This episode is another chance for us to consider the emotion around failure, which most of our instructional community acknowledges is something that higher education would really rather avoid dealing with. The guiding question is: what is the place for loss and grief in higher education?
We return to three voices about failure: Professor Elena Martinez-Vidal, counselor Cyntrell Legette and, from our first Failure episode last season, Professor TK Kimel.
With our guests, we'll explore in more detail what students lose when they leave an institution of higher education because it's much more than just a career option. We also examine the connections between loss and grief and get much further into our thinking about what educational grief could be.
Finally, we begin some early thinking on how better understanding of student loss and grief might change the ways in which we respond to failure. In keeping with our season of new conversations and ideas, we make a beginning of new possibilities when we look at student failure through the lens of loss and grief.
Stream the episode here or listen through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Cyntrell talks about the Five Stages of Grief in our conversation. Here is an article summarizing them. Like most information about the Five Stages, it's focused on the grief from a death of a loved one.
Perhaps if you look more closely at the descriptions of these stages, you'll find related feelings and behaviors in students who face or are in suspension. We happen to believe that grief for educational loss can also follow similar patterns.
Most importantly, we can ask: if we begin to perceive educational grief happening, how can we respond differently and better than we have in the past? Perhaps this juxtaposition will give you new insight into student choices and behavior around failure.