In this episode, Carol and Rebecca speak with Dr. Tiffiny Hughes-Troutman, Director of the Center for Assessment, Referral, and Education (CARE), about how faculty can understand trauma and work with students experiencing trauma, especially during the COVID-19 era.
In this episode, Carol and Rebecca speak with Dr. Tiffiny Hughes-Troutman, Director of the Center for Assessment, Referral, and Education (CARE), about how faculty can understand trauma and work with students experiencing trauma, especially during the COVID-19 era.
Carol Subiño Sullivan(00:10):
Welcome to this episode of the Teaching and Learning Buzz, a podcast by the Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning. We’re your hosts, Carol and Rebecca. We're excited to share with you in this episode our conversation with Dr. Tiffany Hughes Troutman, Director of the Center for Assessment Referral and Education or CARE, here at Georgia Tech. Dr Hughes Troutman sat down with us to discuss a topic that is top of mind in teaching circles right now: trauma and trauma informed pedagogy.
Rebecca Pope-Ruark (00:41):
When most of us think about trauma, we think of major negative events in our lives that cause us grief, stress, and disruption, while that is absolutely true, we do each come to every environment, even a classroom with our whole selves, along with the wonderful, but also traumatic pieces of those selves. 2020 has been a year of collective trauma as we deal with the pandemic racial injustice and the stress of the current political landscape. And it's not just students, we're all experiencing that trauma as well. What resources are available to students and faculty and staff on campus? How do we teach in such a way that students can learn and thrive during trauma? We talked to Dr. Hughes Troutman about how Georgia Tech students may be experiencing trauma and what that means for faculty in the learning environment. Here's our conversation. We'll be back after to share what struck us most.
Carol (01:33):
So good morning, Tiffany. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Teaching and Learning Buzz podcast.
Tiffany Hughes Troutman (01:39):
Good morning, Carol. I'm delighted to get an opportunity to join you this morning
Carol (01:44):
To get us started, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and about your experience in helping faculty and students manage their experiences with trauma in the context of learning?
Tiffany (01:57):
Well, certainly. So my name's Tiffany Hughes Troutman and I'm a licensed psychologist. Uh, and I serve as director for the Center for Assessment, Referral and Education known as CARE, here on Georgia Tech's campus. I've also worked in two department, other departments at Georgia Tech, that being the counseling center and health initiatives, and have worked with collegiate mental health for over a couple of decades, really focusing on, on helping students to thrive, also working with faculty and staff in a collaborative way to ensure student learning and to help students achieve their academic goals. So certainly, directly, I've worked clinically with a number of students who have been impacted by many experiences, negative and positive that impact their learning and persistence. Uh, so I think that's one part of it to understand as a psychologist and here we meet directly with students at a single point of access and point them in the right direction.
Tiffany (02:58):
So that they know the depth and breadth of the resources that are available to them all are knocking at this and so that's one role. I've also provided a significant amount of consultation to faculty and staff. On an individual level, if they had a question about a student or group of students in their classroom, but also provided a lot of presentations to faculty and staff on recognizing signs of distress in a student and how to respond. I am a QPR training facilitator, so as a master trainer, I provide a significant amount of training to the campus community specifically on mental health, distress, suicide prevention. And all of that kind of wraps around to some of those things as our conversation goes on.
Carol (04:04):
Thank you, Tiffany. And I'm so glad to know that you're here, that CARE is here and that all these resources are available to students who need help. Um, as well as in helping faculty to learn more about what to look for and what to do. And we'll certainly circle back around to some of those things as our conversation goes on in the teaching and learning circles, trauma, and specifically a term called trauma-based pedagogy has really become a buzzword. Faculty are wanting to understand how they might shape their teaching. And so that it's sensitive to, um, students who may have gone through a traumatic experience, especially recently. And I wonder if you could share with us from your perspective why trauma is such an important thing to be thinking about right now from the teaching perspective.
Tiffany (04:57):
So it's important to understand that all students face trauma and challenges when they transition to college. And in some respects, individuals, I think, think about trauma quite narrowly. For instance, they may think that it's being in a car accident or being exposed to a violent crime or, uh, or having lost your belongings in a fire. But it's important that educators understand that the trauma is very broad and students come to college having, uh, the full range of those experiences that may have impacted them for years and years. And also the transition to college is stressful in and of itself, even if it's a positive experience for students. And it can be even more difficult, uh, for students who have a history of trauma. And so for instance, college students are more at risk for, for sexual assault. Uh, when they, when they reach college age, we know that from our statistics, we also know that certain racialized communities have, uh, experienced trauma or have that historical intergenerational trauma that they're bringing to the classroom and through their living and learning communities.
Tiffany (06:08):
And so for all of that, it's important to understand that it's incumbent upon our campus community, our teaching faculty, our staff, uh, other students to really have a good understanding of what trauma is. And with respect to, to pedagogy. It's, I think a critical that we understand that trauma informed teaching it's different from teaching about trauma, and there are things that faculty can do in the classroom to set the stage of awareness for students who have been impacted by these traumatic experiences to create safe spaces for students and also learning experiences where students can feel safe and empowered to share those experiences in and out of the classroom.
Carol (06:55):
I also think about, you know, the context of the pandemic and about the ways that that may be creating experiences of trauma for many of our students, you know, some of whom they have family members who get sick or, you know, even just the environment of being afraid. It is that also the type of thing that creates a trauma experience and a trauma response.
Tiffany (07:23):
Certainly! And right now the importance of this conversation particularly is because the COVID-19 pandemic is a collective trauma for everyone. So the things that I spoke about a few minutes ago are things that any college student may encounter in general, but now since March, we have experienced a global pandemic, but trauma it's also, I think the grief, um, many, I think don't think about it that way, irrespective of whether or not a life was lost. This is something that's very relevant because students are experiencing the loss of real lives, whether that could be family members or friends who have been sick, or who have died due to COVID-19, uh, the loss of their former life that they experience as a college student or disappointments. So coming back in the fall and not knowing, uh, what was going to be happening, that anticipatory anxiety or mourning the loss of what they had mourning the loss of a job opportunity or an internship, um, or even the social connectedness that they had that isolation and loneliness is a threat.
Tiffany (08:33):
That is a trauma, uh, to just to give an example just as if an individual would go into a fight or flight reaction due to fear our bodies crave, isolate, uh, that connection connectedness, and when individuals experience isolation and deprivation of the social connectedness, that is a threat to their survival as well. So on a fundamental level, understanding that is important, certainly students are taking that into the classroom. Certainly we also know that due to incidents of racial injustice and police violence, individuals are impacted, um, but a number of levels that could be directly impacted by knowledge of incidents or by, uh, media, um, exposure. Uh, there are studies that support the fact that repeated media exposure to incidents is traumatic, but in additional additionally, uh, racialized, uh, communities and students of color or students who identify as black indigenous people of color have intergenerational trauma, which is historical trauma.
Tiffany (09:40):
So students, young students, young folks now have heard stories from their parents or grandparents about racial discrimination or injustice, and that lies and their collective memory. So that's why it's important to understand that students who are young, who may not have experienced the history of trauma due to racism are experiencing this. Now they're living that they are, uh, I think being reinvigorated reignited by these recent incidents and the common experience isn't necessarily the racism for young adults. It's the microaggressions, it's the, uh, the subtle, the, um, maybe, uh, unintended, but impactful incidents that happen on so many levels. And so that just takes a little bit of a deeper dive. When you talk about the pandemic, it's the double pandemic of COVID-19 with the most recent incidents of racial injustice on top of other things that students have been facing that really paints a very complex, but compelling picture for faculty and administrators, to understand as students go into the classroom, as they try to meet their developmental goals, their social goals or educational goals, students often have to prioritize living and surviving, uh, with their academic tasks.
Tiffany (11:07):
But what it does is to explain the student in your classroom who has difficulty attending in class, or has difficulty completing their lectures or their coursework, their assignments on time, who may even have difficulty being motivated enough to get up, to go to class virtually or residentially, uh, explaining all of that. Uh, so it's not just a student who is lazy, uh, as some people may want to say who can't get it together, this is prolonged exposure to stress and trauma for many reasons that we've been able to talk about this this morning, thus far
Carol (11:45):
Now prolonged exposure. And it, and it sounds to me like, uh, layered and particularly our students of color, having, you know, more of a layer than then students who are from a dominant majority who are white or from, uh, another identity who isn't affected by that, but even experiences that we don't know about. And we can't see cause they happened before they got to college. All of this might be coming in the mix and be in the background and as faculty, we don't necessarily have that full picture. So that sensitivity and kind of openness to that, any of our students could be going through this. Um, at any time that's helpful for me to keep in mind.
Rebecca (12:28):
And that also reminds me that that empathy is so important at this point, we are all going through this. It is a collective trauma and we can connect to each other on different levels perhaps now, because we are all experiencing potentially that inability to focus or, you know, even as a, as a kid, the pandemic has continued. We still have some of those issues because it's something, it seems like it's something every day in our culture, we can, we can at least rely on each other to be experiencing similar things and hopefully allow that empathy to connect to flexibility in our, in our pedagogy and our, in our classroom, where we work with our students.
Tiffany (13:05):
And certainly to your, to your point, Rebecca, that helps having the experience, the shared experience and given the fact that we are all in it together gives us that, that sense of empathy, uh, that sense of compassion that helps us to lean into those feelings when others are presenting with similar issues. Certainly what I would practice now is self-compassion over everything else because it's difficult to be in a place when you're maybe not performing or thriving the way you used to, you're not the behaving the way you think that you should be, or you may be questioning how long this is going to happen or why am I not myself so you could lean in and be tuned into those feelings that you're having it helps to place even that much more understanding in an empathetic space to understand that someone else is experiencing something that's similar.
Rebecca (13:54):
It reminds me of Kristin Neff's work on self-compassion, and the idea of, of where all the human connection, right. We all have, we're all connected as humans, as well as that need for self-compassion being crucially important as well. Yes,
Tiffany (14:06):
Yes, yes. And Kristen, that work has been, I think, fantastic, uh, with Dr. Neff talking about the role of self-compassion and the role of, of resilience and empathy. Uh, you know, I think all of that, the psychological capital is what I call, um, that those clusters of behaviors that are critical so that we can understand ourselves better to have it, or screw your self-awareness to connect with others more optimally,
Rebecca (14:34):
That idea of resilience is so important. I think sometimes we think it's a buzz word, um, unfortunately, but we all are hopefully experiencing and practicing resilience as we work through all of this together.
Tiffany (14:46):
Certainly that concept of resilience, the, you know, the bouncing back, the face of adversity or our practices, that's actually a practice as we shift the concept of looking at trauma informed approaches and shifting them to more constructive conversations. It's really recognizing the resilience in all of us in your students, as you teach and work with them, you know, instilling hope, stilling, positivity, and resilience, and not just the passive sort of, of hope and resilience. So to your point, uh, it's a real phenomenon and it is, um, their practices and strategies to support that mental muscle, um, to, to be able to thrive, to be able to have social things, social, emotional intelligence, to have a growth mindset, to be positive. But what many students are doing are so important is to vacillate between those more optimistic and hopeful experiences. And also simultaneously just trying to process what's going on in the moment.
Tiffany (15:46):
And that's very adaptive, you know, it's, I think unrealistic to expect someone to be completely positive. I think that's the challenge that individuals who are exposed are experiencing and facing a trauma may say, well, I just can't be positive all the time it's going on right now. So often we'll find individuals trying to cope and process and adapt, whereas, you know, trying to strengthen their social connections. So trying to find something positive in their day to help them to feel happy. And that's what we're really looking for is that adaptive response to promote resilience and strength in our students.
Rebecca (16:18):
I think that idea of hope and resilience as practices is so important and something that faculty can kind of latch on to and share with their students. You don't, you don't, you're not just born hopeful or born resilient. These are things that we can work on and that we can work on together.
Tiffany (16:31):
Certainly it's a mental muscle just as if we wanted to build a physical muscle, we may engage in some physical activity. Maybe we'll walk more. We would, um, engage in some physical activity. Uh, it's the same thing. You're building skills to help build that mental muscle to help you be stronger. And those experiences help us. We don't want anyone to ever want to be in a negative place, but what we find is someone you have experiences that are negative or that allow you to grow, um, or to allow you to fail up that really does help to build our resilience. So, whereas no one would ever want or hope to be in a pandemic or to not, uh, have the, uh, that connectedness that we know that we all need. And we, we thrive on that. It's important to understand that we'll come from this stronger, we've developed adaptive mechanisms to help us grow and thrive.
Tiffany (17:23):
And so that helps us to become resilient and the classroom, there are things that can be done to foster that, um, and that acknowledgement of that is I think it's a piece of it. Faculty can, you know, encourage students to journal, for instance, that's a common practice. And so, um, using that as a strategy to, uh, support the work or finding texts or, uh, academic resource, uh, literature pieces to tie the experiences in, um, would be important pieces of that, that work, I think very well to, to focus on the, and boost the social, the social, learning, the emotional learning, the cognitive learning. Uh, so those are all strategies that can, can help with that. Hmm.
Rebecca (18:09):
We found in some of our other work that students, they just want to be validated. They want to hear that we, um, that we are going through it too, or that we understand. Um, and that, that we may not be experts in how to, how to address all of this, but we're here
Tiffany (18:22):
Certainly, and to your point, the idea isn't to turn faculty and administrators into clinicians. That's why we want to make sure that we are partnering with faculty in the division of student life so that the referrals can be made to the experts who can treat them for the clinical issues and the concerns we’re trained to do but what it does mean is it's having the recognition creating the safe, psychologically safe, space in the classroom in other contexts, it's having compassion, using peer to peer models to help so having a constructive platform in your classroom that allows peers to feel comfortable supporting each other but also having that sense of collaboration and learning. That's all part of the trauma informed approach so that may be gartering feedback, having surveys, asking about experiences within good boundaries, but all of those practices I think will help us all to, I think, create and cultivate a teaching experience and environment that feels safe but also fosters productivity and fosters a student’s sense of curiosity and engagement and agency. And take greater risks, safer risks and further them in a way we want to, we want them to be compassionate, to cultivate a care for the human condition and that starts with the students themselves.
Carol (19:57):
I know that many of our faculty listeners will feel really compelled by this will want to create that sense of collaboration and connection and, and an openness to voices in their classroom. But we'll be unsure exactly about what's a way to do this. I wonder if you could give an example maybe of that peer to peer network. That was really an interesting concept to me. Do you have any examples of, of how, how you, maybe you've seen this implemented in a classroom to, to make that happen, to create that network?
Tiffany (20:31):
Certainly. And so I think this can happen very successfully now because we are providing virtual learning opportunities. Um, many, um, many campuses have adopted, uh, peer to peer networks that are academic. And so what that means is, um, here's can form learning communities offline in which they're sharing stories and experiences. I think it works well because we're not meeting face to face and they're not study groups, but perhaps having a topic in which they can share stories in a safe way, if they feel comfortable about how they persisted or overcome, uh, a challenge or how they, they failed up, which means that perhaps they didn't do well in the class or had a negative experience and leverage that as a strength. And so it works incredibly well. You know, I think you compare that with some journaling opportunities. I spoke about that a few minutes ago, peer journaling opportunities in which peers can share stories, um, and perhaps post them taking their identity your way or, or not.
Tiffany (21:37):
So that's another strategy. Another strategy I think that's particularly powerful and effective for students or faculty sharing their brief stories in which they failed up, in which they've built their own sense of resilience. Studies have shown and anecdotal stories have supported that students really love hearing about faculty experiences. My thought is that perhaps some faculty are less comfortable with that but what happens is when a student hears a story about a faculty member who maybe didn't do so well in the class or who struggled or changed their major or didn't pass that qualifying exam the first time or who, you know, had to rework that offer paper several times but still went on to persist. That gives students a sense of hope and also allows that student to connect with that that would remember on an individual level.
Tiffany (22:36):
Um, those are very, very powerful strategies. Um, and those are things that I would love for us to implement on, on Georgia Tech's campus. As you know, our students are very, very bright, um, and resilient and, you know, often maybe doubt themselves or compare themselves to others. So just, it can be reassuring to learn that they're not the first person who had a struggle who had a challenge, their faculty went through it to their other peers did too. Those are powerful, powerful techniques that can be done. And they're easy. It doesn't take a lot that can go a long way. Yeah.
Carol (23:12):
Would you say so, for example, a faculty member within a course that could be about any topic right now, could be like a calculus course or some introduction of psychology or you know any of the many courses that we have on campus, that you know this topic isn't maybe might not naturally come up in their topic but maybe...would it be like a strategy that supports the type of thing you're talking about if they created an optional discussion board where they put a prompt saying you know tell me about a challenge that you faced and were able to overcome and then leaves off by sharing a short story of their own and then invite other students to add their own? Would that be something that you've seen as an effective way to create these kinds of sharing communities?
Tiffany (24:02):
Certainly one great way of achieving that in today's times, given that we're, we're, we're primarily virtual. What I've seen in the past would actually be physical boards or displays in which faculty listed their name and said, I remember when I failed my first calculus test, or I remember when I, you know, I had to leave college to care for a family member and then came back, um, and just made it transparent, had their names, had their stories and shared, and then other students would come up and write on the board or share their stories, or co-sign it, or comment saying, thank you, professor. Thank you. I went through that too. That works well, certainly given today's times that can be easily translated into what you've suggested, Carol, which is a virtual board, uh, independent of the subject. Doesn't have to be related to the subject, but the, the common core themes are persistence.
Tiffany (24:57):
So it could be in that calculus class share a time in which you struggled with this, what happened or tell us about, uh, an opportunity that didn't go as well as you thought it would be. Tell me about a disappointment and what happened as a result, uh, or tell us about a positive experience that came from something negative. Those are all prompts that are general, they're general enough that they will apply to anyone, but also are safe enough for someone to look at, to read and to extrapolate something that they felt safe sharing.
Carol (25:30):
Yeah, those prompts are super helpful and I also like your idea of a physical board and there's even tools now that kind of create the experience of a physical board, that more visual sense, but digitally so you know maybe in our show notes we can look up a few tools that that could help even if it was maybe something that wasn't just within a course. Maybe it's something like a department says, “hey we're going to create this kind of board for our major” and in each class a faculty member takes a minute and says, “hey you know there's this board that we're doing here in our in our school I've posted some stories on the, you know, and invites other students to contribute it could be another way to sort of bring it into the course but it's still kind of like safe enough at a distance of students feel like I can share and it's not it's not getting to tangled up in my class work.
Tiffany (26:29):
Yes. I love that idea. I think it, um, it can also be integrated into our living, learning communities as well, um, beyond the departments, because you know, our students are, are learning in different contexts, certainly. So in the departments is, and any other co-curricular spaces that we can infuse. That is fantastic.
Rebecca (26:49):
I like the idea too, of connecting it to the school or to the college that removes any potential temptation to make it extra credit or something like that. Right. So if this is something that we're doing as part of a human community, so that we can connect more, this isn't directly connected to our course or how we're functioning and learning in that course necessarily, but it says that we do care and that we want to be there for each other.
Tiffany (27:11):
Absolutely. I think that's a great point. Um, an excellent point.
Carol (27:16):
So earlier in the, in the conversation, you had talked a little bit about CARE, and I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about the resources available through CARE, um, for students I would love to,
Tiffany (27:30):
So CARE is, uh, a new department that was started last August, August of 2019. And we're the new single point of entry for mental health services on and off campus. Uh, just wanted to note that the department started because we knew that students were, um, needed a clear pathway to, um, mental health services and were often confused about where to go and work shuffling back and forth. So what we do in here is provide a confidential assessment, um, after triaging them and get them a referral and care plan to a number of on and off campus resources. Um, and that one appointment. And since COVID, we shifted to virtual, uh, service delivery, which has worked very, very well. We give appointments now. Uh, but those services include many on campus that include the clinical resources like the counseling center or stamps psychiatry. Um, they also include a number of academic and career resources.
Tiffany (28:29):
They include wellbeing resources. So student may need, you know, more work on their self care or education around sleep. So that might go to health initiatives. They may have a desire to improve their mood. So we may refer them to the CRC because physical activity impacts mood greatly. We may point them to a number of student life resources. For instance, they may, uh, benefit from support from STAR if they're experiencing food insecurity or the women's resource center or the LGBTQA resource center for support or for some connection with students. And so that really is a wide range of resources on campus, as well as off because some students want or need those referrals off campus. So we have strong networks with providers who provide mental health therapy and psychiatry off campus who are close to campus or, uh, or across the city for students who, who want or need that right now due to COVID.
Tiffany (29:28):
Um, many students are virtual. So it's really, I think, a benefit to offer the tele-health platform because we're connecting with students through the computer or phone, if they like, um, if they need that appointment to face, uh, we can provide that for them based upon our criteria, but because most providers off campus are also virtual, but we found for some students is that it's accessible, um, maybe more accessible because we're all connecting, uh, in the same way right now. Um, so we're just delighted to partner with faculty through care, through the division of student life, just to make sure students get where they need to go and actually eliminate, let the confusion and questioning about where they need to go.
Carol (30:14):
Yeah, that's so that's so great because there, there is a wealth of resources, which is wonderful and that makes it overwhelming. And especially for a student who might be experiencing trauma, a traumatic moment, you know, where, where to turn what's the right thing to do. So knowing that there's someone they can talk to that will help them sort it out and figure out, okay, here's the plan? Here's, here's our recommendations. What might you access first?
Tiffany (30:39):
Absolutely. And just a couple of other notes for faculty and staff. There are the blue folders that were sent out all of last year. And for students, there's a canvas page, a mental health resource canvas page that was just developed this summer, um, that lists all the resources there. Um, students do need to start and care to receive services from the counseling center or stamps psychiatry. So they just need to call us directly, but there are other resources that students benefit too. And I'm really pleased that those resources have been developed recently, just to make the knowledge of the resources more accessible to your point, like, well, where do I go? How do I even know who to call? You know, it's important that we make ourselves accessible in different ways. And so I wanted to add that as well.
Carol (31:25):
Are the blue folders available digitally now? Um, especially for faculty who may have joined our community more recently.
Tiffany (31:33):
I am not aware that they are digital right now. Uh, we, we passed out a folder to every faculty member all of last year, and there are more of those certainly. Um, but for questions, um, we can please refer any faculty member to the division of student life, be happy to work with them, to make sure that they get what they need.
Carol (31:54):
We will definitely include that contact information in the show notes for anybody who maybe didn't get a blue folder has misplaced it. Um, if they're still working at home, um, uh, we'll include that context so that they can reach out to be able to get the information that sounds great. I think our show notes are going to be packed with time, which is wonderful. There's so much great information. And I wonder at the end to close this out, there was, there were so much great information. Um, if you could identify like the most important take home idea that you'd like faculty to take away after listening to this episode, what would it be
Tiffany (32:33):
That would be to understand that students are bringing their whole selves into the classroom and the acknowledgement of, um, of the recent events of historical events, as well as historical trauma that students may present with will positively impact your ability to teach effectively ability for all students in your classroom room to learn and engage and to thrive. Um, and so that's the most important point is, is to have that sense of understanding, acceptance and compassion, as well as to understand that students have the ability to thrive and to be resilient in spite of any of those incidents that they may present with.
Carol (33:13):
Thank you so, so much, Tiffany, for being here for the insights and, um, leaving us with, with some hope that, that, um, we and our students can, uh, rise above all of the challenges that we're facing here. And we will, well, that was such a great conversation with Dr. Hughes Troutman.
Rebecca, I feel like one of the most important perspectives I took from it is to understand that if we see students who somehow just don't seem to be responding the way we expect, or don't seem to be producing work, like as quickly as we expect, we need to keep in mind that it's not like they're being lazy. They may be experiencing trauma may be in a frame of mind where they're just trying to get through each day one by one. And, you know, I can definitely empathize with that. Some days it just feels like enough, like putting one foot in front of the other and doing what I can and, you know, Dr. Hughes Troutman talked to us about how, when we're in that kind of mode, that can really take a toll on our ability to concentrate, you know, and really put in that focus that is required or study for me, that's a really powerful perspective that helps me, you know, just think about how I might approach it from a totally different place.
Rebecca (34:50):
I agree. I mean, I definitely feel like personally, I'm struggling with that as well with the concentration and focus. And it's not that I feel lazy either. It's just, my brain is processing so much information that it's a challenge to really feel like I'm accomplishing the work that I need to accomplish. Um, so I know that our students are going through that and our faculty as well. I think we're all going back to that idea of collective trauma and collective humanity. We're all doing the best that we can in this moment. And we just have to be sure that we provide each other with the compassion and the empathy that we would want to be given to us as well.
Carol (35:26):
Yeah. And, you know, so I, when I think about that from the perspective of teaching, you know, when and how I can create a classroom environment that has plenty of room for all of that, right. Not just that pride, that drum tech students of, you know, being able to rise to the challenge and just get through it, but also that, that part that's hurting that part, that's healing. That part that needs the space in order to, you know, deal with the grief. Um, and so, you know, how can I, as a teacher then bring that compassion in the types of policies I set the types of tone, the kind of space I create in my class for students to feel like, um, they can come forward and let me know if they're struggling and that there's space to be able to, you know, let them catch up, let them take extra time if they need to, even as I'm still creating that structure to encourage rate, right. To help them, uh, to get back up and once, you know, they're ready to move forward so that they don't get stuck in their studies. I think it's a, it's a really delicate balance, but not losing sight of this perspective of our students as whole people dealing with some really serious things can help us navigate, uh, that kind of balance.
Rebecca (36:50):
Yes, absolutely. That's a great point. And I think building on that, one of the things that Dr. Hughes Troutman says is that faculty aren't clinicians, and we don't have to be clinicians to empathize with our students to show them compassion through many of the means that Carol mentioned in the classroom and also recognize that sometimes just sharing your own perspectives on how you're feeling through this pandemic or how you're dealing with your stress, those are things that, that humanize you for your students and build more connection between you and your students as the semester goes on. Especially if you're teaching fully remotely, it's one way to really connect to the students and to be human with them as well.
Carol (37:29):
Yeah. I really liked what Dr. Hughes Troutman had to say about telling stories and how powerful it is for us to tell stories to our students about times where we encountered challenges and what we had to do to overcome those challenges, um, so that students can get a real picture of, of who we are as people. And don't just imagine that we just, everything kind of came easy to us and boom, here we are at the front of the class or at the front of the camera leading a discussion on zoom or blue jeans, you know, and I, and you know, one of the dimensions of the pandemic experiences, how it's limited for many of us, those social connections, those human connections, and we've been able to accomplish a lot, uh, through technology, but the one, you know, really important piece that, you know, as limited as we were only seeing each other through these little squares, and there's so much more to all of us, so thing that we can do to help bring those other parts of ourselves, um, I think contributes to develop creating that environment that offers that possibility for, for, uh, moving through, um, uh, these, this time of trauma
Rebecca (38:44):
Agreed. And I think I've seen some research in, I want to say organizational behavior or something like that that has to do with the number of tiny faces on a screen. They found that the smaller, those faces get the less people see them as people, but when you have a much bigger screen and those pictures get a little bit bigger, you really start to remember the people and the humanness of, of who's on the other side of it. So you, um, you developed some of those, or you can describe some of those social and intellectual practices with those people on the other side of that camera, which is another thing to think about when we think about our students and as they watch us and watch each other remotely,
Carol (39:26):
That's really fascinating. Yeah. Because, you know, I even think about how I curate my square. You know, I just have a virtual background, you know, I just want to control what people can and can't see. Um, but you know, where can I leave the little imperfections? Um, and, and how can I make space for all of our, um, whenever I'm I have teachings for our classroom to be that kind of a real space
Rebecca (39:50):
Things that I really appreciated that Dr. Hughes Troutman said was this idea that hope and resilience are practices. They're not permanent states. Um, optimism is not a permanent state. Those are things that we can continue to work on through mindfulness, how we engage with each other. I think sometimes we feel like the either are, or are not resilient and, and, you know, resilience can be kind of a buzzword these days, unfortunately, but it's that, it's that power to be in a situation and learn from the situation and continue to grow through a situation. But that does take effort. And when everything's kind of coming at us at once, um, and this year, that can be a real challenge, but if we can think about how we as faculty can help our students build hope and through our teaching practices, that's a really powerful thing.
Carol (40:39):
That's a really great idea to bring out here. And, you know, even, even though, uh, hope and resilience are practices and constant practices, I do think it's helpful for our students to remember a time in the past, maybe when they faced a difficult and, and they overcame it, not because it brands them as well, I'm that person who overcomes things, but so that they can remember, Oh, these are the things I did. Right. And it helped me to take one step and then the next step. And then before, you know, it, I was on the other side of it and onto different things. And it's easy when we move on to kind of gloss over all the effort it took to overcome, but reconnecting to that skill, um, and remembering that you can still go back to that skill and find a way to move forward. I think, uh, can be really, you know, can bring hope, uh, to, uh, to a situation that feels hard, right?
Rebecca (41:34):
And we can't be doing those things, not just in our classes, but kind of on a broader scale, right. In classes we've already talked about making connections. Carol, you mentioned in the podcast, maybe having a discussion board with some journaling questions that students can answer. Some folks might want to do that in canvas, or maybe outside of canvas. Um, that gives you an opportunity to share a story or two about being hopeful or resilient, and then allow students to share their experience as well. We talked about an example of a department doing that with a whiteboard that could be something, um, a piece of technology you could do across a department or a school have faculty and students tell their stories in that one space. Um, and I think the other thing that we just as faculty that we really need to be aware of or what campus resources are available for our students, um, and making sure that those are available in multiple places in our yes. In our syllabus yes. In our, in our canvas sites, but also within department messaging, um, in school messaging so that students know they're not alone and there are resources on campus that they can tap to help them build that hope and resilience through these troubled times as well.
Carol (42:40):
Yeah, for me, I'll all of those ideas. Just, I feel a little bit of sense of relief when I think about connecting my particular students in my class to part of this bigger community, right. Bigger within, uh, maybe, you know, the major within the school that they're all a part of. And my class, like making a few cues during the class, maybe I'm referring to that board every once in a while, when I say hello, when and saying goodbye, or I saw something inspiring and I bring it in and it just kind of is like, we're part of this bigger community and we're in this specific class together, but we're all connected. I, you know, and it also feels maybe, maybe students might feel a bit more comfortable with that little bit of distance from this class. Maybe they don't want to reveal a lot of personal things about themselves, but there's this other bigger space it's a little bit more neutral. Um, yet we acknowledge it. Um, and, and maybe we contributed to it as, as is appropriate.
Rebecca (43:37):
So there's so much richness in this episode. I think we could keep talking about it for a very long time. So I hope that you'll take some of this information to heart that you'll share it with your colleagues, that you'll pick up some of these practices with your students. And we'd love to hear some of the things that are working for you, things that you've tried. Um, those are, those are really important things to share as a community as well, building your community of colleagues and, and fellow professors and instructors to learn from each other at this time as well.
Carol (44:03):
Look forward to hearing from you soon. And we thank you so much for listening today.
Carol (44:12):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Teaching and Learning Buzz, the podcast of The Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Tech. Show notes and a transcript are available at https://www.ctl.gatech.edu/teaching-and-learning-buzz-podcast.
Rebecca (44:32):
Check back regularly for new episodes, bonus clips, and more resources. If you have a topic or question that you would like us to explore, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at ctlhelp@gatech.edu.