In our recent Faculty Roundtable, SSU Secondary and Higher Education faculty member James Noonan spoke about how he started checking in with students over the last year. After getting the idea from SSU colleague Vijay Kanagala, he started sending students brief well-being focused emails. Students responded so well that he plans to keep doing it. Here's what he said, in a lightly edited transcript (or scroll down for the video):

"About three weeks into the semester... I sent individual emails to every student in every class. And the email is pretty basic: 'I want to check in on how you're doing. No pressure to respond, but I'm available to check in or talk more if that would be helpful.' I actually found these short emails were one of the best things that I did last year. I have done it again this fall, and I'm doing it again in the spring. Most students don't respond, which is fine. I don't want them to if they don't want to. Some students respond and say, 'Thanks very much. I really appreciate it. This matters a lot and I'm fine,' which is great. They feel seen and appreciated, and I appreciate knowing that they're OK.

Almost without fail, there's one or two students who write back and say, 'Honestly, I'm having a really hard time. It's really stressful.' Maybe these are students who aren't getting in all of their weekly reading discussion posts, or who have missed classes but who otherwise seemed fine. It's like this email is a door, and I'm inviting them to walk through. When they do, when any student wrote back, whether they said they were fine or whether they said they were struggling, I tried to respond to right away. Not a long note, just, 'thank you so much,' or 'I'm so glad to hear from you. So glad you're doing fine,' or 'Thank you for telling me what's going on.'

That contact feels like a really low lift in service of personalizing and humanizing the relationship between us as faculty and our students, especially during times of crisis. But, you know, this is a worthy enough practice that it is now a part of what I do. Even as COVID fades, I will keep doing this. I'll put on a calendar reminder and say, 'time to send your emails' and I will sit down and I will do it."

See James talking about this practice, and sharing a sample email template, in the video below, and sign up to come to one of our future Faculty Roundtables in Engaging Design for Equitable Teaching.