Friday Fragments, August 21st

Breakout rooms, burnout, inviting students to share & a podcast recommendation.

What I’m reading & listening to:

7 ideas for using break-out rooms - in this post, Rachel Tsateri shares ways she uses breakout rooms for task rehearsal, task repetition, allowing students to have a choice of tasks or differentiating tasks for students, and space for peer feedback or private feedback.

As we gear up for fall, some - many - of us are still feeling the weight of spring and summer, and have gone without any mental or physical break since the winter holiday. Burnout Is Coming to Campus. Are College Leaders Ready? by Kevin McClure addresses these “not normal” times.

Nice White Parents - a five-part podcast from Serial, investigated and written by Chana Joffe-Walt, is so interesting and well-done. I zipped through it this week, and wish there were more episodes.

Image from Pablo Delcan/New York Times - Nice White Parents

I know that there has been some critique on Twitter, but I still think that the message of asking students to write personal essays in a recent column in the Chronicle of Higher Ed by Rachel Toor is an important one. She urges that instructors allow students to communicate some essential truths about how they are right now: “Students want to be seen, to know that we care about them, to be reminded that we understand that they’re struggling.” She offers several other strategies for encouraging student-student and student-instructor relationships.

Thanks for reading!