Compassion and Stress Reduction

Actively listen to your students, acknowledge their perspectives, and use policies and teaching practices for your course, lab, community placement or clinical rotation that help reduce stress. If you want a little more discussion around the topic of active listening, here’s a resource.

Course Design

• Reflect on your course design by trying to step away from your perspective as the instructor and consider your students’ perspectives.
• Set deadlines and policies that support students in achieving healthy work-life boundaries. For example: Avoid scheduling online tests or midterm exams over the weekend or large assignment deadlines right after school breaks. When setting deadlines keep in mind some of the major religious observances and holidays that might impact students such as Ramadan or Shabbat.
• As you design your course, consider using a variety of assessment approaches and opportunities for students to receive regular feedback on their progress.
• Figure out the average weekly workload expectations for students (how many hours of reading, how many hours of work on assignments, how many studying, etc. to be sure that your expectations are reasonable. A tool to do this can be found here https://cat.wfu.edu/resources/tools/estimator2/. Making these expectations clear will help students plan their time appropriately thereby reducing stress and increasing their potential for success in your course.

Syllabus

• Ask yourself: Do my policies balance structure with flexibility? Structure helps us and our students manage time and workload, while flexibility acknowledges the difficulties students may be facing.
• When designing policies, recognize mental health as a legitimate concern, as you would physical health. Both impact students’ abilities to be in class, pay attention, learn, and complete assignments. You may want to include the following statement in your syllabus:
  • Students may request an accommodation as a result of barriers experienced related to disability, or any characteristic protected under Canadian Human Rights legislation. Students who require academic accommodation for either classroom participation or the writing of tests and exams should make their request to Accessibility Services as soon as possible. Please visit upei.ca/accessibility for more information or contact Nicole Wadden Garland, Manager, Accessibility Services, 902-628-4364, nwadden@upei.ca
• Explicitly mention ways that you are compassionate in your course design and policies. For example: “I understand that unexpected things can happen, so to provide some flexibility you can turn in two weekly assignments up to 48 hours late.”
• Consider setting assignment deadlines for times that allow students to have access to a reasonable window of sleep time before their classes the next day. Whether they choose to get some sleep is up to them of course. You might add something like this to your syllabus
  • Deadlines are set to 10 PM so that you have access to at least 8 hours of sleep between the deadline and your next early morning class.
• Write policy language in a way that supports student autonomy. Read through your syllabus and identify negative or controlling language that you can change. Some examples could be:
  • “Don’t be late for class.” becomes  → “Being on time to class will support your success.”
  • “Each student must post AT LEAST twice per week or they cannot receive credit.” becomes → “To help you get the most out of our discussions, I ask you to contribute at least two posts each week in order to get credit.”

First Days and Weeks

• Help destigmatize mental health concerns and other disabilities or conditions by explicitly talking about your commitment to supporting student mental health and well-being.
• Mention campus resources for mental health. Remind students about these periodically during the semester, particularly during busy or demanding times. While Student Affairs staff can’t make it to every course, section, lab, etc. they can make a personal appearance if it seems helpful, especially if they have a way to also contribute to content. For example: The engineering program was quite creative in interpreting national standards around training engineering students to recognize workplace safety concerns as including mental health and incorporating mental health and social skills into their curriculum.
• Talk about students’ concerns and worries about the course; show that it is normal to have these thoughts and feelings. Then discuss strategies to address their concerns and emphasize how they can find support in the course (e.g., office hours).

Throughout the Semester

• When a student comes to you with a question or need, use active listening.
• Give students the benefit of the doubt and avoid making assumptions about the reasons for their behaviour. For example: If a student doesn’t do the reading or gets a bad grade on a quiz, don’t assume it is because they don’t care about your course, lab or rotation.
• Mention ways that you manage or reduce stress and ask students to share what they do. Some examples:
  • “It’s been a hard week, so I’m looking forward to going for a walk in the park tomorrow. Does anyone have something relaxing they’re planning to do this week?”
• Share a weekly summary email or message on Moodle that reviews topics covered during the week, notes upcoming due dates, reiterates office hours, and briefly outlines what will be covered in the coming week.
• If you’re comfortable doing so, it is okay to acknowledge when you are going through hard times without getting into detail in class. This serves as a model for students so that they know they don’t need to act like they’re fine when they aren’t. For example: “I have a challenging personal situation that I’m dealing with, so it’s going to be an extra day before grades are posted.”
• In longer classes, allow for short breaks so that students can stretch, get water, or have a snack.
• Consider the use of humour to reduce stress.
• Create space in class for students to reset their attention. Examples could include:
  • Incorporate mindfulness activities at the beginning of class or before exams.
  • Get students ready for the day’s topic by presenting an image, quote, question, or song that is related to the topic and asking students to make a connection.
  • Have a brief reflective exercise in the middle or at the end of class, such as a Minute Paper or exit ticket.

Especially for Graduate Students

• Recognize and value the diversity of your graduate students by adjusting your supervisory practices according to their individual learning needs. This might be related to their lived experience, cultural background, strengths, areas for improvement etc.
• Consider online meetings instead of requiring in-person meetings when students are not on campus.

Mindfulness in the Classroom

Mindfulness activities, also known as contemplative pedagogy, are designed to cultivate deepened awareness, concentration, and insight and have been shown to support student health and well-being (Chick, 2010; Malow & Austin, 2016; Scholz et al., 2016; Steyn, Steyn, Maree & Panebianco-Warrens, 2016). Here are some 1-2 minute techniques that you can do at the start of class:

• Ask students to take five slow breaths, inhaling through the nose, then exhaling through the mouth.
• Ask/Invite students to think about their favourite place.
• Ask them to describe it in great detail, using their different senses.
• Try a Headspace mini meditation video such as “Let Go of Stress” or “Find Your Focus.”
• Use the simply pausing audio exercise.

Some additional resources:

• UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center: This resource contains several mindfulness meditations lasting 3-20 minutes that are available in 15 languages.
• UC Berkeley’s Greater Good in Action Centre offers resources on Mindfulness and well-being that are all evidence-based with the associated peer-reviewed studies to support the activity
• This website from Vanderbilt University outlines a range of mindfulness activities for use in higher education settings