Teaching As Intervention

Entry from the original HBCU Stem HUB  website, published September 19, 2022

Last week I wrote a poem “Ode to Students in Chapter 2” as a blog post. I started writing it out of sheer frustration. After writing it, I felt better. I even shared it with the students who were the subject of the poem. They actually liked it! PLUS it sparked a conversation about their own frustrations. They are making the transition from screen to in-person learning and the shift has not been easy. They need help.

I need to help them.

Teaching as Intervention (TAI) focuses on methods used in classroom instruction to augment teaching and learning. TAI is part of the Transcendent Intervention Strategies being developed by the Analytic Hub. We plan to support our TAI communities of practice through the CareFull Scholars Program and have as an objective not only an improvement in student’s grades but for the instructors to experience greater fulfillment and success as teachers. Of course, we also encourage writing so as to contribute to the Science of Teaching and Learning AND as a means to explore and vent and think.

I am not the first to discover that writing leads to thinking. One historian, sums it up in an essay titled “Writing leads to thinking (and not the other way around).” For me, my little poem, led to thinking and actually to feeling. The feeling then led me to acting differently. I shared a poem that I wrote to my students. I got me from frustration to vulnerability to acceptance to generosity to gratitude… all from a few rhyming phrases.

Since our actual day job is both teaching (important and urgent) and writing (important but mostly not urgent) we may be able to use them together and perhaps get better at both.

Why not give it a try. Write about what you are feeling. (It doesn’t have to rhyme.)

You DO have 15 minutes.

Start today.