I Need It To Be Just A Little Quieter

"I often wonder if I should have been born at another time. My senses are unusually, some might say unnaturally keen, and ours is an era of distraction. It's a punishing drumbeat of constant input. It follows us into our homes and into our beds. It seeps into our... Into our souls, for want of a better word. For a long time, there was only one solution for my raw nerve endings and that was copious drug use. In my less productive moments, I'm given to wonder.... If I had just been born when it was a little quieter out there, would I have even become an addict in the first place? Might I have been more focused? A more fully realized person?"

Sherlock 2.7
There's a scene in Phenomenon where John Travolta talks about not being able to find his rhythm.
I've been thinking about these two scenes a lot lately. I feel like I have spent the last couple of years moving quickly from one thing to another, always reacting, adapting, working on the fly. Particularly the last few weeks the world seems very crowded, very noisy, a constant background buzz that I can't get rid of, that blocks everything else. These thoughts were at the forefront of my mind when I read "A 'Stunning' Level of Student Disconnection: Professors are reporting record numbers of students checked out, stressed out, and unsure of their future" this week.
I've been teaching face to face this whole time and over the last couple years I've tried a variety of interventions and strategies. Some I've done for years, some I tweaked or doubled down on to try and help. I survey students every few weeks, I post weekly announcements that check in with them and encourage them. I email them if they stop showing up. I added Zoom to face to face classes, scans of my notes/lessons. I've cut work or made adjustments based on their feedback. I stopped having an attendance policy or deadlines weeks ago. I have one hard deadline at the end of the semester that they can turn in work until then. They can revise stuff for a higher grade.
Yet this semester has been the worst yet. Students who stopped showing up week 4, and don't answer emails. Students who come but come late consistently. Students who won't talk, participate. Students skipping reading or work. Students sitting as far spaced from each other as possible. Students glued to phones or laptop. Nothing works. And who can blame them? Not a week has gone by where I haven't heard that someone has experienced another death. Tested positive. Is sick. Has a family member who is sick. That many are one bill away from having to drop out. And these are just the things they share. What I know that they don't share is that trauma is cumulative. That the gaslighting of "back to normal" is destroying them. That they are exhausted, stressed, anxious. They are numb. 
This semester with all this I've been thinking a lot about what works and what doesn't and what I can do. I've come to the conclusion that there's just too much noise, too much data, sensory overload.So I'm going to try some different things come fall and my face to face classes. Students are not facing single issues. There is little help and a lot of gaslighting so my focus is going to first be on not making things worse. Then I'm going to try to continue to be honest about what is going on and model some ways to try and help.

• I've noticed that two years of a reliance on badly implemented LMS and the idea that just more tech will save us has actually made things worse. It's too many places to look for too much data. I've also seen students unable to understand content if it's not presented in this narrow, specific format of the LMS.
• My experience supports what the article said about how a reliance on technology has meant that many classes still seem virtual, that students want to be active in the classroom but that the tech makes things feel "fake."
• I have all face to face classes in the fall. I will not be activating a Blackboard shell. Students will have just our hyperlinked Google Doc syllabus. One place to go for information. I will send whole class emails if I need to, but I'm cutting down on the tech noise.
•  In my composition classes I often due this activitity where for one class students turn on the notifications on their phone. We put the apps on the board and every time a notification goes off they have to get up and put a hashmark. It's a fun day, they're always giggling about five minutes in, it's not a rant against tech, rather it is just a chance to show them how the constant noise, alerts, lights, vibrations, can distract them even if they're not conscious of it. We talk about how to turn some things off, or how to focus, or things that can help.
• When I taught high school I often had days where I asked students to clear their desks of everything. Then just add the one or two things we were using that day. A physical manifestation of helping them clear the noise out, to help them focus.
• I was thinking about maybe having "quiet" "no distraction" "tech day off" classes. Days that had the equivalent of "clearing the mechanism." I also thought about days that were all tech focused, listen to music zone out. To provide models for both.
• I've read a lot that the online gradebooks, the obsessive checking of grades, only focusing on the grades, or only acknowledging work if an F or zero is put in, is not only horrific pedagogy but is creating an unmaginable, untenable amount of stress and anxiety for students.
• For years I copied the model I learned in my PhD program- four major assignments in composition plus a final portfolio. Low stakes assignments that led to major writing assignments. 
• Yet lately I've been thinking about the skills, what my students need, and that means fewer big assignments and more time working on the steps, more chances to get feedback. 
• I've tried dividing class into practice assignments and major but this didn't help. Students either didn't use the practice assignments or got confused with the number of assignments. 
• Weighting things with grades even if complete or incomplete did not show students that practice was important. For online classes it gave students updates, for face to face students it was just more noise, more distractions, a greater chance to lose sight of the objective. 
• I also noticed that many students would not pay attention to feedback or missed assignments unless/until a grade was put in LMS and an alert popped up. 
• Questions they asked too made me think they didn't understand how class worked, how the parts fit together.
• So my composition students are going to have  two assignments- an analysis and an argumentative, one due at Week 7, one at Week 14, in time for progress reports. At the end of the semester they'll do a reflection, a "what I learned" letter. No gradebook. Grade conferences for these two items. Lots and lots of practice in class for the steps. But that's it.
• We're still going to do all the work in class, workshops, the steps to all the assignments.
• No more final portfolio, which, while a cool idea, becomes another barrier if students have not been there, makes it hard for them to complete.
• Students will still choose their topics, cater their work to their interestes. Still won't be penalized for late work. Still will be able to revise to do better if they want.
• The composition classes focus on social issues, so the real world engagement, interest, is there. This has consistently been successful with students.
• I've also noticed that due to crappy pedagogy in LMS that many students in my GE classes, specifically who have spent the end of high school and have only known college in the pandemic, have no idea what class looks like.
•  Flipped classrooms are great. As someone who runs most of her classes like a seminar, having students watch or read so that all of class can be spent on discussing has long been my model.
• But I've heard from a lot of students that they don't feel they need to come to class because they can look at videos, or read notes, or just talk to a friend. And while these may work for a single class missed, these strategies do not work for weeks, months, of classes missed. 
• Or the idea that if a class is hybrid, they can only complete the online work, that the in person portions are optional, skippable. I've also seen, since so many classes are offered in so many formats, that they don't really understand the different expectations between online, hybrid, face to face. I've had students email me in week 12 that they don't understand why they are failing, when I've never seen them in our face to face class.
• I've also seen that many younger, first year students, don't understand the consequences of missing a lot of class, and don't feel comfortable asking for help, or taking advantage of help, and social anxiety results in avoidance mechanisms to avoid stress and this can mean skipping class, or not answering emails or check ins.
• Another aspect of this is coming to class but not being prepared, and feeling pressure of that, so just disappearing into phones or laptops during class, thinking just sitting in class, even if not doing work, is enough.
• I've always spent a lot of time building class culture, being honest with students, checking in, and students have told me that even if it doesn't change anything (them coming to class or turning in work) they have said it matters a lot to them, that often I hear I'm the only professor who has ever done this.
•  I will keep reaching out, keep surveying.
• I'm going to have counselors come in at the beginning of the semester, talk about the help that's available, put faces to help, then reinforce this all semester, points that can cause stress, how to help.
• Continue to teach advocacy but also add information, tools, to try and give them tools to help counter the avoidance mechanisms. Teach coping skills.
• I'm going to personalize more of the class, have more conversations about what matters to them, what they wish education did, and integrate this into the social issue focus.
• Same with adding voting/citizen work, why it's important to be aware of things, issues with news algorithms. 
• Since I am teaching mostly GE classes I've tweaked the language of course policies, not to be punitive, but to stress importance they might not be aware of, put in guardrails, make consequences clearer.
• But I'm keeping my accommodations about attendance and due dates, the hard deadline at the end of the semester.
• I'm paring down. EVERYTHING.
• This semester a student who has taken classes with me for a few years, told me they loved my hyperlinked syllabus, that it was always up to date, that everything they needed was there BUT that sometimes it was too busy. Too much on there.
• So it'll just have readings/viewings, assignments due. Less noise. 
• Just the syllabus, no LMS, no gradebook, nothing else. No folders, no resources, no scans.
•  Less tech, fewer things to focus on.
• Easier to focus in class, more activities that help them, show them, how to focus.
• More activities, more focus on being active in class.
• I admit this has been hard for me this semester. I've spent hours planning a lesson, no one is there at class start time. A couple of students come in ten minutes later. Maybe a couple come in after that. But no one did reading, or prepped, or hell, in some cases, don't even know what we're doing, haven't even looked at syllabus. So it's hard for me to amp up my enthusiasm. It's hard to do my active learning lesson when this is the class. It's not a blaming thing, I'm not mad. I totally get why in week 12 students are done. I'm done. It's more an observation that I think this all, especially at this point, can become a bit of a feedback loop.
• To help students SEE help, I'm going to offer in person tutoring session once every four weeks, a chance for students to come, sit, work, get help, go over things.

My totally online classes do seem to have done better, especially this semester. I think the flexibility, how it can work with their schedule, the ability to make things up, the announcement reminders, all helps them. I have two online classes this summer. I am going to keep the practice assignments, major assignments. But other than that, I'm going to try a bunch of these pared down approaches. Especially since our summer classes are only five week sessions I've really thought about what is most important, and what is the minimum I need for my students to get there. 

So we'll see.

Another thing I'm going to try next year is NOT to react in the moment. Not to say I won't listen to students, or make some changes, but I've noticed the last couple of years that too often I react to a thing, a knee-jerk reaction, and I cut things, or redesign, to try and help, but then I realize I cut a skill assignment they needed, or a lesson that was key to the scaffolding. I get lost in the micro and it screws things up later. So I'm going to try to pare down the syllabus, the class from the beginning, and avoid need or inclination to make changes mid class.

I don't know if these staggered, layered interventions will work. I don't know what new issues we'll have in three months. I don't know what will be better or worse. 

But I'm going to try not to make it worse. I'm going to try to help my students, to build things I can live with, that won't burn me out so I CAN help my students.