Exercises for Teachers
The exercises below provide examples how one can work with teachers on character development. We provide exercises that can be done quickly, exercises that take more time–typically a semester, and exercises that require a long-term change of habits.
Please send us suggestions for additional exercises and let us know if we can help you train your teachers
Exercises that can be done quickly
What does love in the classroom mean?
We use the work “love” often, but what does that really mean in the higher education classroom? Obviously this does not refer to romantic love. In the book Love as a Business Strategy, Mohammed Anwar and co-authors identify the following six pillars of love, which can be seen as virtues of love:
- Inclusion
- Empathy
- Vulnerability
- Trust
- Empowerment
- Forgiveness
Reflect on these six pillars of love. Do you manifest them in the classsroom? Of so, how do you do this? If not, how can you bring these aspects of love into your teaching? Make notes, or even better, articulate an intention along with action steps.
Reflect on a teacher that had a positive impact on you
Our character is shaped by our past experiences and by role models that we have encountered. By definition, role models set an example that we seek to emulate. We ask faculty to reflect on teachers that had a positive impact on them. Therefore, it is useful to reflect on teachers that had a positive impact on us.
Reflect on the following questions.
- What teacher from their past had a positive impact on you?
- What did this teacher do to support your growth?
We heard from some teachers that participate in our project that are concerned that creating a loving classroom environment may cause them to be perceived by colleagues as being soft, and that this might even hurt the application for tenure. One of the faculty in our program wrote “The thing that I remember was that she engaged with us like people. She was tough as a teacher but I think her toughness was not really toughness but an expectation that we be on the same level.” These words capture that showing up with a mindset where we see students as people does not imply that we pamper students. A reason we use this exercise is that we heard from faculty that that they are concerned that creating a loving classroom environment may cause them to be perceived by colleagues as being soft, which might even hurt their application for tenure.
Discuss self-care
Our character is shaped by our past experiences and by role models that we have encountered. By definition, role models set an example that we seek to emulate. We ask faculty to reflect on teachers that had a positive impact on them. Therefore, it is useful to reflect on teachers that had a positive impact on us.
Reflect on the following questions.
- What teacher from their past had a positive impact on you?
- What did this teacher do to support your growth?
We heard from some teachers that participate in our project that are concerned that creating a loving classroom environment may cause them to be perceived by colleagues as being soft, and that this might even hurt the application for tenure. One of the faculty in our program wrote “The thing that I remember was that she engaged with us like people. She was tough as a teacher but I think her toughness was not really toughness but an expectation that we be on the same level.” These words capture that showing up with a mindset where we see students as people does not imply that we pamper students. A reason we use this exercise is that we heard from faculty that that they are concerned that creating a loving classroom environment may cause them to be perceived by colleagues as being soft, which might even hurt their application for tenure.
Write a Teaching with Heart statement
The character that we bring to the classroom is influenced by our intentions, and it is important that we have clarity on our intentions. We therefore ask teachers to articulate intentions with the following exercise.
Write a Teaching with Heart statement that captures the character that you seek to bring to the classroom. Make sure this statement is aligned with your values as well as with you teaching philosophy (for example, to what extent you want to foster a growth mindset in students and whether you want to teach by coercive or creative power).
We encourage teachers to share their statement with students, but they often are reluctant to do so because such sharing is a commitment to live up to the articulated intentions. That commitment feels daunting to some teachers. One of the teachers in our program wrote “once that statement is shared it is an expectation, and I pride myself in showing up and completing that expectation every day and every class period.”
Reflect on inclusion
Some of the prejudice about various aspects of diversity that many of us hold run deep, and this is aggravated by being unaware of some of our prejudices. As a result, inclusive teaching is still a challenge for many faculty. The Wheel of Power and Privilege shows various aspects of privilege and power in relation to the components of identity. In order to create a greater awareness of diversity we use the following exercise.
Take a look at the Wheel of Power and Privilege and ask yourself the following questions.
- Where is your identity located in the diagram? How does that affect the way in which you show up in the classroom?
- Where is the identity of your students located? What steps can you take to better include students who in a disadvantaged position?
- Do you teach students who at first may not appear to be disadvantaged, but who face a particular challenge? Examples are first-generation students or transfer students.
Be aware of challenges students face
Students may face challenges that we may be oblivious of as teachers. The following exercises gives insight into the challenges of some students, while respecting the privacy of students.
Hand out index cards to students and ask them so share any challenge with you that they are willing to share anonymously. They can hand in an empty index card, or they can write down that they are doing well.
When Roel does this anonymous survey with his students at Mines he finds that 1/3rd of the students state they do well, and 1/3rd mention the normal stresses that come with going to college. (For example, “I need to learn new programming language and that gives me stress.”) The remaining 1/3rd mentions serious issues such as “I work at nights at the airport to pay for my education”, or “my mother is psychiatric and I am the only one to take care of her”, or “I have a drinking problem.”
Next reflect on how your classroom behavior can either support these students, or aggravate their stress. How can you mobilize and manifest the empathy that is needed to support students in need? How can you make it easy for individual students to contact you to discuss their challenge?
What does trust in the classroom mean?
Trust is essential for heartful teaching. To explore the meaning of trust in the classroom, watch the video The Anatomy of Trust by Brenee Brown. She introduces the acronym BRAVING, the letters stand for:
- B = Boundaries
- R = Reliability
- A = Accountability
- V = Vault (holding in confidence)
- I = Integrity
- N = Non-judgement
- G = Generosity
Reflect on how each of these attitudes show up in your behavior as a teacher, and take notes. To what extent do you live up to these values in the classroom? What are the circumstances where you don’t live up to these values? What steps can you take to practice BRAVING in the classroom?
The Pygmalion effect and your teaching
In his paper published in 1963, psychologist Bob Rosenthal described experiments to determine whether smart rats learned better to navigate a maze than dumb rats. Unsurprisingly, the smart rats learned faster than the dumb rats. There was a catch, however, the “smart” rats were not smarter than the “dumb” rats, the rats were randomly distributed into two cages labelled with smart rats and dumb rats, respectively. As a result, the graduate students who handled the rats just thought that the “smart” rats were smarter than the “dumb” rats. The only difference was the expectation of the graduate students, and differences in expectations were enough to cause different learning outcomes for the rats. This phenomenon is called the Pygmalion effect, it is illustrated in a brief video that you may enjoy watching. The Pygmalion effect has been shown to also occur education, where the expectations of teachers have an impact on the performance of students.
Reflect on the expectations that you have about your students. How might you communicate these expectations either explicitly or between the lines? Do these expectations depend on gender, or other status of a particular group of students? (You may want to look at the wheel of power and privilege again.) How might your expectations affect students? Apart from an impact on learning outcomes, how could your expectations have an impact on the wellbeing of students?
Excercises that can be done over the course of a semester
Experiment with Teaching with Heart practices
Formulating an intention is one thing, but unless translated into action, an intention is an abstraction. For this reason, we have formulated a number of Teaching with Heart practices. We then ask teachers to do the following.
Pick at least three teaching with heart practices that you want to incorporate in your teaching for the coming semester. You can choose practices from the website, but you can also articulate your own practice. Maintain a record of your experience using the practices that you have chosen.
The consistent application of these practices helps teacher anchor the intentions formulated in their Teaching with Heart statement into their daily practice.
Connect emotionally with students
Please watch the video on the Still Face Experiment by Dr. Tronick. In the video, you see a mother with a young baby. The mother is asked to refrain from responding to her child and to withdraw emotionally. Within a very short time the baby is in a complete panick. We are social being and need emotional connection with others. This is also for our role as teachers, we are not just providers of information, connecting with students helps them feel safe, seen, and heard.
Please reflect on the following questions:
- Do you connect emotionally with students, or do you keep a “still face” while you are teaching?
- What can you do to connect emotionally with students? Write down some action items and experiment with these during the semester.
- Here are a few actions to consider. Learn students’ names. Be in class early and talk to students. Have private conversations with students, create opportunities for this and encourage students to use these opportunities. Develop good listening skills. Communicate to students that you care about them. Know what to do when a student needs support.
- As you experiment with these habits, do you notice barriers or resistence? For example, some find it difficult to provide suppport when the other person is in tears. What can you do to overcome such barriers?
This exercise works well in a series of group conversations.
Exercises that involve a long-term change in habits
Managing emotions
Few of us are trained in managing our emotions. If we are unaware of our emotions and don’t know how to manage them, our emotions manage us instead. As a result we may activate defensive and reactive aspects of our thinking. To be better aware of our emotions, and the reframe them in a positive way we offer the following exercise.
Take teachers into a meditation where they listen to their emotions and to ways in which these emotions manifests in their body. After the meditation we ask them to journal in an associative way about their emotions. This is followed by a reflection on to reframe our thinking in positive ways.
This exercise can usually not be carried out in a single session; it is a process that takes a longer time. It is an important exercise, though, because our emotions are an important driver of our behavior. This is even more pronounced when we carry unprocessed trauma with us, that we may not even be aware of.
Teaching above or below the line
The video Locating Yourself — A Key to Conscious Leadership introduces the concept of being “above” or “below” the line. Please watch this video first.
When we are below the lone, we live in a state of fear, our focus is on survival, we are reactive, and as a result our empathy and creativity shuts down. When we live above the line, we are creative, playful, trusting, and we express ourselves. Being above the line is good for our wellbeing, but it has also been shown that students learn better when they experience positive emotions.
We suggest that you reflect on the following questions:
- When are you above and below that line as you are teaching?
- How does this affect the students and the classroom atmosphere?
- Do you experience triggers that push you below the line?
- Are your students in general above or below the line? What influence this?
- Are there aspects of your behavior that push students below the line?
- What can you do to help students be above the line?
- How is your mental state determined by the emotions that you experience? (You may want to go back to the module “Managing your Emotions”.)
- What actions can you formulate to help your students, and yourself, be above the line?
Since most of us cycle back and forth from being below the line to being above this line, this exercise should be seen as an ongoing project that requires regular monitoring and reframing of emtions. This is a great topic to journal on regularly.
We value your feedback
If you have questions, want to share your experience, or if you want teacher training for your organization, contact Roel Snieder.