Course info

In our quest to be student-centered, we can end up making choices that overwhelm us with their unsustainability. That is, it's easier to be a "sage on the stage" than it is to meet students where they are. In this session, we'll discuss how to stay student-centered while avoiding burnout.

In this workshop/discussion, we'll begin by sharing experiences around inclusive, student-centered teaching. Attendees will be invited to share intentional changes they have made in their courses to decrease learning barriers while increasing scaffolding, belongingness, and active learning. Then, we'll move on to considering how these choices, while evidence-based, require much more time, effort, and intentionality than more traditional teaching approaches. This increased effort will be examined using an intersectional lens that considers the various identities we hold as faculty members that complicate our ability to sustain inclusive pedagogy. For example, research indicates that women and/or BIPOC faculty members are disproportionately more likely to receive requests for exceptions (such as assignment extensions) and to be contacted by students for mental health support than men and/or white faculty members (El‐Alayli, A., Hansen‐Brown, A. A., & Ceynar, M., 2018). These intersecting identities have important consequences for our ability to teach inclusively while avoiding burnout and overwhelm. We'll conclude our time together by discussing strategies we've found to be successful in maintaining our own boundaries and self-care, while still providing a student-centered learning environment. By anchoring our teaching choices to our deepest values (including values concerning our own self-preservation), we can learn to teach in ways that empower not only our students but ourselves.