Recap: Reclaiming Joy and Purpose in the Classroom
For you and for your students
On September 4, CETL’s Josh Eyler kicked off the fall semester with a workshop on how instructors can renew their sense of joy and purpose in the classroom. The session began with recognition of how the classroom environment has changed in recent years, most notably during and since the pandemic. As an example, headlines from the past year called out high levels of disconnection among students and burnout among faculty. Given this atmosphere, how do we, as educators, proceed?
For this workshop, Josh aimed to give instructors some space to breathe and rejuvenate: first, by acknowledging the current classroom climate, and second, by taking time to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what brought us into the classroom in the first place.
To that end, participants were invited to take a slip of paper and respond to two questions:
“What is difficult/challenging/hard about teaching right now?”
“What is difficult/challenging/hard for students right now?”
Instructors shared their responses in small groups, then to a group poll. From the generated word cloud, it’s apparent that high levels of distraction and potentially shorter attention spans are making things more difficult for both teachers and students. Additionally, many groups called out difficulty in keeping students engaged. Teachers and students alike feel overwhelmed and are encountering mismatches in their expectations for a college-level course.
To help with a mental reset after this challenging reflection, Liz Norell led participants through a visualization activity, where everyone closed their eyes, breathed deeply, and imagined all the stresses and issues just discussed. She encouraged participants to put them in a box and tape it up.
From there, Liz guided participants in imagining this box stored away, in a place they can’t easily access, but could get to if need be. This activity helped participants identify, acknowledge, and set aside feelings that, though true and helpful, can also overwhelm and block joy and purpose.
With this clear-headed space established, participants were asked to spend a few minutes jotting down thoughts to the following questions:
“In the best of times, what do you love most about teaching?”
“Describe the moments where you have felt the greatest sense of purpose in the classroom.”
“Why did you want to get into this profession in the first place?”
Responses to this set of questions brought up sincere smiles and vibrant dialogue at each table as participants shared how much they love connecting with other people in this age of screens and technology. Instructors love sharing their joy for the subject matter they teach, and they love helping and inspiring others even more. We love when our classrooms feel like a community and we see students experiencing joy as they learn.
These genuine moments of positivity in the room can serve as guides for how we teach, and so to close, participants thought of “one small way to bring some of this back (or increase it) into your teaching this semester.” In centering our own joy and sense of purpose this fall, we can better restore our classrooms.
If you missed the workshop and you’d like to do some thinking about how to bring joy and purpose back into your own classroom, you can access Josh’s slides here.
Last week’s event was the first of several CETL offerings this semester focused on this topic. If you’re interested in learning more, consider joining this semester’s reading group on the book Unraveling Faculty Burnout by Rebecca Pope-Ruark or registering to attend “Rekindling Joy & Purpose: Leveraging the Power of Human Connections for Faculty & Student Success,” a September talk by guest speaker Dr. Isis Artze-Vega. We hope to see you there!
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