OPID| 2025 Spring Conference for Wisconsin Educators

Thursday, April 10 & Friday, April 11, 2025

Memorial Union, Madison

Jessamyn Neuhaus

Thursday, April 10, 2025

A SoTL Reality Check: Three Underrecognized, Underexamined, and Underestimated Truths about Teaching and Learning

This year’s OPID Annual Spring Conference on Teaching and Learning marks the 25^th anniversary of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the University of Wisconsin System. But in addition to celebrating the achievements of this field, we need to keep pushing SoTL researchers and authors to address gaps in the scholarship, and to provide actionable, inclusive advice and support for diverse classroom practitioners. In this keynote, I unpack three unassailable truths about teaching and learning that SoTL has been slow to sufficiently address: 1.) Learners and educators are human beings and human beings routinely make mistakes and mess things up. 2.) Our biases, stereotypes, and positionalities shape our teaching and learning environments. 3.) Popular discourse and media representations create unrealistic ideals and ideas about effective teaching—including the myth of the Super Teacher—which can negatively impact our experiences as learners and educators. Better awareness of and understanding of these three aspects of teaching and learning would improve the SoTL field as a whole, and are an essential part of our own individual pedagogical reflection and development.

Friday, April 11, 2025

Use Your Words: The Value of a “Script” When Something Goes Wrong in Teaching and Learning

As I argue in my latest book, Snafu Edu, teaching and learning always includes mistakes, missteps, and messes. When—not if, but when—something goes sideways during a class discussion, interaction, assignment, or other type of class activity, it can be pedagogically effective and personally empowering to have a “go-bag” of prepared phrases and responses. I do not mean “scripts” in the sense of long, memorized speeches but rather a handful of carefully chosen sentences/wording that you know will defuse tension and help everyone productively navigate potentially fraught situations while maintaining professionally appropriate connections and facilitating a positive teaching and learning environment. Scripts are a versatile teaching tool, useful during a wide range of teaching and learning snafus—from microaggressions to student disengagement to academic dishonesty to classroom incivility, to when we ourselves fumble or fail. Scripts are also easily adapted to your own unique teaching persona and positionality. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll identify some of the predictable snafus we encounter in our teaching lives, reflect on how our past responses (especially what we said) either helped or hindered our teaching efficacy at those moments, share our current best scripts for when something goes wrong, and brainstorm and practice some new scripts.

Jessamyn Neuhaus is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) and Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. A scholar of teaching and learning, Dr. Neuhaus is the author of Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers and editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning, both published in the West Virginia University Press series, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Her Fall 2025 book, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom is published in the Oklahoma University Press series, Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Education. Jessamyn holds a Ph.D. in history and in addition to two historical monographs, has published pedagogical, historical, and cultural studies research in numerous anthologies and journals, and is editor of Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. As a professor of history at SUNY Plattsburgh, she earned the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and has over twenty years of classroom experience at a range of higher ed institutions, teaching courses on U.S. history, gender studies, history of sexuality, popular culture history, and specialized seminars she created, such as “Superheroes in U.S. Culture,” “The Prom: History, Politics, Culture, and Society,” “Food: Culture, Society, Economics, and Politics,” “The Apocalypse in U.S. Popular Culture,” and “Zombies in Popular Culture.” As an educational developer, Jessamyn supports and promotes faculty’s scholarly teaching and pedagogical reflection at every stage of their careers. As a collaborative campus leader, she prioritizes building and sustaining strong communities; recognizing, documenting, and celebrating effective teaching practices; and increasing equitable teaching and learning environments for faculty, students, and staff.