My conversations and text threads this summer have been sworling around the same issues: Are students coming to us even less prepared than in the past and what are we going to do about it?

It is true that Artificial Intelligence and its (ab)use in high school has set students up for struggle in college when they cannot outsource the reading, thinking, discussing, and writing to a chatbot. But it is also true that we educators have more power to be part of the solution than we sometimes like to admit.

I have long been an advocate of revealing the hidden curriculum in the classroom— from letting students know what “office hours” are to how to troubleshoot when they cannot purchase their textbooks the first week of class.

It is only a natural extension from those instances of revealing the hidden curriculum to being more transparent about what students should be doing to prepare for class and what to do when they get there. It is common to be disappointed by your students’ lack of preparation (and care about you and your course, if you are apt to take it personally as I am! ;0), but it may be just a misunderstanding about what they should be doing. In other words, they many not know what you expect because they have never been college students before.

This semester I have been working on creating clearer expectations for what I expect outside of class and what I expect inside of class. For example, this week I asked students to

• bring a print or printed copy of whatever we are reading to class.

• have a writing instrument and paper that is, preferably, housed in an organized binder.

• spend a little time at the beginning of class reviewing with partners the main ideas of the reading (I figure that working together to fill in gaps lowers stress and anxiety).

Then, when we started discussing, I asked students to

• capture the main idea of the reading by breaking it up into parts.

• turn from demonstrating understanding or comprehension to thinking more critically.

• evaluate the text based on their own experience or knowledge.

• write a “minute paper” on their reaction to the text.

As I did this exercise with them, I reminded them how to capture key ideas in their notes, how to check their level of preparation, and how to make sense of what they read, heard, and thought about.

What made this exercise different than, say, a normal class where students demonstrate they have read (or not!) and students participate in a discussion (or not!) is that I called out—or revealed the hidden curriculum—along the way, not in a condescending way (I hope!), but in a way that helps them figure out how to prepare for other classes that may not take that time to get them up to speed.

What I did took no more time than had I just jumped into the discussion, but I believe it made for a richer, more engaged, and involved class. My goal is not to reward only those who figured out the hidden curriculum with no help, but also to invite all the others who can do the work but are not sure how to do it with confidence to spend a little time improving their skills.

For a specific reading, note-taking, and discussion strategy, check out my video: Revealing the Hidden Curriculum for Reading and Discussion

Not too long ago, I changed dentists. I wanted one closer to my house, and I settled on a small practice in a nearby neighborhood. It is hard for me to make changes like these. The dentist I had for decades, and whom I looked forward to seeing twice a year because we read the same books, retired and I was adrift.

My new dentist is young and earnest. So when he assessed my teeth and started mapping out major dental work that was needed in each “quadrant,” I was a taken aback. The work would take place over months and ring up thousands of dollars of bills. This made me nervous and a wee bit skeptical. I needed to know exactly what he was going to do, why he needed to do it, and how I could spread it out overy different sessions to avoid having to sell a car.

Now, it wasn’t because he was young(ish) or because I was embarrassed that my teeth had rotted away over the years (okay, maybe I was a little embarrassed) that I asked for all of this information. I wanted to know because this was a new dentist and I didn’t know what his “dental philosophy” was—Did he want to get ahead of issues or did he want to let them play themselves out? (I think I knew the answer immediately). I also wanted to know because this would entail a major(ish) investment in my mouth.

The dentist was not new to questions like mine, and he was patient and thorough in his explanations. He even offered to show me pictures of what needed to be fixed and talked through the process, telling me what to expect at each stage. He got my buy-in, although I doubt he would have called it that, by being transparent and kind. Never did he say, “Trust me, I am a dentist. I know what is best for you at this time. You will get this work done because I said so.” That would be ridiculous, right?

I shared this story because my experience is not unlike what my students face when they show up to my class each semester. It wasn’t that I really needed “buy-in” to get my teeth fixed, but it did make me think of what my students are often asking of faculty:

• What are you asking me to do?

• Why do I need to do this?

• Is this a good use of my time and money?

My students, especially my new-to-college students, in other words, need buy-in before they proceed. This need for assurance may be the mark of Gen Z or the realities of the costs of a college degree, but either way, it has certainly colored my teaching over the past decade.

A brilliant colleague of mine is often quoted as saying that students need two things from faculty: To know we are organized and to know we care about them. I would add a third now: To know that what we ask them to do is worth their time, money, and effort. They want, in essence, to know that the work they do has clear connections to something they want (e.g., a career) or something they need (e.g., to learn the parts of the body for the said career).

Anything that seems “required” for no clear reason or that seems unnecessary is a task or a course that they have little motivation to complete.

So what are we faculty to do to help students invest in our courses from the jump? First, organize your course around these three principles in which students are seen, heard, and convinced.

Want students to feel seen?

• Learn their names quickly. This may be a challenge in large classes, but you can use seating charts or table tents to facilitate this.

• Find out something about your students that is personal in nature. What do they like to do? What is unique about them? Or just what is their major or career aspiration? Refer to these tidbits of information when talking with them.

Want students to feel heard?

• Ask them for input in course design: content selection or arrangement, assignments, test types, assessment dates can foster ownership in the course.

• Provide opportunities for anonymous feedback during the term and share what people have suggested needs to change and then do it.

Want students to feel convinced?

• Address skepticism on the first day and invite students to connect the academic or professional goals with the course outcomes, content, and assignments.

• Revisit issue at crucial points in the semester when doubt may creep in (e.g., after a tough unit), enthusiasm wears off (e.g., mid-term), or stress becomes challenging (e.g., during a challenging project).

Second, create an elevator pitch for your course and your academic discipline. Even if you never shared this with your students, the exercise is useful in helping you boil down the essence of your course’s value. If you want to be creative, consider embedding your elevator pitches in unusual ways throughout the semester.

Finally, anticipate that buy-in will be a continual process. I don’t mean that you will be constantly begging students to stay engaged, but that it may take time for some hardened skeptics to come around if at all. You won’t win all of them over, but you may get a few more to see the importance of your course. To make that happen, use a Buy-in Calendar to determine where in your course you may be able to convince students to dig in and commit to the course.

In my teaching fantasy, all of my students come to my class so excited by the course content and assignments, that they won’t leave each day until I promise them we will do even more work. I am sure that my dentist has a similar fantasy in which all of his patients brush and floss religiously and are eager to fix the imperfections to avoid major problems down the road. We can both dream, but until then, I will work on creating stakeholders in my course.

Want more ideas for helping you build buy-in for your course? The above activities and more can be found here: From Skeptics to Stakeholders Worksheet for Faculty

I have a reputation for taking things a little too seriously when it comes to education—my own and others’.

I was in kindergarten sitting on the floor in a circle, as one does when one has Gumby-like, five-year-old joints. My teacher Mrs. S. was frustrated. The class was noisy, chaotic, as I imagine any classroom is when part of the day has to be given over to nap time.

Mrs. S. had been pleading with us to “be quiet.” It seemed to me that there was a lot of noise being made, but it wasn’t all my classmates’ fault. With laser focus, I kept my attention on my teacher, fascinated that she seemed to struggle to take control of two dozen pint-sized humans.

“Be quiet,” she said again. “We haven’t been able to get anything done today.”

I promise I wasn’t trying to be that student, a busybody, know-it-all, a teeny fictional Tracy Flick-type. I didn’t have any frame of reference for such a student (and the movie Election wouldn’t be out for another 20 years). But I did care. I cared that indeed we were not getting anything done that day. And in my mind, we had lots to do. For starters, we had yet to learn how to read a book.

I had an idea! My hand shot up high, and before she could give me permission to speak, I blurted: “Mrs. S., maybe if you try being quiet we will get something done.”

What possessed a roly-poly half-decader to have the chutzpah (and that is putting it nicely) to share some classroom management strategies at that time? I can only guess that I cared too much.

My K-12 education is dotted with similiar stories of my over-caring about the education I was receiving; most of the time they were as poorly received as my kindergarten suggestion. I was then—and often—punished for disrespectful behavior.

As soon as saw my teacher’s face, I knew I had made a grievous error. If there is anything I hated more than wasting precious learning time, it was getting in trouble.

“Amy, go to the orange pillow,” Mrs. S. said.

I had been banished, far away from my classmates, to presumably “think about what I did.”

I have been thinking about that experience a lot lately because I have had dear colleagues and friends ask me the same question when I share a frustration with higher education, what’s happening in the classroom (or not), and my own feelings of helplessness: “Why do you care so much?”

There is a statement beneath that question rather than genuine curiosity: “Stop caring too much. It is ruining your life.”

They are not wrong. Caring too much causes me lots more grief than if I lived my life not worrying about anyone else. Caring too much has sent me down rabbit holes to understand what it is I am doing wrong and how to fix it. It has led to obsessions about why students do what they do—from using AI for everything to leaving to go to the bathroom for 20 minutes in a 50-minute class…every class meeting mind you.

Caring too much comes with a cost, and left totally unchecked, and could morph into unhealthy behaviors at worst. At best, it can create strain between the very people you are trying to help (Sorry, Mrs. S!), which ultimately defeats your purpose. As an educator caring too much has pushed some students away.

But caring too much has also given me a richness to teaching and learning. I often think about good teachers and coaches that I have had in the past who cared a lot, who held the standard, who accepted nothing less than my best even when I was not interested or capable. Those teachers are the ones that I remember and revere, not the ones who couldn’t be bothered to hold anyone to account or, in some instances, to even do the basic parts of their jobs.

Caring too much shows up for me in the classroom in these ways:

• + Wanting to know as much as I can about what students want and need

• + Spending lots of time crafting what I think will be a great learning experience

• + Revising a course sometimes in the middle of the semester to meet students’ needs

• + Challenging students’ perceptions of the value of course concent or activities

• + Expecting that I to get to know each student well enough that I could write them a letter of recommendation (and mean it)

• + Ruminating over every eyeroll, sigh, and disengagement to determine what I could do differently next time

• + Requiring that each student conferences with me so I can break the barrier of professor-student and plant the seed of empathy for both of us

• + Fussing over how quickly I can get feedback to students to help them develop and grow or just know that they are going to be okay

• + Diving deep into my “misses” more than my “hits” and wallowing in the disappointment of the few students who were not impressed by anything

I care too much because it feels that in this day and age everything is at stake in a way that nothing really was ten or more years ago. It sounds hyperbolic, but I care too much because it feels as if not enough people do care too much we won’t find our way out of the mess we were in now in higher education…and the world.

I could care less about teaching and learning, but I don’t think it will happen. I am just wired that way.

There has been a nostalgic trend on social media in which someone posts a video that includes the opening text “What were you like in the ’90s?” Then, the video continues with still photos or short films of the original poster doing 1990s things such as wearing a rugby shirt with “Coca-Cola” on it as “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls plays in the background.

These are fun 30-second dips into the increasingly-distant past, so I have decided to do my own reflection on what I was like in the 1990s when I was a brand-new instructor at a community college. The year was 1996, and other than teaching swimming lessons and art classes to 6th graders when I was in high school, I had no real teaching experience.

The only model of a student I had was myself, a self-described teacher’s pet and nerd with “call on me” energy who sat on the front row and did everything that was asked of her with enthusiasm. If you want a fictional character to serve as an apt reflection of who I was then, all you have to do is think of Tracy Flick in the movie Election (1998). In the movie, she is an achievement-driven obnoxious twit. Alas, so was I.

My teacher role models were plentiful—I have been blessed with great teachers in my life—but I cannot say that I truly embodied them in those end-of-the-century years that began my own teaching career. I had, and continue, to hack my way through learning how to teach all at the mercy of my generous students who have taught me the most about being a better educator.

What did I do as a 1990 professor that I thought was the right thing to do? First, I took my role very seriously: I was there “not to be liked, but to be respected” (I will save my musings on that for another article) and maintained what I thought were high standards. What I didn’t realize is that I was fulfilling the role of a gatekeeper to higher education. Honestly, I was probably more of a bouncer. It wasn’t until the last decade or so that I realized my role should be a host in which I am inviting students into the college experience and making them feel welcome. A good host makes the environment hospitable and comfortable so that guests feel as though they belong. I certainly wasn’t doing that in the 1990s and it showed in how many students were still enrolled by the end of the semester.

In that same vein, I held tight to my stringent policies. “If you are serious about college,” I thought, “then you will take my class seriously.” That included in my mind submitting well-written essays and completing near-perfect tests on the first try. I am embarrassed to say that in the 1990s I just didn’t understand how learning worked and didn’t full grasp that I was also the recipient of opportunities for revision and improvement along the way. After much learning and reflection on the psychology of students, I realize how out of touch I really was. I now provide many avenues for students to demonstrate growth, change, and improvement. I try to reiterate this encouragement and support in one-on-one conferences with all of my students, something I would have never been brave enough to do in the 1990s.

Probably the most important change I have made since that time is how I give feedback on papers. I can admit that I still have room to grow in this respect, but my attitude has changed completely. Instead of dreading grading because I assumed I would be irritated by the students who “just didn’t get it yet,” which would make me feel like a lousy teacher, I now look forward to grading (I know! Weird, right?) papers because I start with the mindset of looking for things to celebrate about them.

Does this mean I don’t mark errors or point out places that can be improved? Not at all; in fact, I probably still do that too much and often miss the mark in being considerate in how I do this. But it also means that I look for genuine things to celebrate with students. One way I make sure this happens is when I ask students to reflect on their own growth in the course, usually at the end of the semester when I am most prone to being stressed out and short tempered. Then, I can authentically gloat with my students who share the small and big steps they have taken to change.

If I am blessed with 30 more years of teaching, I may finally get it right. Until then, I will keep working towards changing my shifting my teaching mindset.

I am sitting in the airport awaiting a redeye flight home from what may have been my twentieth time to attend a special gathering: The First-Year Experience Conference. Mind you, I did not choose to take almost 25 hours to get home from Seattle, but it just seemed as though the universe had other plans.

But now I get to gather my thoughts in the stunning Salt Lake City airport while a a young person in well-worn Chuck Taylors entertains a thinning crowd on a black grand piano that has already attracted a few people this evening to share their musical gifts with those who are waiting for their chance to make it home.

The FYE Conference is one of my favorites because I feel as though I belong. In fact, a few of us “old timers” were discussing how much the faces have changed, but how the friendships that have been made over the years have deepened.

What keeps us coming back to such a place is not the opportunity to learn, connect, and grow in our field; it is mostly because we feel as though we belong. Not in a clique-y way, but in a way that that honors the unique perspectives that we bring to an interdisciplinary academic field that can feel “othered” at our home campuses.

At the conference, I had the privilege of presenting on “Wise Interventions for College Success,” strategies that take little time to implement but can have a big impact. I shared the following grid and asked the participants to think-pair-share on two questions: 1. How did you feel as a first-year student? 2. How do you feel as an educator?

Participants told their stories of having high belonging, but a fixed mindset because they were at a small, liberal arts college as a high-achieving school, but were very protective of their identity as “smart.”

Others shared that they were new in their roles and felt low belonging, but high growth mindset. They knew they would improve, but gosh, darn it is hard to connect with others and feel “safe.”

I shared with the group that Greg Walton and Geoffrey Cohen’s work on belonging offers a lot of promise for our students and us. If we can normalize setbacks and share with others our own stories of how we got better and improved, then we can help others feel less alone, breaking through some of the psychological barriers that persuade us we are not good enough.

What can we do to improve belonging on our campuses?

• First, don’t just say “You belong.” Make sure that it is clear at all levels of the college experience.

• Share authentic student stories of challenges and bouncebacks.

• Ask students to share advice to a future student about how to handle setbacks.

What can we do to improve our own belonging?

• Be authentic about our own successes and failures. If we want others to feel more competent and confident, they need to know we are not perfect.

• Be willing to put ourselves out there and connect with all levels at the institution.

• Consider being a mentor to others at different career stages. Those mid-career and late-career people can benefit not just from mentoring others, but dare I say may learn more from being mentored by early-career colleagues and even students!

The most edifying educational and professional experiences I have had were not because I worked hard, achieved a lot, or earned accolades. They were from the times that someone made me feel as though I was worthy of being in the room with them; recognized that I had something valuable to contribute; appreciated what my presence brought to the project or problem to solve.

While I still have 12 more hours of this 24-hour journey back home, I can at least appreciate that I have had the time to share my gratefulness for the people who have helped me feel a part of the group—and may I do the same for my students both current and future.

Hidden curriculum can live any where in and outside of your curriculum. It isn’t always just in the syllabus!

One way to know if you have areas in your course that are confusing for students is to notice who and when students get tripped up. Some common areas include the following:

• Understanding what the course is supposed to cover and how one will be assessed.

• Recognizing that course resources are required, have a cost, and must be obtained early in the semester.

• Realizing that the course has a Learning Management System or some online component is a major part of the course.

• Acknowledging the need to use university services such as offices for accessiblity and tutoring.

• Realizing that assignments must adhere to the guidelines that may include how the are formatted, how well they are written, and how they are submitted.

• Understanding that policies may differ among courses and that students are responsible for following them.

• Preparing for class adequately and with the appropriate materials and work completed.

The next time you scratch your head when a student doesn’t do what you want or need them to do, consider what may be “hidden” from them and strive to make those expectations clearer.

I have a core memory that is hard for me to shake: The year is 1985. I am in 7th grade English class and the teacher, who also happens to be my mother, opens up a royal blue trifold peg board in the back of the class. Fastened on the peg board are laminated construction paper “clouds”—some stuck to the bottom of the peg board and others “floated” up to the top.

On each paper cloud, which happened to be a pocket that held slips of paper within them, there were words written: “knowledge,” “comprehension,” “application,” “analysis,” “synthesis,” and “evaluation.”

“What fresh hell is this?” I thought.

Okay, maybe 12-year-old me wouldn’t have said it that way, but I was instantly repulsed. I was told it was something called “Bloom’s Taxonomy.” It even sounded weird, and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

We had started a unit on Greek mythology and we had to go to the peg board and draw a slip of paper from these paper-cloud-pocket things. Written on them were tasks that became more complicated and involved the higher up you went on the peg board.

“You will need to choose at least one task from the higher clouds,” my mother-teacher said.

The lower clouds had tasks on them such as “Identify 10 Greek gods and goddesses and describe their characteristics.” Easy-peasy. The higher clouds had tasks on them such as “Create a modern-day myth that explains an event such as a traffic jam or running out of hot water in the shower.” [Insert sad trombone noise].

I don’t remember much from that year besides reading a ton of really long books, learning lots of vocabulary from a book titled 1001 Words You Should Know, and trying to pretend that I didn’t care that the cute boys in the class didn’t notice me.

But I do remember the challenge of having to work—and think and create—at those higher levels. It felt like a chore, at least at first, but it also produced a more memorable experience as a group of classmates and I took on the challenge of creating a modern-day myth that may have been a skit that involved baby powder puffing in the air to mimic a hot shower.

Fast forward some, um, [cough], 40 years and now I am all about the Bloom’s. Why? Because I now see how determining what you want students to be able to do is and designing course experiences that challenge them to think and do at higher levels are important instructional skills.

I have also seen that students who think they are going to be learning at the “remembering” and “understanding” levels (Bloom revised his levels in 2001, long after I had completed junior high) stumble when professors expect them to do work at the “analyzing” and “evaluating” levels.

First, though, it may be helpful to define Bloom’s Taxonomy for those who didn’t encounter this work in their formative years. There are a lot of great websites that explain Bloom’s Taxonomy if you want to dig deeper—and marry this work with other important instructional frameworks—but simply put, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical framework that arranges educational objectives into six cognitive levels of complexity. The order of the levels from low to high are “remembering,” “understanding,” “applying,” “analyzing,” “evaluating,” and “creating.”

“Remembering,” for example, may show up in a course as “Identify the steps of the Kreb’s Cycle” or “List the major figures of the Italian Renaissance.” The highest level is “creating,” which may appear as an objective such as this one: “Design an integrated treatment plan for a complex case study that synthesizes at least three therapeutic modalities.”

In some cases, first-year college courses may rightfully focus on the lower-levels of “remembering” and “understanding” while junior and senior courses may include more “applying,” “analyzing,” “evaluating,” and “creating.” Nevertheless, I think it is important to think about the levels that you want students to perform and be transparent about those expectations.

Here is what you can do to help students rise to higher-order thinking:

• Familiarize yourself with the learning objective verbs that are associated with each level of Bloom’s. This site has a great list and other resources if you are looking for support.

• Review your course’s learning objectives to determine if you are asking too little or too much of students. Lots of “identify,” “list,” and “define” for a course that is supposed to help students stretch and grow through “design” and “critical review”? Then consider revising your objectives.

• Ask someone to sit in on a class or review your assignments to ensure that they align with the levels of Bloom’s you intend. I have observed classes in which their was a major misalignment, which can cause students to be bored (too low = not enough challenge) or to be confused (too high with no scaffolding = exasperation).

• And for the love of all things holy, share with your students the levels and what they mean as well as why you are asking students to work at the chosen levels. I have talked with faculty who were upset that students were failing quizzes and tests because they were assuming they just needed to remember content rather than know it well enough to apply or analyze it.

While I moaned as a 7th grader when I first encounterd Bloom and his “blasted” taxonomy, I am forever grateful that I was exposed to his work, for it gave me a lens through which I could evaluate my own learning and eventually my own teaching.

References

Stapleton-Corcoran, E. (2023). “Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.” Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois Chicago. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://teaching.uic.edu/blooms-taxonomy-of-educational-objectives/.

The hidden curriculum, or the unwritten rules that students learn about being a student, makes many feel the same way. Hard-working, competent students can feel helpless, as if nothing they do will make a difference. And sometimes those feelings drive them to lose motivation, stop working hard, or drop out entirely.

What can you do as a faculty member to help students understand the hidden curriculum in your classes?

• Determine what is “hidden” in your expectations. Are there things that you want students to do that they don’t do consistently or well?

• Review your syllabus for items that may need some clarification. I wrote about the syllabus and hidden curriculum in a previous post.

• Make expectations clear and provide examples. Want students to show up with annotations on their texts? Give an example or walk students through the process.

• Ask students where they are confused or unsure of what they should do. Work on making it clearer how to proceed. Examples and explanatory videos can be helpful.

• Get feedback on what has been helpful. When you add clarity and explanation in areas that may be where hidden curriculum lurks, ask students to rate how helpful the information is.

Revealing the hidden curriculum is not just a way to help all students by removing unnecessary barriers; it is also one of the best ways to deliver equitable education, which can allow those who have often been “shut out” of college to have a chance at success.

“It never hurts to ask, right?”

A student stands in front of me with a request: Can she find out what we are doing in class the Monday before Thanksgiving break? And can she be excused so she can go home and be with her family?

I bristled at this question. On the highest of high horses, I was insulted. “How dare she ask as if nothing we did was important to her?” I thought.

Miffed, I took to my social media network to complain and look for empathy. “Hell, yeah, she is out of line,” I assumed my friends and colleagues would post in unison.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, those closest to me asked me a question, “Don’t you appreciate that the student asked?” Even one person—who is now blocked and unfriended for other behavior—took the time to rant about the elitism of professors and how egotistical it was that I would not consider a student’s needs greater than my own. He wasn’t completely wrong.

But the unexpected pushback made me think: What should I be doing to help students advocate for themselves? In a world in which many students just assume they have no agency, am I part of the problem by dictating when it is good to ask and when it is not?

This search for the answer has led me to rethinking how I help students develop self-advocacy skills and how we can make the practice of speaking up and conveying needs more transparent and accessible. It also made me think more about the learned helplessness I see in the classroom when I know students need help, but they don’t seem to be motivated to reach out.

Now, let’s talk about how to do this.

First, let’s define self-advocacy, which is what we are talking about: “Self-advocacy is defined as communicating individual wants, needs, and rights to determine and pursue required accommodations” (Pfeifer, et al., 2021). Self-advocacy in higher education has its roots in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 when we began to see more opportunities for students with disabilities to get the support they deserve.

While the term has been broadened some in the field of student success, it still indicates an ability to determine a need or want and the ability to request and obtain a desired result.

Why Do Students Avoid Speaking Up?

Now, let’s talk a bit about why students do not advocate for themselves. Generally speaking, there are four reasons that students may be hesitant to ask for help:

1. Internal barriers. Think about what may be going through a student’s mind about their ability to do the work, the feeling of belonging, or their worry of being stereotyped. Students who internal barriers are attempting to mitigate others’ views of them. No one wants to be exposed as an “imposter” or put into category of annoying or unworthy. Thus, they don’t ask.

2. Cultural barriers. Students who see asking a professor or a staff member for help as disrespectful can find that reaching out is impossible. This may be cultural issue related to where, when, and how they grew up. A student who thinks asking for help is bad form may try to figure it out on their own.

3. Systemic barriers. Have you ever tried to figure something out on your campus only to be shuffled to different people or offices and then realize that you may not have what you needed to get something resolved? The experience may point to systemic barriers that are often built into institutions and organizations. If it takes several steps and a working knowledge of the process to resolve an issue, then most of us may just give up.

4. Skill-based barriers. Many students will say that they just don’t know how to explain their need or how to initiate the conversation without it being “awkward.” These are skill-based barriers that are probably the easiest to address.

What Can We Do to Build Self-Advocacy Skills?

What can you do to help students develop these skills—and perhaps reduce the “noise” from internal and cultural barriers to self-advocacy?

• First, build their self-awareness. Use a survey to help students assess their self-advocacy beliefs and behaviors first. Have they tried before? What is their attitude toward seeking help? You may find that in some areas of their lives—such as mental health issues—they feel very comfortable reaching out while in other areas—such as academic issues—they are hesitant.

• Start them off right. Using sentence starters and communication templates such as these, can ease students into learning the language of asking for help. If you have the time to role play the communication exchange, I strongly recommend it! Nothing helps more than practicing the skill in real time with someone who can give instant feedback.

• Show them how to prepare. Good self-advocacy often requires clear and careful note-taking and follow up. Even if the answer is “Yes, you can come in early to take the exam because your grandfather passed away,” it is best to write that down—or confirm in writing—so that there is no confusion later. Preparation notes such as these are more involved, but they guide the student through what to do before the meeting, during the meeting, and after the meeting.

Some emphasis in guiding students should also include what to do if the answer is “no” or the person is hesitant to grant the request. To be sure, there are many times that there is no wiggle room because of practice, policy, or law, and there is really nothing that can be done. However, how a student handles the initial or final no can be a great opportunity to practice professional communication and self-regulation skills.

Some sentence starters that can help when things aren’t going the student’s way include the following:

• “I understand this might not be typical. Is there any information I can provide that would help?”

• “I have [documentation/email from other professor/etc.] if that would be helpful.”

• “What would you need from me to make this work?”

While I still have to work to do to learn how be a better advocate for my students—and be more patient when they are practicing self-advocacy skills—I think that being more intentional about when, where, and how to ask can go a long way in building their confidence and communication skills.

“Failure is not an option,” a student wrote on her goal setting worksheet this semester.

This was a response to the question “What obstacles may you encounter when pursuing your goal?”

I know what she was wanting to say, but I kept thinking “Failure most certainly is an option.” It wasn’t like she would implode on site if she didn’t earn the grade she wanted, at least not physically.

In fact, I knew that she had experienced a few setbacks in the past few semesters. And yet she was still here doing things differently and moving forward. She was succeeding despite past failures. But had she actively learned from them?

What I was concerned about was her mindset: Was she focused on the wrong thing? Was she focused on “not failing” instead of learning, growing, improving?

I think we too often try to keep students from failing. Many of my first-year college students admit they were “kept” from failing (and learning from those errors, I would add) in high school because they got extra extensions and unlimited “do-overs” to improve their grades. While I embrace giving opportunities to students to revise, correct, and learn from a first attempt, I also think we often allow students to glide right over the necessary reflection it takes to make failure truly instructive.

Now they sit in my class without prior experience with learning from their mistakes or at least really digging in to do things differently. And some just want “the points” without understanding the purpose of the assignment or without much effort. Not all of my students—just enough for me to contemplate what to do differently.

I am not advocating that we fail students—or make work unnecessarily hard—to “teach them a lesson.” Instead, I am arguing that we need to prepare students to expect setbacks, obstacles, challenges (and confusion, ambiguity, and a little chaos), to build these experiences into their learning, and then encourage them to use the information (or “data; it’s just data,” I often say when handing back graded tests) to make changes.

What can we do to help students embrace the power of failing? Here are some strategies with students:

• Ask students to reflect on a challenging lesson. “Describe a time when you learned something difficult and initially failed at it before succeeding. What was it? How did you use setbacks or failing to make changes to your approach? What advice would you give someone in the same circumstance?” Allowing students to reflect on a past learning challenge can help prime them for future ones by reminding them of their ability to handle setbacks.

• Teach students what learning is. I have used Rita Smilkstein’s work on the “Natural Learning Process” as a start. She refers to “trial and error” in the early stages, but I would suggest that failure can happen especially when you have “mastered” something. It is how we use that failure that makes the difference. I also like to share this video as an example of what learning in real time looks like it. The skateboarder in the video repeatedly falls, but gets up and tries until it “clicks” with him as to what he needs to do differently. Learning is essentially experimentation and we have forgotten that many experiments fail until they succeed.

• Build in a revision or a “do over” into your assignment. Take any challenging assignment and build in a revision or retest opportunity, but require that students review their prior work, demonstrate understanding of the shortcomings and feedback, plan their “do over,” and point out their improvements. Redos without reflections can miss the point of the process.

• Assign students a “failure reflection” on challenging assignments. In my student success class, I consider the reflection to be more valuable than the actual product. For example, if students are learning how to study for a college mid-term exam, I give them a test reflection that asks them how they studied, how they felt taking the test, and how they felt about their performance. The exam grade is not as important to their overall progress in the course as much as the test reflection (and other reflections) are.

• Make failing fun. This one may be hard to do, but there are many activities in which the failing is baked into the process. The Marshmallow Challenge is a perfect activity for helping students enjoy the process of failing…or at least making it seem less intimidating. You can also create tongue-in-cheek certificates for students who failed at parts of this challenge.

• Create a “failure” wall. Allow students to anonymously share their past failures in a public setting. This could be through technology in which students can share on a document what they failed at, or it can be in the hallway of a building where students can write on designated paper their failures. We do this during our “Fail Forward Week” in which we celebrate failing—and learning from those mistakes—with “Fail Boards” around campus. Students can share their failure to help normalize the experience.

Finally, in addition to its being part of the learning process, remind students that failure is normal—everyone has failed—and temporary. It is not a permanent state that you cannot move out of no matter how deep the hole. For the student who said “Failure is not an option,” she has been proving that a setback such as a low GPA is not going to keep her from continually improving.

I had been teaching at a community college for over a decade at the time and I saw, each and every semester, very capable students who struggled to complete a class. Some would find that life just got in the way while others seemed to self-sabotage. And it didn’t seem to matter how encouraging you were; some just think they had what it takes to complete a degree. “How many lives could we change,” I thought, “if we could get more students to believe in themselves?”

Don’t get me wrong: We can improve curriculum and course sequencing (and remove barriers that delay student progress unnecessarily) and we can also provide opportunities for students to develop the mindsets necessary for doing challenging work.

In a darkened room of a hotel somewhere in the midwest, I came to this revelation, and it led me to a lifelong pursuit that has allowed me to co-write a book with several really cool colleagues and talk about how to help students develop a sense of belonging and a willingness to approach challenges with a growth mindset. I was locked into figuring out the why does this happen as well as the what can we do differently.

And I got a glimpse into that what when in 2014 I read what is now a classic article: “Who Gets to Graduate?” by Paul Tough. In it, Tough describes the work of David Yeager at the University of Texas at Austin and how something as small as sharing with students a “belonging” story at the beginning of a semester had a big impact on students’ retention, completion, and wellbeing. This, in turn, led to an opportunity to work with Greg Walton (check out his latest publication Ordinary Magic) on a belonging study with my institution. I started out as intrigued by his work, and ended up a fan.

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Since then, I have been collecting these strategies (or interventions in the social psychology lexicon) and have incorporated them into my classes. Here are several that you can try with little-to-no time.

• Lay Theory Exercise. This exercise is a simple one: Provide students with “dose of science. You may have them read a short article on how the brain can grow or provide them with a short video on neuroplasticity. Then, ask students to write about a time when they had to learn something new. What did they do to go from practicing (and failing) to mastery? Finally, ask students to provide advice to a student who is struggling to learn something new. What would they tell them about what they learned that could help them overcome the challenge?

• Growth Mindset Statements. Ask students to create a list of “Fixed Mindset” statements or things they may say to themselves when faced with a challenge: “I am not good at X” or “I avoid challenges.” Then, ask them to revise those statements using the ideas of “Growth Mindset.” This may mean that they state something like “I embrace challenges as a way to learn more about how to improve” or “I can get better at X when I use good strategies to improve.” The goal is to get students to “rewire” their self-talk when faced with an obstacle.

• Belonging Stories. One of the best things I learned from Greg Walton and Geoffrey Cohen’s work (another recommended reading is Cohen’s Belonging) is the importance of stories to help students feel like they belong. You can create them yourself or have students create them by asking them to first identify a concern they had before coming to college, then asking them to describe how normal the concern was (e.g., “Almost everyone worries about making friends when they first get to college”). Finally, you can direct students to identify how they worked through the concern.

Here is what it may look like:

“Colin, a sophomore, was worried that he was not ready for college last fall. When he arrived on campus, he thought everyone else knew how to study and was making good grades. When he failed his first exam in chemistry, he realized that many of classmates had also failed. Most first-year students, he discovered, stumbled in the first few weeks. However, he realized that by changing his study habits—and seeing a tutor—he could improve his grades. Now, he feels more comfortable knowing that he can make changes to do better any time he finds a class challenging.”

• Values Affirmation Exercise. Cohen’s work on belonging led him to research on one’s self-concept. An outgrowth of this research is Cohen’s Values Affirmation Exercise, which has shown to improve the academic outcomes of students from marginalized groups by buffering some of the self-doubt that may arise when faced with a difficult challenge. Here is what the exercise looks like:

  At the beginning of a challenging course or before a major exam, ask students to

  • Choose their most important personal value

  • Write briefly about why it matters to them

Example prompt:

1. Look at the values you picked as most important to you.

2. Think about times when these values were or would be very important to you.

3. Describe why these values are important to you. Focus on your thoughts and feelings, and don’t worry about spelling or grammar.

• Value-Utility Exercise. Yeager and Walton, who I imagine were on fire finding ways to help students subtly change their mindsets, found that when you ask students to find the value in an assignment, they were more likely to persist through college (and less likely to dropout). Here is what it looks like:

  Before an assignment or at the beginning of a course, provid a brief, 10-15 minute writing or reflection activity in which students articulate how course content connects to their own lives, goals, or values. This can be done individually or in small groups.

Example prompt: “How might what you’re learning today help you in your future career or personal life?

What is interesting about these interventions is that they can be done easily and with little time investment. In fact, if you didn’t want to use class time, you could assign them before the semester starts. What is also interesting is that most of them have long-lasting effects. It isn’t just that students persist to the end of the semester in which they partcipate in the intervention; many students indicate that the effects last beyond degree completion.

If we are looking for ways to improve students’ mindsets—and subsequently, their college success—these are some of the easiest ways to help students “keep believin’” in their ability to meet their academic goals.

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This is the week of mid-term tests at my institution. I have gotten on the bandwagon of testing even though I know it is not always the best way to measure student learning.* Why? Because I have found that if I can direct students towards a goal (e.g., a test or some sort of assessment), then they are more likely to stay focused on learning. Without it, my students often slack on the assigned readings, take poor notes (if any at all), disengage from the discussion, and skip the scaffolded assignments.

Perhaps my tactics are “old school,” but it is the language I know: Learning should move one towards an ability to demonstrate that learning.

Another reason I have started incorporating testing into my classes is that because I teach first-year college students. That means that they will have tests in most of their classes over the next several years. Many have honed their skills on high school tests and are not yet prepared to take a college-level exam. If I can help them anticipate questions, study effectively, and take tests with confidence, then I will do just that.

As I have been looking for ways to help students develop academic skills, there is no better strategy, I think, than providing students with practice tests because they do a few things that help not only students, but also me the instructor. Practice tests can do the following:

• Reveal the types of questions they will see on the test. This helps them orient their approaches to studying and taking the test. If they know, for example, the test will be short discussion questions, then they will know they need to incorporate writing (preferably timed) into their study sessions.

• Allow students to “test” out responses. If the test questions are subjective, for example, students can practice what is an appropriate response. This can help students who may know the material but are unsure of “how much detail” you are looking for. In essence, students can learn how to calibrate their responses.

• Help you determine what kinds of questions are best for the goals you have and the timeframe of the test. One of the most important aspects of practice testing for me is that I can try out questions to see if students struggle productively (or unproductively) and how much I can ask of them. If the questions are too easy (or seem easy) and students may rush through or see the test as inconsequential. If the questions are too hard, too confusing, too dense, or demand an answer that takes up more time than it should, students see the test as ridiculously difficult and may give up in the middle of the test. Neither outcomes are ideal if you are trying to provide a fair assessment that also stretches students’ capabilities in productive and meaningful ways.

To be sure, there are many other reasons to provide practice tests, low-stakes or no-stakes quizzes, and sample assessment questions throughout the semester. Practice tests help students do far more than just see a sneak peek of an upcoming test. In fact, practice tests can do the following:

• Show students that practice testing is not as hard as they think to do on their own. Many students resist practice testing because it is “hard” to do and not as enjoyable as rereading notes or texts. Idea: Encourage students to use an AI generator to create practice test questions for themselves.

• Close the gap between confidence and competence. What I mean by this is that students are often confident that they know the material especially if they just studied it or covered the content in a lecture. What a practice test can do is help students determine what they truly know versus what they think they know. Idea: Ask students to mark questions that they are confident they got right and the ones they are not confident they got right. When you reveal the answers, encourage students to study the questions they not only got wrong, but the ones they were in which they were overconfident or underconfident.

• Eliminate fluency illusion. Marking students’ confidence levels on test questions is a great way to help them become aware of a concept called “fluency illusion,” or the idea that you know something when you don’t really know it. Students often confuse familiarity with mastery. Just because I know some Spanish words and can, in a controlled environment, parrot back phrases between a partner and me doesn’t mean I can call up a hotel in Madrid and converse competently about making a reservation. Idea: Provide a variety of low-stakes or no-stakes questions throughout the semester to decrease fluency illusion.

A goal of testing can be—should be?—to help students embrace the activity as a learning strategy rather than an end-all-be-all declaration of their self-worth, intelligence, or future success. In essence, we can coach students to see practice tests as their most powerful learning tool. Happy semester mid-terms to all who celebrate!

*I provide a variety of assessments for students without one in particular dominating the overall grade. My goal in my classes is to provide a wide variety of learning experiences and teach students how to approach each one.

I have been thinking a lot about the incoming first-year students. It is kind of my job to think a lot about them as I teach a first-year seminar as well as a student success course—all designed to help students build competence and confidence. So it wasn’t a surprise when a colleague shared with me a post by EAB (a company that offers strategic planning among other services to colleges and universities) that curled her very straight hair.

The post shares that 42% of high school graduates do not meet reading, math, science, and English benchmarks for college readiness and 48% indicate that stress and anxiety affected their college planning process.

For the work that I do, these statistics are not out of the ordinary. I have worked with promising, yet underprepared, students for almost 30 years. These data points just mean that more of my colleagues will be more aware of the opportunities that my department have to help students shore up their skills and allay their worries about being in college.

Alas, it is no easy task, but here are my suggestions:

• Ack-sen-chu-ate the positive. If you are familiar with the Bing Crosby classic song, you know that focusing on the positives of a situation can help you “bring gloom down to the minimum.” Our students have lots of positives that often get drowned out by what seems like a monumental task of getting them to successfully transition from high school to college. Here are some traits to get you thinking about your students in a promising light:

  • Inclusive and accepting of others. I have rarely seen a cohort so open to others’ differences that it makes me embarrassed for my generation’s treatment of classmates in years past. If there is anything to learn from this group, it is their world view on others (quirks, preferences, traits, identities, etc.), and I think that is pretty special.

  • Aware of mental health issues. They are so much more in tune with their mental health and what resources they have (just need some nudging to use them). I cannot recall ever talking with my friends in college about anxiety, depression, or emotional well being. These students feel empowered to talk about issues and are open to learning how to manage their mental health.

  • Driven by purpose and value. They are not willing to accept things the way they are. Instead, they demand that experiences, learning, opportunities be meaningful and align with their values. That kind of self-awareness keeps me on my toes, for sure, when planning my classes, but I admire their willingness to find fulfillment in their lives.

  • Keenly sensitive to economic drivers. This is not just a low-income, first-generation college student thing. While they may need some help learning how to budget and delaying gratification, they are aware of how expensive college is and how important it is to them to walk into a job after graduation that can pay their bills.

• Educate them on the transition. For the love of all things holy, be transparent in what it takes to navigate from high school to college. There is no reason to hide the steps that it takes. This means sharing a framework such as the Six Areas of College Adjustment (Hazard & Carter, 2018) or Southern Methodist University’s High School to College comparisons.

• Scaffold the skills they need. If you want to help them rise to the standards of your course or institution, provide the steps to get started. This may mean creating guided notes (e.g., provide an outline of key concepts you want students to capture during a lecture or from an assigned reading) or helping them create a time management plan for completing work in your class (e.g., estimating time on task for each component and scheduling that time throughout the week). If you want them to study for a test, show them how to do so effectively and how much time it should take.

• Create meaningful connections with you and peers. Don’t leave connections to chance. Instead, orchestrate them. There are so many great ideas for helping students get to know othters, but here are some not-so-common ones. Require students to visit you in your office outside of class for “non-crisis” conversations. Send them “kudos” notes when they are doing well. To help them get to know their fellow students, create small groups for activities and projects and help them form study groups.

• Connect their positive traits to actionable steps. There will be plenty of time to help them narrow gaps (that can be a Substack post for another time), but look for ways to help them flex their strengths:

  • Inclusive and accepting of others. Encourage them to develop their network with a variety of people each semester.

  • Aware of mental health issues. Encourage them to use health and counseling resources as well as other options (e.g., faith-based organizations, volunteer opportunities).

  • Driven by purpose and value. Connect what they are doing now with their larger goals and dreams by asking them “How can this ___ (assignment, course, experience, skill, etc.) help you in a goal that you have for yourself?”

  • Keenly sensitive to economic drivers. Provide access to resources for paying for college and career services that help them choose viable career pathway.

You will have plenty of time to help students build the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in your course and beyond, so start with what they can already do and leverage their strengths.

What does it take to help students feel they belong in our classroom? And can we make them feel welcome, confident, and ready without taking away from teaching our content? According to Greg Walton, we can. It just takes some "ordinary magic."

I recently read Greg Walton's book Ordinary Magic, which compiles his and others' research on belonging interventions. If you want to nerd out on social psychology, it may help to know that Walton is a protege of Carol Dweck (growth mindset) and Claude Steele (stereotype threat).

I have been a fan of Walton and his work for over a decade—he is so approachable, kind, and unassuming, and his work, well, it’s also approachable and downright easy to implement. About 10 years ago, Walton visited my campus to talk about implementing a belonging intervention as part of the College Transition Collaborative. The data suggested that those who took part in the treatment group of the intervention increased the sense of belonging for students of color and first-generation college students.

I spent a good part of this summer savoring Walton’s new book. There is so much to glean from his research and his stories, but he also provides some easy wins that anyone can implement into their work with students.

Here are just a few ideas as you begin to prepare to meet and greet students this fall:

• Be very intentional in saying you are glad your students are in your class: "I welcome your experience and expertise." A wise old owl (the incomparable colleague and all-around-amazing educator Dr. Amy Hawkins) once said, "Students want to know two things: that you are organized and that you care." Lean into the "care" on the first day (and, of course, be organized always!).

• Create a space for students to share their values. Geoffrey Cohen, another colleague of Walton’s and the author of the fantastic book Belonging: The Science of Creating Connections and Bridging Divides has developed a short intervention that can have significant results for students who initially do not feel they belong. You can access it here. All you need to do is hand it out and have students do it. The rest is, as Walton says, "ordinary magic." Seriously, though, the research suggests that students who reflect on what is most important to them are more likely to weather the challenges that they will face in the weeks, months, and years ahead. They also earn higher grades.

• Reframe office hours as a way to get to know students. One study Walton mentions is from the University of Texas. They "revised the syllabus...to say that the purpose of office hours wasn't just to ask questions about class material but because instructors cared about students and wanted to learn about their broader values and goals." Again, higher grades for first-gen students and students of color.

• Share that the purpose of your class is to support growth and learning. Students worry about how they will be treated when they make mistakes--"Will I be judged?" If you share with students (and create a course that supports this) that their mistakes are part of progress and they have opportunities to demonstrate growth, they are more likely to feel comfortable. Explain why you give tough critical feedback: "We have high standards at this institution and I give you this feedback because I believe you can rise to those standards." These are powerful words that reframe setbacks and motivate students to revise and improve.

• Help them imagine what resources they will use to study. When students are preparing for a test or major assignment, ask them to think through (or write down) the resources they would use to make the best possible grade. Better yet, require them to use the resources--a writing center, library, tutoring, peer coaching, etc.

• Teach them that stress can be a "superpower." When students worry that anxiety is a sign they will fail, they can shut down. In one study, a professor sent an email to students the day before the mid-term that said "test anxiety is your body getting ready to take on a challenge and succeed." Another way to convey this information is to show students Kelly McGonigal’s video about how to make stress “your friend.” Again, the results of this kind of intervention suggest that students who have been historically marginalized in higher education say significant benefits--higher grades, lower stress.

In a world in which we want bold strategies and big results, it can be hard to think about student success as micro strategies and nudges. But they do work, and they can take little to no time to implement. We just need to remember that we are planting seeds and nurturing the soil so they can grow.

Let’s talk about you and me.

Let’s talk about all the tactics

And strat-uh-jeez.

Let’s talk about texts.

—Salt-N-Pepa

Okay, so maybe those aren’t the original lyrics to the 1991 hit.

But if Cheryl, Sandra, and Deidre (the members of last century’s dynamic hip hop group responsible for a few good ear worms) were to see the state of college preparation, they would surely update it.

If you have been like me, an educator for at least a decade, you are not surprised that it seems more and more students are struggling to meet the demands of college reading. The Atlantic article that circulated last fall captured the existential concern that students—no matter what their background—are coming into college without the requisite reading stamina and skills.

Even if you are not teaching a reading class, if you teach any level of student, you are teaching reading. If you are teaching first-year students, you may find that you are not only teaching reading skills, but also larger reading issues such as motivation, focus, and comprehension.

So what has brought us here?

Why Students Don't (Like to) Read

• Students report that they have not had to read much in high school. When I say “had,” I mean that even if they were assigned texts, they were able to progress without investing time and effort into developing their reading skills.

• Students have so many options for content consumption. While some may rue the decline of reading, it may be true that many students are still consuming large quantities and varieties of content—video, audio, and all that is in between. This means that they are literate in different ways or aliterate, which drives their finding alternative ways to digest information.

• Students tell me again and again they are not interested in reading what is assigned. They say they like to read "what they want to read," but find little pleasure in reading assigned work. The key here is "pleasure," I think because they want reading to be pleasurable or they are not motivated.

• Students have trouble focusing when they read and then cannot remember what they have read, which deflates their motivation.

• Rarely do students take notes while reading, and they have difficulty comprehending what they have read. Some reasons include: their vocabulary is low; they may have undiagnosed/untreated learning difficulties that make reading more challenging; they may not be used to reading dense, complex, long texts. They have not had much practice.

Now, where can we go?

What Can We Do About It

First, there is no need to reroute your entire curriculum to help students improve their reading skills. One of the easiest, best things you can do share what you are reading, what you are excited to read, and what you have read that you really liked. Enthusiasm is contagious. Talking about reading and learning from it normalizes it.

Another strategy is to share an article like this one to read together and discuss the process for reading, especially how to read the texts you assign. Creating a conversation around reading helps students see that there is a process. You may also want to discuss the differences between reading for pleasure and reading for knowledge and share strategies for enjoying reading for knowledge.

Share with students short videos on taking notes while reading or assign longer videos on how to stay focused while reading that can demonstrate the steps to take to make the most of their reading.

If you want to provide more instruction (and I suggest this as you become more comfortable), consider using strategies such as previewing the text, providing guided reading notes, and other short assessments for helping them make meaning of the content. These are “external motivators” and can jumpstart students’ habits.

The pinnacle of reading support is helping students develop the habits that are needed for college. Not easy to do, but you can always plant the seed and water it, hoping it will sprout. First, help them estimate how much time they need to complete reading (and they should overestimate at least at first). Then, show them select strategies for reading to remember and comprehend. And if you want to level up, require students to provide evidence of their note-taking and comprehension by submitting notes or writing summaries.

We aren’t going to wave a magic wand and make every student a solid reader who is excited to read everything that you assign. But we can certainly start talking about texts.

• Ideas for starting the process of planning your fall courses.

• A book review of Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts.

• A link to The Curious Professor’s YouTube channel and a sample video.

  

I have sat down to write this post a dozen times over the past week but stopped each time because I don’t want to acknowledge that the summer is half over. Let me be clear: I recognize the privilege of getting to refresh, reorganize, and reenergize over a dozen weeks. I am grateful. But I also feel the pressure of using my time wisely to prepare for the fall before the chaotic schedule of meetings, announcements, the crush of students, and the general buzz that marks the beginning of the academic year.

While I am not quite ready to jump into full-on planning for my classes, I can—and will—be doing a few things to make some small moves to make fall planning much easier. To that end, I want to share some basic steps I take when planning a new course or rethinking one that I have taught for years.

Asking Essential Questions

I think it was Linda Nilson, the prolific and extraordinary author and workshop facilitator, who first introduced me to the idea of “essential questions.” I have been using this concept to create new courses and revise old ones. In its original form, essential questions are focused on the knowledge that you want students to have mastered by the end of your course. The beauty of using essential (meaning just a few) questions is that when written for students, they can guide the learning process and be used as check-ins or assessments. I have use four essential questions as the framework for a student success course and those questions are all that is asked on the final exam. Students are aware on the first day what we are going to be working towards answering.

I would like to expand these questions a bit, though, in light of the work I have been doing over the past few years in terms of student dispositions.

• What do I want students to know or be able to do? This can be your content or course objectives or it can go deeper. While many students may realize that a writing class is there to help them become better writers, perhaps what you want them to be able to do is use revision to “resee” their thoughts and ideas. The goal here is to be transparent. Not everyone will automatically know what you want them to do.

• How do I want students to feel? Think about where in your course you want students to feel challenged, supported, successful. Do students ever feel frustrated? Downtrodden? Ready to call it quits? If so, identify those places in the term and see if you can find ways to improve their experience. No one expects you to make learning easy or without struggle, but sharing with students what they most likely will feel and how to weather the ups and downs can help them feel connected to your course.

• How do I want students to grow? This is a good question especially if you teach a course that is intimidating for students. In fact, sharing this question (really, all the questions) with students can be a great way for them to see the purpose of your assignments and feedback.

• What do I want students to take with them 10 years from now? This is one of my favorite questions that I ask at the end of the semester. It is helpful because it can encourage students see the benefit and importance of something they learned in your class. The answers can also help you plan for next semester by identifying what has been most useful for students.

Getting to Know Your Students

This strategy should go without saying, but I do recognize that some faculty have large student loads and getting to know each one on a deep level is impossible. However, there are some things you can do to make it a little easier for you.

• Create a “Getting to Know You” survey. I started doing this after my oldest kid had her first orthodontist appointment. The dental assistant gave her “Dr. David Wants to Know About You!” sheet with blanks to fill in about her favorite books and movies, activities, and foods. She turned to me genuinely stunned: “He wants to know about me!” she said in awe. I thought, if that kind of outreach works on new patients, would it work on new students? I ventured to find out and haven’t looked back. Things to ask include the following:

  + Their preferences in what you call them.

  + Their hometown, high school mascot, favorite foods, special talent, “walk-up” song that reflects who they are or want to be.

  + A time in which they learned something hard and how they were able to do it.

• Ask students to record a short video. One time I mispronounced a student’s name the entire semester until she meekly raised her hand the last week of class to correct me. I felt terrible both that I had butchered her name all semester and that she didn’t have the courage to correct me earlier. I strive to be better than that. One way I have made improvements is to ask for a short (1 minute) video of their saying their name and telling me a little about themselves—anything they want or where they are from, what they want to do in college, and something they are watching/reading/listening to.

• Assign a “Student of the Day” or “Lecture Dedication” each class meeting. I cannot recall where this idea came from, but a professor shared that he asks students to create one slide or image and provide a short introduction to their “dedication.” Students have “dedicated lectures” to pets, grandparents, and superheroes. The ideas is to have students share something meaningful to them. Alternatively, you can ask a student to share a few key things about themselves at the beginning of class. This can be prepared (as in a slide with images or text on it) or can be off the cuff. Just make sure each student has the opportunity.

Creating Buy-in

I have talked for years about the importance of creating buy-in for your course. This is especially true if you teach a course that is required (and not beloved) or unusual (meaning students don’t “get it” right away). Creating buy-in can help students get excited about the course, and it can also help them weather potential setbacks or struggles as the semester gets more stressful. In some cases, your moves here could bring a reluctant learner into the mystery and beauty of your discipline!

• Identify key questions in your discipline. Unlike the “essential questions” above, consider sharing with students the key questions that are being worked on in your discipline. For example, I teach a memoir class (students read memoirs and write memoirs) that is focused on the college experience. One of the key questions regarding research on the student experience is “Why do students struggle with completing a college degree?” and “What can we do to improve student outcomes?” Through these questions, students can see the importance of the work we are doing, not only for making meaning of their own experiences, but also for helping researchers understand what contributes to student success.

• Ask students to identify important learning outcomes and content. Another way to foster buy-in is to ask students to reivew your syllabus and identify what they think is the most important learning outcomes and content for them. Take it it a step further and ask them to reflect on how those selections will connect to their ultimate career or personal goals. If students struggle with finding something they see as meaningful, a class discussion about the skills inherent in the outcomes may be needed.

• Harness student strengths and values. I have pulled a lot of ideas from the social psychology work of Geoffrey Cohen (a colleague of Greg Walton’s —see book review below). His value affirmation exercises help frame students’ thoughts about what they bring to learning. His research has found that a simple reflection task in which you ask students to identify and write about a couple of values they hold help inoculate them against setbacks from the challenges that they may inevitably face. If you do this exercise in your class, it may help students who, for example, fail the first test, to attribute it to their actions rather than their identities. The exercise may also provide you with an opportunity to discuss how yoru course may help students leverage their key values.

You can watch the video embedded at the bottom of this newsletter on creating buy-in for more ideas and more videos for preparing you to teach college students at my YouTube Channel @abthecuriousprofessor. Take a moment to think about how you are going to “sell” your course to your students.

Book Review: Greg Walton’s Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts (Harmony, 2025)

I first learned about Greg Walton when I read the 2014 New York Times Magazine article “Who Gets to Graduate?” in which author Paul Tough examined David Yeager’s research on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Yeager at the time was implementing some interesting interventions that Walton and colleagues had created. I had just started a new job—well, hadn’t really even started yet—and forwarded the article to my soon-to-be supervisor. What resulted from the article (which made spread like wildfire inside higher ed) was an opportunity for my university to participate in the belonging research of Dr. Greg Walton.

An unassuming research powerhouse, Walton’s work has intrigued me for over a decade, and the intervention that he guided on our campus showed significant promise. This eventually led me to an incredible opportunity to co-write the book Promoting Belonging, Growth Mindset, and Resilience to Foster Student Success (Stylus, 2020). Walton graciously wrote a foreword for our book!

This is all to say that my review may not be totally objective, but I am grateful that he has put together an accessible, enjoyable, and story-driven book about the research that he has been a part of or has been built from the foundational work he has done. If anything, Walton has shown us that stories, especially those that are built around a certain narrative structure, can be incredibly powerful.

What Walton has provided in this book is an understanding of the key principles of belonging:

• We can spiral down or up depending on what think about our identities and our sense of belonging. If we can intervene early with students to help feel capable and part of the community, then we are more likely to trigger a spiralling up rather than down.

• Wise interventions help students by acknowledging that their experience is real, normal, and has options for next steps.

• Getting students to share their stories for the benefit of others and having students read other student stories can help them spiral up when they face a hardship.

• Inviting students to determine how useful a course, a unit, a topic, or an assignment is more powerful than telling students why it is important.

Walton writes, “When learning is, in fact, relevant to learners—to who they are, to who they’re trying to be, and to what they want to do—people respond” (p. 159).

His book is a good reminder that these “nudges” can be incorporated into classrooms and one-on-one interactions with very little effort, and the results, as his and others’ research suggests, can be somewhat “magical.”

If you read this far, you are a hero in my book! Happy summer planning!

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I have talked with lots of first-year college students in my almost 30 years of teaching, and I have offered enough activities and assignments to know what piques students’ interest, what challenges students to listen and work with others, and what goes over like a lead balloon.

Unfortunately, I have lots of failures in the classroom, but I always learn more about what my students expect, what they want, and what they just don’t want to do.

To help you avoid the crickets or the outright mutiny (While I haven’t be asked to walk the plank yet, I think I have only narrowly avoided it in the past…maybe my time will come), I want to share with you some of the things that students have said influence their attendance, engagement, and interest in the course.

• No clear policies or expectations or a laissez-faire attitude toward policies or expectations. It may feel good to have the “They are adults” conversation with them, and there will be some—usually a small few—who are enegerized by that, but so many more need boundaries and clear expectations. This is what they tell me: They know they should go to class or stay off their phones during class, but without the expectation (and, unfortunately, enforcement), they have trouble doing those things.

• Lecture only as a means of delivering the course. Dymanic lecturers need not fear—they are not exactly talking to you with this nugget—but they have expressed that faculty who lecture, read off slides, read out of the book (!), or do anything that keeps students passive are seriously missing an opportunity to get them to participate and think during class time. True, some students love a good lecture so they can listen or taking some notes, but many more appreciate the opportunity to talk to each other or work together. Lecture without opportunity to answer a question, reflect, share, or test themselves are bringing them down.

• Only one way to demonstrate learning. Many of my students struggle with quizzes and tests. I have, for example, given a quiz on the reading, noticed that most could not answer a few questions, and then discovered later in class that they were discussing the text in depth. WTH? When I asked, “What gives, pray tell?” they tell me that they have trouble reading for specifics or key ideas (!), but can talk about a text globally. This is not to say we need to ditch the specific questions on assessments; it does mean that we could consider alternative assessments that gauge something like reading the text for understanding.

• Quizzes can motivate. Even though they often struggle to do the reading at the depth they need to for a class, they have indicated over and over again they want and need accountability—and a quiz each class time is something they know would help them. What would make it better for them? Provide some potential quiz questions to help guide their reading.

• Guided notes, reading questions, and study guides. Ugh, I bristle at the idea of these elements. “Study guide? Aren’t your notes guide enough?” Yeah, I have thought it and said it. But this keeps coming up over and over again. Perhaps this is where Artificial Intelligence can help them generate these questions and note-taking structures. I am just the messenger, but it wouldn’t hurt to model how to take notes, how to read actively and critically, and how to study for a specific assessment.

• Real-world, high stakes assignments. You can call it project-based learning, service learning, real-world problems, or whatever, but students tell me they get energized when directly applying key concepts to an issue that is connected to your course. If the project or assignment has an outward facing component (e.g., students have to share what they learned with other constituents besides their classmates), they can be motivated to achieve. So many of my first-year students want to get into their major classes and work on things that matter to them. This is one way to introduce them to that kind of work.

Look, I am just the messenger here. There are times when I think, “No, you do need to read this carefully and reflect on the significance of it.” But there are many other times that all I need to do is tweak something—how I present it, what I expect students to do, or how I have called students into the process—to get them to see that the work we are doing is important and important to them.

I am notorious for being excited to teach first-year college students and a little obnoxius for asking them questions about how they are doing and what is on their minds…like every day.

“So, tell me how y’all are feeling this week?”

Most students play along and tell me about significant other break-ups, the pandemonium of having three papers due and two tests in one week. Still others confess they are not motivated. Or they are stressed. Or they are worried. Or they are excited because they got an A on College Algebra exam.

These questions and student responses have given me a wealth of information into the heart of the student experience. I can pinpoint about when they are going to start to look for a part-time job and when they will need a letter of recommendation.

Because I feel so strongly about helping students understand, anticipate, and weather their experiences in college, I have tried out a few different strategies for getting to know my students and identifying where they will need some support.

First, I use Hazard & Carter’s (2018) Six Areas of Adjustment as a framework for student issues: social, financial, cultural, emotional, intellectual, and academic. If you want to read more about blog post about the Six Areas of Adjustment.

You may assume that your first-year college students will identify most with the academic adjustment—and you are not wrong! However, you may be surprised by some of their questions and challenges.

Here are just a few ways that I have used the Six Areas of Adjustment to help students begin to reflect on their journey through college.

What’s Your Sign?

I know there is a more formal instructional name for this activity, but for now I am going to call it “What’s your sign?” with apologies for anyone who has had to endure that question as a pick-up line in a bar in the 1970s. Here’s how you do it:

• Print each of the 6 areas of adjustment on a sheet of paper and tape around the room, providing enough space for students to move around easily or identify the area of adjustment.

• Ensure that students understand the descriptions of each adjustment and some specific examples.

• Ask students a series of questions about each adjustment and have them stand under/next to/close to the adjustment that best answers the question.

  • What adjustment will be most challenging for you?

  • What adjustment will be easiest for you?

  • What adjustment do you know a resource for?

  • What adjustment do you not know a resource for?

When students move around the room, you get a clearer picture of how many students may be experiencing issues related to the adjustment. For example, several students stood next to “financial” when asked which was most challenging, which helped me identify who may need some extra resources. The ones who stood next to “social” bravely shared that they needed help making friends.

What Resource Can You Use?

Another variation of this assignment is to ask students to write about 2-3 and describe how they think they will move through the adjustment and grow from it while in college. Then, ask them to identify which campus resources they would need to use to help them with the adjustment. Students can share their reflections with others and help them identify additonal resources.

What Advice Can You Give?

If you feel students may not want to reveal their own struggles or concerns with the adjustments, then create a few student scenarios in which the class can identify the adjustment that the student is working through and—better yet—what the student can do to help.

Case Scenario #1: Patricia

Patricia feels as though she spends all of her time after classes reading and taking notes on what she is reading. She has never been a fast reader, but the amount of reading she now has to do seems overwhelming. She also has trouble remembering what she has read and keeping it from confusing her with other material. At times she feels like it is not worth doing the reading before class. What advice would you give Patricia and why do you think it would be helpful?

Case Scenario #2: Carl

Carl has not purchased his books yet and it is the fourth week of the term. He doesn’t have enough money to buy them yet and the bookstore is out of some of his books. He thinks he can take good notes and he will be fine. What advice can you give Carl and why do you think it would be helpful?

Case studies can do so much heavy-lifting for students: 1) it normalizes types of challenges, 2) it allows for the application of knowledge, and 3) it provides the cognitive benefit of “saying is believing,” or the idea that if you give advice, you are more likely to follow that advice.

While I have used the Six Areas of Adjustment for these activities, you can use just about any framework with these activities.

When I was in graduate school, I took a statistics class. The professor’s reputation had “preceded” her, as they say. She was the only professor who taught this particular level, and she had all the grad students “shook.”

At the time, I was a full-time English instructor, an author of several textbooks, a parent of two young children, and an otherwise capable human being who had proven over the last couple of decades that I could achieve.

This course, however, had me doubting myself. It was partly because my classmates had gotten into my head about how hard it was and how uncompromising the professor was. I felt as though she wanted us to fail or she wanted to prove to us that she was superior in her knowledge.

The first night of class (we met online except for occasional opportunities to see her in person) we filled the classroom to get an overview of the course. I don’t remember what we discussed—only a few people asked some questions about the assignments—but I do remember that she said, “If you are not smart enough to know what you are asking when you ask me a question, don’t bother asking it.”

I took from this statement that if we were so confused by the content that we couldn’t even ask a proper question, then she was not going to help us.

I was on my own. And because I didn’t really know anyone else at the beginning of the semester, I felt all alone.

But being the trooper I am, I sallied forth to do the assignments. If anything, the professor was organized and she had built a robust online course. I just didn’t realize I wasn’t really learning anything. I moved from section to section in fear of being “found out” that I didn’t belong in that course.

It wasn’t until I took my first test (8 questions, mind you). I thought I had done “okay, maybe a B,” but I wasn’t prepared for making an F! The grade was a 56% to be exact, which I, at first, erroneously thought was a D.

Although I did persevere after finding a willing classmate who helped me through the content, I ended the class grateful to pass, but completely unsure of my abilities. It wasn’t until I hired a tutor to help me prepare for my comprehensive exams that I realized I had actually wasn’t as incompetent as the course—and the professor—made me feel. It took someone presenting the same content in a way that made me feel supported to realize that I could do statistics.

I often think about that time when I am working with new students. While the professor had no way of knowing that I felt like an imposter in her course (partly because of her reputation, partly because my background was language, writing, and literature, not math, probability, and significance testing), I think now that she could have approached the course a little differently and had better results—or at least had students who felt comfortable asking questions.

I strive to do the same for my students now—to make them feel as though they belong in my class, they belong in college, and they can do this work even if they need some support. I admit I wasn’t always focused on creating this kind of community (more on that in another post), but I have learned from my own experiences that sometimes very capable students in a new, challenging environment just need to know you care.

Here are some things I do to help students feel as though they belong:

• Provide a student survey. I ask students at the beginning of the semester questions or prompts about themselves including “Tell me about a time you were excited to learn something” and “How did you get through a challenging learning experience?” My favorite question that elicits helpful information is “Tell me something I need to know that would help me support you.” I often get statements such as “I am a slow learner, but be patient with me” or “I am really shy, but I do want to get better at talking in class.”

• Select readings and examples that mirror your students’ demographics. This may be difficult in some disciplines to choose readings that reflect who your students are, but you can create student scenarios of common issues that your students may face and be mindful to include common details. For example, I may create a scenario about a student who is struggling to pay for books at the beginning of the semester and we talk through what that student can do to get their course resources.

• Require student conferences. This can be difficult if you have a large number of students, but you could try it out in certain sections or for certain students (e.g., those who struggled on the first test). Of all the strategies I have used to help build rapport with students, this is hands down the most exhausting and most rewarding. It allows me to provide words of encouragement and to identify what issues they may have.

• Find ways to praise progress. This can be a quick note on an assignment or a brief statement after class. Show that you are paying attention and that you see the hard work. This is especially important to do with students who often fly under the radar—those who are quiet and may not quite be meeting the course expectations, but are showing effort. If a student makes a marked improvement, asking “What did you do this time that made a difference?” can help students reflect on their strategies.

I think if my professor had done any of these ideas, I would have had a different, much richer experience even if my grade would not have been better. I would have felt like someone who has the ability to improve and get better rather that someone who would hide their ignorance in hopes of not being “found out.” And I would have had less stress during a time when I truly needed it.

I have been teaching a student success course since 2003 and each semester, I set aside time to discuss planning a degree and goal setting. While I love the idea of future thinking, teaching students how to set goals is often an exercise in futility for a variety of reasons.

• I use the SMART acronym, which is concrete, yet flawed. For one, students struggle with what it means for a goal to be measurable. They want to be “healthier” or “more outgoing” or they want to “do well.” And they often struggle with what it means to be “attainable” and “relevant” to their values. It sounds good to want to earn a 4.0 GPA, right? And yet for many that is not really attainable (especially if they are on track to earn at least a B) nor is it necessary for what they want to do in life.

• Once I get them to craft a bona fide SMART goal, some are left with something uninspiring. I want to write a best-selling book one day. And that sounds more exciting and motivating than “Complete 200 manuscript pages by May 15, 2025.” Shouldn’t goals lift us up and make use eager to get to work?

• On that note, goals should be something that you have control over completing. I learned this lesson when I was setting goals with a coach—I kept writing down things I wanted to happen, but that I had no real ability to influence. Who doesn’t want a raise? But to believe that I can get one by doing all the things one must do to get a raise is nonsense. I have no control over my supervisor’s budget or the impending budget freeze that will severely limit an ability to get even a modest cost of living raise.

• Another problem with goal setting for my students is that it is easy to put a goal “out of sight and out of mind,” which makes reaching it harder. Without the goal staring us in the face every day, one gets caught up in all the activities and tasks that do need attention. I always have the goal of eating healthy food and exercising regularly, but the grind of teaching, writing, meeting, grading, and just plain living often keeps me scrambling to grab something from a fast food place or to count my steps to and from my car as cardio. It is not until I put on pants with a zipper that I remember I have a goal of not eating so much.

These flaws in teaching goal setting (or my own flaws, if I am being honest) have led me to try something different this semester, something that focuses on daily habits, specific strategies, and upgraded skills rather than getting the goal just right.

First, if you are not familiar with James Clear’s best-selling book Atomic Habits, then get thee to a bookstore. In it, he provides research-based advice on how to develop habits and discipline to meet your goals. Some of what I am going to share here comes from reading his and others’ works, but these ideas are all grounded in what my students have found most useful.

1. Break down a goal into specific steps or tasks that are clear, concise, and actionable. For example, if we revisit the “I want to earn a 4.0 GPA by December 15, 2025,” then ask students to list 4-5 consistent habits that would contribute to earning As in all classes. Here are just a few:

   • reading actively and critically all assigned texts before they are discussed in class,

   • reviewing lecture notes with a study buddy each week,

   • creating practice problems or potential test questions and answering them, and

   • reviewing all quizzes and tests to determine what was missed and why.

   These are actionable tasks because they clearly reflect what the student can do. An example of a vague task is “study,” which is often what students write down on their first go at this task.

2. Schedule at least 3 steps or tasks each week over the semester or a predetermined amount of time. It will need to be at least 4 weeks in a row to help build the momentum needed to make it a habit. Use a fixed schedule weekly calendar with students where they add all their other fixed commitments—their class schedule, their work or sport schedule, and anything else that they do regularly. Then, ask students to schedule these tasks throughout the week at appropriate, definite times. For example, they may want to use Sundays to “read actively and critically all assigned texts” to keep it from interferring with their other work during the week. The key here is scheduling a specific time, and, if needed, a specific place to complete the task.

3. Do some “mental contrasting” with these tasks. Mental contrasting is the act of thinking through a goal (or in this case tasks) and imagining what would happen if one encountered obstacles and how one would work around those obstacles. If we use the instance of “reading actively and critically above,” a student could reflect on what they would do if they were unable to read ahead of time because of a family emergency or because of another task that needed to be completed. That student could determine “I will use some of my free time on Monday to read” or “I will take good notes during class and then schedule more time later in the week to catch up.” The process of thinking through what could happen and how to deal with it helps keep us on track should we encounter a roadblock.

4. Review, reflect, recommit, and reward. Just as goals are not as effective unless we think about them regularly, developing habits can be difficult if we are not reminding ourselves of what we need to do each week. Embedded into this practice should be a day (My day is Sunday) to review the week’s schedule; make adjustments as needed; reflect on how it is going so far (Is it hard? What could make it easier?); recommit if needed by thinking about that big dream or goal that these habits will help them get to; and reward oneself for sticking to it.

Do I want my students to dream big? Absolutely! But I have found that focusing on that part and that part alone doesn’t necessarily get them there. Instead, my class time is better spent helping them create tasks that they can develop into habits that will most likely lead them to their ultimate goal—and maybe even beyond what they can conceive currently that they can do.