (which they interpreted as "what I did wrong.") I see that shift, from their exasperation and disappointment to them becoming partners in the assessment of their work, was emblematic of the fruits of a pedagogy of kindness. It was, and is, transformational for all involved.

A pedagogy of kindness asks us to apply compassion in every situation we can, and not to default to suspicion or anger. When suspicion or anger is our first response, a pedagogy of kindness asks us to step back and do the reflective work of asking why we're reacting in that manner and what other instances of disappointment or mistrust are coming to bear on a particular moment in a particular student-teacher interaction. This can transform the student-teacher relationship - but it's not only on an individual-to-individual level that it can alter our working world. To extend kindness means recognizing that our students possess innate humanity, which directly undermines the transactional educational model to which too many of our institutions lean, if not cleave. Transactional models of education identify students as consumers and teachers as retail workers who must please their customers (an inhumane model for retail sales as well as the world of learning). Administrators become managers in this model, looking for cents they can save rather than people they can support. This drains the entire system of its humanity, and leads to decisions at every level where the personhood of a student, teacher, or administrator is diminished.

To value and practice kindness is to resist such models. Even where institutions are leaning away from investment in personhood in favor of hedge funds, we as teachers have the ability to insist that individuals matter. We have the means to hold a line, to see the student without shelter - or food, or safety, or a laptop, or an internet connection, or health, or confidence, or a support network - as someone who matters exactly as they are and even because of the challenges they face. We can refuse to dehumanize our students and presume an adversarial stance. We can prioritize kindness.

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Kindness is something most of us aspire toward as people, but not something we necessarily think of as central to teaching.

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https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/pedagogy-kindness-cornerstone-student-learning-and-wellness

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A pedagogy of kindness: the cornerstone for student learning and wellness

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Fiona Rawle outlines a pedagogy founded on human connection, care and compassion that improves student learning outcomes

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v1_Template for Reflexive Teaching Practice