Science Backed Classroom-Based Strategies for Improving Students’ Academic Performance and Emotional Resilience
Subject Area
Foreign Language Pedagogy
Abstract
According to a November 4th, 2018 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “a surge in anxiety and depression has played a part in persuading colleges to take a more active role in helping students to shape their lives.” The article asks rhetorically whether universities should be responsible for teaching students not just to think, but also to thrive.
Too often, professors tend to believe that their primary goal is to teach course content. Personal matters were to be left outside the classroom. However, when instructors make the mental shift from “teaching content” to “teaching students”, they find that the people they teach will thrive both academically and emotionally.
In June of 2017, I attended a six-day workshop at the University California, Berkeley’s “Greater Good Science Center” where we (K-16 teachers, principals, deans, professors, program coordinators, directors, social workers, and counselors) learned how science-backed strategies for promoting pro-social behaviors (kindness and compassion) in the classroom improves both academic performance and emotional resilience.
Since attending the workshop, I have implemented several of these strategies in my German classrooms (1001, 4230 and 3130) and have seen the positive impact they have had on my students’ interactions among themselves and with me as their instructor.
If this proposal is accepted, I would like to share these strategies (adaptable to any language) with my colleagues, while also speaking about the relatively new field of “Compassion Science” upon which the strategies are based.
Brief Bio Note
Dr. Catherine Johnson is an associate professor in German at Georgia Southern University. Her research interests include second language acquisition, assessing student performance, issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality in German-speaking countries, compassion science and POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning).
Keywords
pro-social behaviors, compassion, academic performance, emotional resilience
Location
Morning Session (PARB 114/115)
Presentation Year
April 2019
Start Date
4-12-2019 9:35 AM
Embargo
11-27-2018
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Catherine T., "Science Backed Classroom-Based Strategies for Improving Students’ Academic Performance and Emotional Resilience" (2019). South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL). 38.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/seccll/2019/2019/38
Science Backed Classroom-Based Strategies for Improving Students’ Academic Performance and Emotional Resilience
Morning Session (PARB 114/115)
According to a November 4th, 2018 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “a surge in anxiety and depression has played a part in persuading colleges to take a more active role in helping students to shape their lives.” The article asks rhetorically whether universities should be responsible for teaching students not just to think, but also to thrive.
Too often, professors tend to believe that their primary goal is to teach course content. Personal matters were to be left outside the classroom. However, when instructors make the mental shift from “teaching content” to “teaching students”, they find that the people they teach will thrive both academically and emotionally.
In June of 2017, I attended a six-day workshop at the University California, Berkeley’s “Greater Good Science Center” where we (K-16 teachers, principals, deans, professors, program coordinators, directors, social workers, and counselors) learned how science-backed strategies for promoting pro-social behaviors (kindness and compassion) in the classroom improves both academic performance and emotional resilience.
Since attending the workshop, I have implemented several of these strategies in my German classrooms (1001, 4230 and 3130) and have seen the positive impact they have had on my students’ interactions among themselves and with me as their instructor.
If this proposal is accepted, I would like to share these strategies (adaptable to any language) with my colleagues, while also speaking about the relatively new field of “Compassion Science” upon which the strategies are based.
