What a wonderful year in the program with Emily Baxter from the John A. Dutton E-Education Institute in the College of Earth & Mineral Sciences! Our focus was to explore mindfulness practice as an entry into deeper reflections about the work we do as instructional designers.
We included in each session a mindfulness practice and then alternated sessions with either, 1) a general discussion around topics of interest that we identified at the beginning of the program such as mindfulness and innovation, or 2) a discussion of the text Teaching as if Life Matters by Uhl & Stuchul.
This text, recommended by Emily, was AMAZING! The authors work at Penn State and put together a very thought-provoking and uplifting collection of insights gained through the years about teaching. Think Parker Palmer meets Rick Hanson and you’ll have a sense if this is a text for you. These conversations were amazing with chapters on “Loving the Questions,” to “Cultivating Classroom Kinships.” My book is now dog-eared with notations and sticky notes to refer to as I prepare my fall courses. But more than impacting my own teaching, I believe this text will also inform my design conversations with other faculty and ID colleagues. We can’t really take in the good from this text, without it also becoming part of who we are and how we interact with one another. Becoming more aware of our emotions, thoughts, and physical reactions through mindfulness practice lets us tap into a powerful stream of understanding that allows us to act with responsiveness rather than reactivity in the classroom or in our interactions with faculty and each other.
I gained so much from these conversations: feeling supported and listened to, sharing the joys and challenges of the work, reinforcing the purpose and deep meaning we feel about the work we do with faculty, and taking a more holistic view of our day-to-day work.
By sharing a mindfulness practice each time with each other, I feel that we set the stage for more meaningful and authentic discussions about topics that were important to us. It helped to break down barriers and create an atmosphere of trust and true companionship on the ID journey.
As I near retirement, I want to take this time to really consider the end of my professional journey at PSU, and to figure out the work that I can yet finish and explore. This opportunity really gave me the time and space to think about this and how I can integrate some of the more important lessons and values that I have learned along the way.
I believe that these conversations were both nurturing and transformative and I am so grateful to my ID2ID partner, Emily Baxter, for so freely sharing her approach to the work she does with faculty and with other instructional designers and for sharing who she is as a person. As I write this, I am reminded of a book we used on campus a few years ago, Transformative Conversations: A Guide to Mentoring Communities Among Colleagues in Higher Education (Felton, Bauman, Kheriaty, Taylor, 2013).
“The agenda [of transformational conversations] would consist of reflecting on our work and life, remembering our callings, exploring meaning and purpose, clarifying personal values, and realigning our lives with them. The goal would be to use meaningful conversations to reinvigorate ourselves, our work, and by extension, the academy.” (Felton, et al., pg. ix)
I am grateful to Emily to have had the opportunity to really experience this series of wonderful and transformative conversations. I feel that this is really at the heart of the ID2ID Program – a process whereby ID professionals can come together for deeply meaningful conversations in support of each other, fostering growth and insights, and building curiosity and creativity to enliven the work that we do.
Here are some mindfulness resources from Emily and me that readers might like to try:
Insight Timer
Calm App
Collection of Resources, Research, and Practices
Yammer Group: Mindfulness in Higher Education
