Preparing essential discussions about post-pandemic education with first-year college students...
July
2024 Update: These sessions did go well. Additionally, those three questions have
related well to discussions about AI in our courses and what sort of
appropriate "friction" (a.k.a. difficulty or struggle) students should
encounter when learning at the college level in order to flourish
academically, socially, and personally. All sorts of discussions have
connected to this book and issues of growth, challenge, grit,
motivation, purpose, and more.
In preparation for February and March (2024), I'll be leading an interactive book review with local community college instructors and professors in different disciplines. The topic is rigorous learning and mental health in the college classroom. The book is Improving Learning and Mental Health in The College Classroom by Robert Eaton, Steven V. Hunsaker, and Bonnie Moon. I've been reading, rereading, side-researching, and discussing the book with others since I stumbled across it in our local library last fall. The book is a timely, humble, and helpful contribution to discussing an elephant in the room: How do we maintain expectations for what rightly should be college-level learning while recognizing and realistically responding to the mental health challenges of our first-year students?