Flexibility within the existing structure of my courses
•Deadlines for Assignments:
•Structured deadlines with flexibility to grant extensions
•Student-friendly explanations in syllabus, e.g., importance of keeping up with assignments and meeting deadlines but urging students to reach out if there are challenges in doing so
•Reducing Content in LIN100 •Require a final capstone project instead of 4 smaller projects
Conveying hope.
•Weekly emails/Bb announcements that include feel good images/clip art, e.g., cute animals to elicit positive emotions
•Weekly office hours via zoom
•Opening class sharing activity, e.g., Roses and thorns
Cynthia — Thanks for your post! Your 1st graphic is a very powerful image! I wonder, can you share more about it? Since your 2nd image refers to the neuroscience of trauma and gratitude, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, it’s not only about reducing content, but thinking about how content is presented. I am not familiar with “roses and thorns”; what is that?
Hi, Jen,
Thanks for your response to this post… I missed it in the summer. Re the reducing content objective, my courses tend to be very very demanding in terms of required projects: in LIN100 I require 2 essays and 4 language-observation projects which have to be rewritten. I think that it may be too much for students to handle and create a great deal of stress. I constantly revise the wording of the assignments so that is something that I practice regularly but I have long considered reducing the number of required assignments, which I do in the summer and in the winter session and have found that often times the projects that I receive are of better quality.
Roses and thorns: https://www.mindfulschools.org/inspiration/mindful-reflection/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAk53-BRD0ARIsAJuNhptOF-x2hODNs0buWRaR52CNZV1t9lRiVE6KcCP8dt37iFs0tcUNQUQaAtWfEALw_wcB