Teaching Strategy Spotlight – PostSecret Writing Project

Photo of a person, Jonas Gardsby, standing in front of trees.
Jonas Gardsby, Green Bay Campus, English Department and Writing & Applied Arts

About the Professor

Jonas Gardsby is in his third year as an Assistant Professor at UWGB. Previously, he completed an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English at the University of Colorado. He earned his PhD in early modern literature at the University of Minnesota.

Strategy

Image of a circular digital badge with a trophy in the center. Text reads UW-Green Bay Canvas Gallery People's Choice Award.Using the PostSecret Project as a way for his creative writing students to add psychological depth and an element of the unexpected to their fiction.

This strategy was one of two awarded the People’s Choice award for the UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching. Haven’t checked out the gallery yet? Self-enroll in the Canvas course and see all the projects.

Representative Assignment

PostSecret Creating Writing Exercise & Discussion

Description

This is both a creative writing assignment and a Canvas discussion board. It draws on PostSecret, a social and art experiment where people anonymously create postcards that share something they have never told anyone. Students choose one of these secrets and apply them to characters they have already created.

Modality and Context

Face-to-face or online. This assignment is the last of six exercises completed by creative writing students who are drafting a full story. Each exercise teaches some element of craft as well as changing the story they are working on in a way that gives it a renewed energy. The PostSecret activity is the last assignment before piecing the whole story together.

Purpose

This activity helps the writer to more fully realize a character by uncovering a previously unexplored dimension that affects the character’s motivations and actions.

Assignment Details

Having already worked on elements of fiction like plot, setting, scene, and character development, the student is asked to browse a Canvas page featuring postcards that display art and written secrets, arranged into different categories like addiction, lying, and regret. The student chooses a secret, gives it to a character they have been developing, and writes a monologue for the character about the secret. After completing this activity, they share the monologue on a discussion board. Peers reply with insights into how this secret is being used to advance the narrative of the original story.

Applying This Strategy to Your Courses

This may seem like an assignment that could only work in creative writing classes, but the idea of adding something surprising to what you already know can be employed in many areas of writing, from policy debates to nursing case studies. Add an unexpected element for students to work within, through which they can generate surprising solutions in their writing. As was done with the PostSecret project, you can give students a list of choices or ask them to come up with an unexpected element and see how they handle it and how that shapes their thinking.

“The Great Re-Wiring of Childhood” Goes to College: A Reflection on Jonathan Haidt’s THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

Article by Tara DaPra, Teaching Professor & 2024-25 Instructional Development Consultant

book cover for "The Anxious Generation" with a sad girl looking at a phone, surrounded by a sea of smiley emojisJonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, was supposed to be about how the rise of smartphones and social media were damaging democratic society. But when he wrote the chapter on adolescent mental health, he knew there was much more to say about what smartphones and social media were doing to children and teens, what Haidt has dubbed “the Great Rewiring of Childhood.” This book is essential reading to help us understand our students today, the youngest of whom were in 8th grade when the pandemic began, and how the college classroom can be the space for them to re-wire once more.

First, how we got here: Haidt claims that two big shifts have happened to create this re-wiring in children born after 1995. First was the decline of what he dubs “the play-based childhood,” which began even earlier, in the 1980s, when fears about safety permeated the culture. Instead of children being allowed to wander parks and neighborhoods with one another, as you or your parents might have done, children were continually supervised, giving rise to the term “helicopter parenting.” They could no longer take the ordinary risks of childhood—or, in turn, develop the resilience and confidence those opportunities provided.

Then in the late 2000s, with the advent of the iPhone, the “phone-based childhood” was born. But instead of parents providing the same vigilant protection against internet-based dangers, they did the opposite, underprotecting children during vulnerable stages of brain development. For girls, their time was largely spent on social media, while boys were pulled into the spheres of gaming and pornography.

On this two-pronged shift in childhood, Haidt writes,

We decided that the real world was so full of dangers that children should not be allowed to explore it without adult supervision, even though the risks to children from crime, violence, drunk drivers, and most other sources have dropped steeply since the 1990s.[1] At the same time, it seemed like too much of a bother to design and require age-appropriate guardrails for kids online, so we left children free to wander through the Wild West of the virtual world, where threats to children abounded. (67)

While some argue that Haidt overstates the correlation between the rise of smartphones and adolescent mental illness, the thrust of Haidt’s argument is that the “the Great Rewiring of Childhood” has created “the Anxious Generation.”

Thankfully, this book does more than describe the problem. He also offers solutions, starting with advice for parents to protect their children. First, Haidt argues that parents must delay giving children their own smartphones, arguing that an internet-connected watch or the texting and basic apps of a “dumbphone” is all they truly need. He praises the movement “Wait Until 8th” (224) but then advises parents to wait even longer, until high school, and encourages parents to support one another in this. It’s so much easier to hold out, he says, if parents do it together.

Second, he tells parents that children should not have social media accounts before 16 and argues for stronger age-verification laws. Haidt writes, “Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers” (15). (This parent is going to wait until her kids are 16 for both social media and smartphones, if she can help it.)

But beyond personal action, Haidt advocates for collective action. In particular, he argues that schools play an important role in driving change, and he calls for phone-free schools, all the way from elementary school through high school. He doesn’t endorse the compromises that some local K-12 districts are exploring, such as students putting phones in a pouch when they walk into a classroom or allowing access during the lunch hour. Instead, Haidt writes, “Students should store their phones, smartwatches, and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day” (15). This means no phones for seven hours, full stop—not until the final bell has rung. The Anxious Generation (and his blog After Babel) describes schools that piloted such programs, and the results were astonishing: students talked to one another. They engaged in class activities and felt less lonely and they learned. They weren’t thinking about the next text or that mean social media post they had to wait forty minutes to respond to. They were free.

Finally, Haidt calls for young children being allowed much more free and unsupervised play, including “junkyard playgrounds” (259), which the New York Times reported on in 2019 but also 2016 and 1971. Haidt argues that letting children play without constant adult intervention is essential to their well-being: “That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults” (15).

But what does this mean for those of us teaching and serving college students today? What control do we have over their use of phones in our classrooms, between periods, or, for that matter, how much free play they were afforded as children, how much screen time they had as teenagers who came of age during the pandemic?

We can, of course, encourage students to put away phones during our face-to-face classes, and I do, especially during the five- or ten-minute increments that students are freewriting or otherwise generating ideas for a larger project. But I’d bet that most of us are not interested in policing phones. Instead, I’d argue that when teaching face-to-face classes, we should lean in to what’s always made those such effective learning spaces: facilitate rich discussions. Haidt writes, “Synchronous, face-to-face, physical interactions and rituals are a deep, ancient, and underappreciated part of human evolution” (57). We can create space in our classrooms for students to talk to one another, to make eye contact, to take small risks, and, with any luck, to be producers of knowledge. And even as some students talk more than others, let’s not forget the benefits of active listening: “When people practice silence in the company of equally silent companions, they promote quiet reflection and inner work, which confers mental health benefits” (207).

“The Great Rewiring of Childhood” has changed our college classrooms, and not for the better. But our students are hungry for the chance to “develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.” Like those who saw the value of letting kids play in piles of construction debris, we can create the space and then watch while our students create from it.

On Keeping a Teaching Journal

Article by Tara DaPra, Teaching Professor & 2024-25 Instructional Development Consultant

On the last day of the semester, I read the Brendan Kennelly poem “Begin” to my creative writing students, which ends thus: “Though we live in a world that dreams of ending/that always seems about to give in/something that will not acknowledge conclusion/insists that we forever begin.” It’s the perfect poem to describe the commotion of the semester’s end, so when I share this with my students, I acknowledge the desperation many of us feel to get to the other side.

But then what? As the poem instructs, we do it all again. I tell my students that it’s okay if the semester didn’t go just as they’d hoped, that they can try again. They have another semester to accomplish a little more, to do a little better, to become a little stronger. And in the meantime, they should acknowledge all that they have achieved and take a moment to celebrate. And we, their professors can do the same.

What does any of this have to do with a teaching journal?

Whether or not you keep one, you already know what a teaching journal is, but here’s a definition for good measure. In their book Professional Development for Language Teachers, Richards and Farrell define a teaching journal as “an ongoing written account of observations, reflections, and other thoughts about teaching, … which serves as a source of discussion, reflection, or evaluation” (68). If you’re not in the practice of keeping a teaching journal, try responding to formal or informal prompts after an ordinary day of teaching—or a particularly tough one: Which part of today’s class was most successful? Least successful? Did students contribute actively? How did I organize and interact with groups? What did students truly learn?

Richards and Farrell distinguish between an intrapersonal journal, written for oneself, and a dialogical journal, written for another. Many of us learned to keep a dialogical teaching journal as graduate students. In Ohio University’s TA Pedagogy Seminar, teaching assistants are instructed to write at least one entry each week, monitored by the supervising professor. While our teaching today is largely an independent practice, a dialogical journal may still be useful, for example, if you co-teach a course or if you and your colleagues who teach the same general education course wish to compare notes.

But all of us can benefit from an intrapersonal journal, a record of our teaching wins and defeats, a record of tweaks you wish to make the next time you teach the class, that, if not written down, may be forgotten until you repeat the misstep. In a blog post for Inside Higher Ed, “Teach Like You Write,” Daniel Knorr describes his version of a teaching journal, which he does simply by annotating his syllabus during the semester. In this, he acknowledges the influence his students play in his planned revisions. He writes, “I wish my students could see how I will teach this course differently in the future because of their questions and insights. Remembering that this is the beginning of my teaching career and that my students’ learning does not stop when they leave my classroom has helped me focus on the ways I can best teach them now given our other responsibilities and limited time together.”

While it’s easy to use a teaching journal to track the minutiae of day-to-day—this lecture needs to be slower, this discussion fell flat—I admire Knorr’s approach for two reasons: First, he recognizes teaching as a collaborative act, one that our specific students take part in. This requires us to react in real time but also to consider how our students change over the years and decades. We all know that what worked in 2019 may no longer work in the same way. Second, I admire Knorr’s ability to zoom out. He reminds us to see teaching as a vocation we are cultivating: What do I hope students remember a year, five years, twenty years from now? What do I hope to retain and develop in my teaching practice a year, five years, twenty years from now?

Teaching, on a good day, is hard work. Some days that hard work feels deeply gratifying. On others, we may feel a desperation of our own, to get to the other side of the semester, to just be done. (Can’t that Giant Stack of Grading die already?) But we get through it. We always do. And these are the days—the joyous ones and the hardest ones—we ought to pay attention to. Note the tweaks you wish to make but don’t neglect recording the wins. This practice, a kind of gratitude, may help to sustain you.

When I first began sharing with students Brendan Kennelly’s poem “Begin,” this was done on instinct—it just felt right for the occasion. In time, I saw why: it reminds me that what I love best about teaching is the practice, the ability to revise. A teaching journal can help you plot the course.

(You can listen to Brendan Kennelly recite his poem, or, if you prefer, Hozier will read for you.)

Sources Consulted

Howells, Kerry. “The Role of Gratitude in Higher Education.” (2024 Jan). Higher Education Research and Development. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228909266_The_role_of_gratitude_in_higher_education

Kennelly, Brendan. “Begin.” (1999 Dec 1). Begin. Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

Knorr, Daniel, “Teach Like You Write.” (2018 Nov 8.) Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/teach-you-write

“Reflective Writing: Keeping a Teaching Journal.” (2024.) Resources for Teaching Assistants. Ohio University. Retrieved from https://www.ohio.edu/cas/about/assessment/teaching-assistant-resources/reflective-writing-keeping-teaching-journal

Richards, Jack C. and Farrell, Thomas S. C. (eds). (2005). “Keeping a teaching journal.” Professional Development for Language Teachers. Cambridge University Press, pp. 68-84.

My Resistance (and Maybe Yours): Help Me Explore Generative AI

Article by Tara DaPra, CATL Instructional Development Consultant & Associate Teaching Professor of English & Writing Foundations

I went to the OPID conference in April to learn from colleagues across the Universities of Wisconsin who know much more than I do about Generative AI. I was looking for answers, for insight, and maybe for a sense that it’s all going to be okay.

I picked up a few small ideas. One group of presenters disclosed that AI had revised their PowerPoint slides for concision, something that, let’s be honest, most presentations could benefit from. Bryan Kopp, an English professor at UW-La Crosse, opened his presentation “AI & Social Inequity” by plainly stating that discussions of AI are discussions of power. He went on to describe his senior seminar that explored these social dynamics and offered the reassurance that we can figure this thing out with our students.

I also heard a lot of noise: AI is changing everything! Students are already using it! Other students are scared, so you have to give them permission. But don’t make them use it, which means after learning how to teach it, and teaching them how to use it, you must also create an alternate assessment. And you have to use it, too! But you can’t use it to grade or write LORs or in any way compromise FERPA. Most of all, don’t wait! You’re already sooo behind!

In sum: AI is everywhere. It’s in your car, inside the house, in your pocket. And (I think?) it’s coming for your refrigerator and your grocery shopping.

I left the conference with a familiar ache behind my right shoulder blade. This is the place where stress lives in my body, the place of “you really must” and “have to.” And my body is resisting.

I am not an early adopter. I let the first gen of any new tech tool come and go, waiting for the bugs to be worked out, to see if it will survive the Hype Cycle. This year, my syllabus policy on AI essentially read, “I don’t know how to use this thing, so please just don’t.” Though, in my defense, the fact that I even had a policy on Generative AI might actually make me an early adopter, since a recent national survey of provosts found only 20% were at the helm of institutions with formal, published policy on the use of AI.

So I still don’t have very many answers, but I am remembering to breathe through my resistance, which has helped me develop a few questions: How can I break down this big scary thing into smaller pieces? How might I approach these tools with a sense of play? How can I experiment in the classroom with students? How can I help them understand the limitations of AI and the essential nature of their human brains, their human voices?

To those ends, I’d like to hear from you. Send me your anxieties, your moral outrage, your wildest hopes and dreams. What have you been puzzling over this year? Have you found small ways to use Generative AI in your teaching or writing? Have your ethical questions shifted or deepened? And should I worry that maybe, in about two hundred years, AI is going to destroy us all?

This summer and next year, CATL will publish additional materials and blog posts exploring Generative AI. CATL has already covered some of the “whats,” and will continue to do so, as AI changes rapidly. But, just as we understand that to motivate students, we must also talk about “the why,” we must make space for these questions ourselves. In the meantime, as I explore these questions, I’m leaning into human companionship, as members of my unit (Applied Writing & English) will read Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick. We’re off contract this summer, so it’s not required, but, you know, we have to figure this out. So if we must, let’s at least do it over dinner.

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Escape Rooms Help Students See That Chemistry Doesn’t Have to Be Scary! 

a smiling woman with blonde hair wearing a black shirt
Breeyawn Lybbert, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Background

Professor Breeyawn Lybbert has been teaching at UWGB for the last 5 years. Professor Lybbert started at the UW Colleges in Manitowoc in 2014, after having worked previously at the University of Minnesota Morris. She went to the University of Minnesota for her bachelor’s degree and earned her PhD from UCLA. She has a special love of Organic Chemistry, which is also the focus of her dissertation.

Strategy

an office door covered in strips of caution tapeWhen Professor Lybbert began thinking about escape rooms, they were all the rage. She discovered an article in the Journal of Chemistry Education, which described, in detail, a Lab-Based Chemical Escape Room. The article describes a scenario in which four bombs are set to explode unless the chemists in the room are able to neutralize them. The scenario presented used the kinds of puzzles those familiar with escape rooms might be used to, but in order to solve these puzzles, chemistry knowledge would also come into play. This is what Professor Lybbert used as a guide to create her own physical escape room inside her classroom. More than just creating a fun activity, she created an environment designed to immerse her students in the escape room, complete with yellow caution tape, scary music, and a countdown timer. Her students get a full hour to work as a team to solve this puzzle.

a chemistry classroom with a counting down timer on a projector screen

Why Is It Important?

Professor Lybbert uses this activity in her Chem 109 class, a class that is not geared toward chemistry majors. The students who take this class are often anxious about the content of the class and their ability to master it. This activity comes at the end of the class and manages to demonstrate to students how much they’ve learned about chemistry, even with all of their apprehension. While the professor says students are often confused at the beginning of the exercise, they become invested and work together to solve the puzzles and escape. At the end of the escape room, they complete a survey of their thoughts on the experience, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. They feel that it’s a nice way to round out a hard class.

How Does It Benefit Students?

manila envelopes and notebooks on a black tableStudents have the opportunity to use the knowledge they’ve gained throughout the course of the semester in a low-stakes (but heightened-intensity) lab activity that gives them the chance to reflect on their learning once the adrenaline has passed. Although not perfectly a real-world scenario, students do realize that they can use their knowledge when the time counts!

What Inspires Your Work?

Professor Lybbert says that her students’ reactions inspire her work. Students realize that they have mastered and applied knowledge and skills that likely seemed very daunting when they started her class. They realize through this activity that chemistry really isn’t so scary and that makes it worth it.

Want to Try It?

The resources below include the article that inspired Bree Lybbert, along with some other articles that link to puzzles and more tips for creating your own escape room.

Share with Your Colleagues

Do you have a strategy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send a quick email to catl@uwgb.edu and we will follow up with you to create your teaching strategy spotlight! We would love to hear from you!