Spring Teaching Forum: Reclaiming and Sustaining Joy in the Classroom

How do we sustain our joy in teaching? Alternatively, how might the joy we reclaim in the classroom sustain us outside of it? We first explored this topic in a 2009 Spring Teaching Forum. 17 years later, against the backdrop of an increasingly fraught national and international landscape, can we imagine our classrooms as places of refuge and hope? This event will explore how teaching might help us instill resilience in our students while finding it for ourselves – finding a way forward by tapping into the motivations and passions that brought us into the academy in the first place. 

This event will feature a plenary lecture, followed by a panel featuring Yale faculty and staff. The day will conclude with a lunch. 

Speakers
10 to 10:50 AM: Joy Gaston Gayles is the head of NCSU’s Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development. She has written on finding ways forward through uncertain times in higher education, advocacy among undergraduate students, retention in STEM majors, and equity in both faculty development and student support. In her capacity as president of the Associate for the Study of Higher Education, she led a symposium on “Finding Our Way: Centering Joy, Care, and Community.”

10:50 to 11:50: Faculty and Staff Panel
After Professor Gayles’ talk, we will hear about how various faculty and staff members have guided their students and colleagues toward finding joy and meaning in the classroom. 

Karla Neugebauer (R. Selden Rose Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Professor of Cell Biology) will discuss how she has reframed the biochemistry curriculum to turn students away from climate despair, instead inviting students to join in the collaborative and increasingly urgent project to build a shared future for our planet. 

Matthew Croasmun (Senior Lecturer of Divinity and Humanities) will share his work directing the Life Worth Living program, a cross-institutional course that invites students to explore (and begin to imagine) the good life, and how they might live it. 

Jennifer Frederick (Associate Provost for Academic Initiatives), who also spoke at the 2009 Spring Teaching Forum, will share her perspective on how she has seen faculty, students, and staff across Yale’s teaching landscape inspire and be inspired by the classroom. 

12 to 1: This event will conclude with a lunch for all participants in Poorvu Center Rooms 120A and B.

Poorvu Center: Faculty Programs and Initiatives | Website | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Poorvu Center: Graduate and Postdoctoral Teaching Development

Contact the organizers