In this episode, we discuss

Kate Mohler on bipolar disorder, accommodations, self-care and supporting colleagues. What is bipolar disorder like? What accommodations can we make for students. How can colleagues be more supportive?

Highlights include:

1. How have you reintegrated yourself into the campus community? (1:33)
2. Reconciling our actions (5:23)
3. How do we recognize signs of a mental illness both in students and in colleagues? (7:23)
4. What can supporters do for their own self-care when supporting colleagues going through depression, mania or aggression? (12:10)
5. What about those with the actual mental illness? What can they do for self-care? How can they avoid an episode or at least avoid it interfering with work? (14:07)
6. Acceptance (17:04)
7. As we know, anyone can become disabled at any time. What accommodations can be put in place in order to anticipate mental health issues? (20:00)
8. What might an awareness campaign look like? (22:55)
9. Can we put some kind of notice in the syllabus? What should it say? (24:43)
10. Do you have any last advice that you’d like to give our listeners? (26:00)

Resources Mentioned

• "As a Disabled Person, Embracing 'Crip Time' Helped Me Define My Own "Normal"" by Javed Avidi Foundation. https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2020/10/embracing-crip-time-lessons-from-teaching-and-learning-during-the-pandemic/
• "Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time" by Ellen Samuels. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684
• Price, Margaret. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. University of Michigan Press, 2014. 

About Kate Mohler

Kate Mohler earned a B.A. in English from Bemidji State University in Minnesota in 1989 and an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University in 1994. She has taught composition for Mesa Community College since 1995. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016.

In this episode, we discuss

Kate Mohler on bipolar disorder, accommodations, self-care and supporting colleagues. What is bipolar disorder like? What accommodations can we make for students. How can colleagues be more supportive?

Highlights include:

1. On bipolar disorder and her manic episode
2. The importance of a support network
3. What is Crip Time?
4. What are some accommodations we can make?
5. Journals of Place

Resources Mentioned

• What Is Bipolar Disorder? by Helen M. Farrell. https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_m_farrell_what_is_bipolar_disorder?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
• "As a Disabled Person, Embracing 'Crip Time' Helped Me Define My Own "Normal"" by Javed Avidi Foundation. https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2020/10/embracing-crip-time-lessons-from-teaching-and-learning-during-the-pandemic/
• "Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time" by Ellen Samuels. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684
• Price, Margaret. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. University of Michigan Press, 2014.

About Kate Mohler

Kate Mohler earned a B.A. in English from Bemidji State University in Minnesota in 1989 and an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University in 1994. She has taught composition for Mesa Community College since 1995. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016.

In this episode, we discuss

Authority, identity and unknowability in the classroom, as well as the intersections of feminist pedagogy and disability studies, and incorporating objects into teaching and learning with Krista Grensavitch.

Highlights include:

1. How would you define feminist pedagogy? What might this look like in the classroom? (1:57)
2. What is intersectional feminism? (3:53)
3. How do you make the material personal? (5:57)
4. How might we think about teaching in terms of creating learner communities? (12:33)
5. What is identity and knowability in teaching? In your dissertation? (14:55)
6. What about authority and identity? (22:19)
7. How do we cede authority in the classroom? (24:38)
8. What is object lesson? How can we incorporate or co-create by incorporating objects? (29:05)
9. Where are the gaps and silences that could not, that aren’t representative, that don’t communicate the complex, lived reality of a wide breadth of identities? (37:09)
10. Any last advice? (43:12)

Resources Mentioned

• Carter, Sarah Anne. Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World. Oxford University Press., 2018. https://amzn.to/3gnKFUZ

About Dr. Krista Grensavitch

Krista Grensavitch (she/her) earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2019. Additionally, she holds a Master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies , also from UWM. Currently, she is a lecturer for Women’s and Gender Studies, History, and Comparative Ethnic Studies at UWM and she teaches Ethnic Studies for the M3 (pronounced M-cubed) program. Krista’s research and teaching are intimately connected; her dissertation and more recent conference presentations have addressed teaching through and with material culture (physical objects) in the higher ed classroom. She intends for her research to be applicable for and adaptable by a wide range of teachers and learners. To sustain her work as a feminist teacher, Krista enjoys spending time cooking, baking, and sharing the outcomes.

In this episode, we discuss

Having lupus, the perception of attendance and the accessibility of Dungeons & Dragons for training with Chrissy Mackey. How can we better support students who suffer from chronic autoimmune diseases? How does it affect attendance? What policies could instructors put in place in the syllabus so students could show how they are engaged in the coursework? How does gaming apply to industrial/ organizational psychology?

Highlights include:

1. What is lupus (1:28)
2. How lupus affects life as a student (2:34)
3. Accommodations (3:25)
4. How can we better support students with chronic illnesses (4:51)
5. Industrial and organization psychology (9:25)
6. How does gaming apply (11:15)
7. How Dungeons & Dragons can be used for training and education (14:38)
8. How can we implement games in training & classrooms? (20:30)

Resources Mentioned

• Dungeons & Dragons: https://amzn.to/3biX3EW

About Chrissy Mackey, PhD (ABD)

Chrissy Mackey is a PhD candidate in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Ashford University, online. Her research focuses on applied gaming, specifically tabletop roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons. Games provide a completely safe world in which to explore different aspects of life and culture. In particular, role-playing games provide instant feedback regarding one’s choices. For more information on how she used Dungeons & Dragons and other games for training and education, please visit her instagram at @improved_initiative, or her website, plus5initiative.com.

In this episode, we discuss

Karen Tang on the correlation between addiction and mental health, and developing mindfulness and self-compassion.

Highlights include:

1. What is your background? How did you become interested in researching co-morbid disorders? (1:38)
2. Who are the students or people, in general, most at risk for developing co-occurring disorders, and is there any way to prevent it? (2:24)
3. How does college life mask mental illness and how do we identify those students? (5:48)
4. How do we notice and mitigate burnout? (9:52)
5. How do we create a self-care toolkit? (11:28)
6. How can we design classes so that we as instructors help to minimize burnout? (12:55)
7. What is mindfulness and why is it important for self-compassion? (15:27)
8. What is meditation and how do we practice it? (22:27)
9. How can mindfulness and meditation lead to better engagement and studying and working within the academy? (24:56)
10. Do you have self-care tips and advice for people or for students who say that they don’t have time? (27:35)

Resources Mentioned

• Headspace: Mindfulness for Everyday Life: https://www.headspace.com/

About Karen Tang

Karen Tang completed her BA (Honours) in Psychology degree at the University of Calgary and is currently in the PhD Clinical Psychology program at Dalhousie University. In her research on addiction, Karen is primarily interested in examining co-morbid disorders, specifically behavioral addictions and mental health correlates (e.g., gambling disorder and depression)—which she recently published a paper on. In the realm of health psychology, Karen is actively involved in research on chronic health conditions and the role of mindfulness and self-compassion. She hopes to combine both research interests in an upcoming study on addiction, mental health, and self-compassion. In her spare time, Karen enjoys volunteering and traveling.

In this episode, we discuss

The importance of multimodality and making online classes accessible with Kristine Koyama.

Highlights include:

1. What were the challenges and accessibility issues you faced when moving classes online amidst the pandemic? (1:32)
2. How do we support students with different learning styles in an online format? (4:33)
3. What are some of the tenets of creating an accessible online classroom? (7:37)
4. How does multimodality fit with creating an online learning space? (7:37)
5. What resources are out there for instructors who want to create a labor-based or contract-based grading system? (18:50)
6. How do we accommodate students who have chronic illnesses who might otherwise not be able to fulfill a labor-based grading contract? (23:18)
7. Do you have advice for instructors who aren’t familiar or comfortable with teaching online? (34:07)

Resources Mentioned

• Loom: http://www.loom.com
• Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom by Asao Inoue: https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/

About Kristine Koyama

Kristine Koyama is a doctoral student in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and received her MA at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her research focuses on the environmental humanities, particularly the racialization of the climate crisis and issues of transatlantic climate disruption. Additionally, Kristine has taught college writing courses for the past three years and is passionate about bringing issues of race and climate justice into her classroom. It is with this lens that she approaches multimodality in the classroom as an integral part of creating an equitable learning space.

In this episode, we discuss

DJ Lee’s book Remote: Finding Home In the Bitterroots. How does “place” function as an archive? How is writing also a spiritual experience? What were mental hospitals like in the 40s and 50s? What does it mean to write through shame? How is mental illness in some ways un-boundaried like the wilderness? 

Highlights include:

1. The process of writing the book through finding her grandmother’s memoir box (2:54)
2. Place as archive (6:36)
3. Writing the memoir alongside exploring grandmother’s memoirs (11:03)
4. Grandmother struggle with mental health and experience in mental hospitals (16:00)
5. Writing through shame (20:23)
6. The wilderness and bipolar disorder as un-boundaried (22:33)
7. What is so beautiful and healing about the wilderness (24:13)
8. What are instructors and universities doing for students with mental health issues (33:06)
9. Gathering up the courage to ask for help (37:02)
10. How we are all connected (38:38)

Resources Mentioned

• DJ Lee’s Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots (Oregon State University Press, 2020): https://amzn.to/2WZ6t2D

About DJ Lee

DJ Lee is Regents Professor of literature and creative writing at Washington State University. Her creative work includes over thirty non-fiction pieces in magazines and anthologies. She has published eight books on literature, history, and the environment, including the collection The Land Speaks (Oxford 2017) and the hybrid memoir Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots (Oregon State, 2020). Lee is director of the Selway- Bitterro­­ot Wilderness History Project and a scholar-fellow at the Black Earth Institute.

In this episode, we discuss

Connecting with Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal on her book, Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education. What are some of the pros and cons for keeping a psychiatric disability hidden? How do we challenge stereotypes and the notion that seeking accommodations is cheating? How do we raise awareness and change the narrative? How do we practice care for ourselves and for our students while also protecting ourselves inside of a neoliberal university system? What advice would you give to those who are thinking of leaving academia?

Highlights include:

1. What are the pros and cons of keeping a psychiatric disability hidden? (3:04)
2. Raising awareness and creating communities of care (7:56)
3. How do we navigate intersectionality and de-centering authority in the classroom in terms of socioeconomic background, race, gender and other kinds of privilege (11:02)
4. How do we challenge the narrative that people who need accommodations are faking their disability? (16:31)
5. The mad genius stereotype (24:19)
6. Persevering in the midst of a mental illness, the challenges of working inside a neoliberal university system, and saying “no” (30:14)
7. Advice for those working in academia (36:30)
8. Advice for those wanting to leave academia (40:00)

Resources Mentioned

• Pryal, Katie Rose Guest. Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education. Raven Books, 2017. https://amzn.to/2yvWHfi
• Pryal, Katie Rose Guest. The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career. Snowraven Books, 2019 https://amzn.to/37SacmI
• hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994. https://amzn.to/3hRB8HX
• hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Routledge, 2003. https://amzn.to/2V7I61z
• “What is the Spoon Theory?” by Bonnie Evie Gifford. https://happiful.com/what-is-the-spoon-theory/
• “The Spoon Theory” by Christine Miserandino. https://cdn.totalcomputersusa.com/butyoudontlooksick.com/uploads/2010/02/BYDLS-TheSpoonTheory.pdf

About Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., is a bestselling author, speaker, and law professor. She is the author of Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education (2017), #1 Amazon bestseller; The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career (2019); and Even If You’re Broken: Essays on Sexual Assault and #MeToo (2019), winner of a 2020 gold IPPY award. She’s also written three novels, Entanglement, Chasing Chaos, and Fallout Girl, and many textbooks on law and writing. She is a columnist for Women in Higher Education, where she covers gender issues, labor, and academia. Her popular column for Catapult magazine, “Mom, Interrupted,” is about family life, mental illness, and raising disabled kids as a disabled parent. Her column “Public Writing Life” for the Chronicle of Higher Education advises academics who wish to transition to writing for public audiences. She speaks frequently about mental health and disability, writing and publishing, gender issues, and higher education.

Connect with Katie

• Twitter:

In this episode, we discuss

Self-accommodation, self-advocacy and building resilience with Jason Anderson. How do we make accommodations for ourselves, learn how to self-advocate, and figure out what we need so that we can get what we need to be successful? What does it mean to build resilience? What are some resources in the community to help students with disabilities?

Highlights include:

1. How Jason became involved in disability services (3:01)
2. The differences between little “d” and big “D” in the Deaf community (4:53)
3. Asking for help (10:31)
4. What is self-accommodation and how do we build self-advocacy skills? (12:14)
5. The differences between 504, IDEA Act and ADA (16:12)
6. What is the process for working with an Access Specialist? (20:55)
7. How do you have the conversation about accommodations with your instructor? (23:06)
8. What is resilience and how do you build it? (24:55)
9. Jason’s example of advocating for captions as a student (28:10)
10. What are some resources out there to help students? (31:55)
11. Do you have any final advice? (38:32)

Resources Mentioned

• Independence First (Metro Milwaukee): https://www.independencefirst.org/home
• Wisconsin Department of Vocational Rehabilitation: https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dvr/
• Accessibility Resource Center at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee: https://uwm.edu/arc/
• Anderson, Jason. The Art of Self-Accommodation. TedTalk, 2016. https://youtu.be/ac1mOswXxLs
• Anderson, Jason. Episode 38: Cochlear Implants and the Deaf Community with Jason Anderson. A Year of Listening, 2018. http://ayearoflistening.libsyn.com/episode-38-cochlear-implants-and-the-deaf-community-with-jason-anderson

About Jason Anderson

Jason P. Anderson is an Access Specialist for students with disabilities and has been with UW Milwaukee since 2013. He grew up hard-of-hearing and became deaf as an adult. He has two cochlear implants and is proficient in American Sign Language (ASL). Jason is an alumnus of UW- Milwaukee (Sociology and American Sign Language Studies) and after seven years of working in the ARC, has returned to work on his master’s degree in Counseling (Graduation, 2021). He is a longtime member of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Accessibility Advisory Committee (ADAAAC), a campus disability advisory body to the Chancellor. He also serves on the Housing Financial Appeals Committee and is a member of the Association on Higher Education and Disability.

Jason believes students with disabilities deserve equal opportunities to succeed. His relationship with deafness, hearing loss, and disability allows him the unique opportunity to see multiple perspectives when working with students and staff. He has presented at conferences across the country about disability and the importance of self-advocacy, including a TEDx talk at UW-Milwaukee, called The Art of Self-Accommodation.

When Jason isn’t working or volunteering, his time is spent with his wife and young son. Jason is an award-winning homebrewer and enjoys creating unique brews that he shares with friends and fami

In this episode, we discuss:

Life as a first generation student and single mother from rural Minnesota with Beth Vigoren. What assumptions do we make about first-generation and/or rural students? How do we handle sensitive, but timely topics in our classroom, that could potentially divide the classroom community, and at the same time, take care of our students’ emotional well-being during these conversations? How do we develop skills in self-advocacy and asking powerful questions?

Highlights include:

1. First experiences transitioning into college (2:15)
2. Self-advocacy and rural students’ perception of professors (6:55)
3. Student conferences and de-centering authority (10:15)
4. Finding and developing an on-campus community (13:02)
5. Stereotypes of rural students (14:57)
6. Being belittled in academia as a rural student (18:00)
7. Defining rural intersectional feminism (20:40)
8. The death of George Floyd and the recent protests (23:00)
9. Handling sensitive, but timely topics in the classroom and asking powerful questions (25:41)
10. Challenging thoughts and beliefs when one feels their identities are at-stake (35:47)
11. Process-Based Pedagogy (42:52)
12. What failure teaches about having good conversations (45:55)

Resources Mentioned

• The Art of Asking Powerful Questions: https://umanitoba.ca/admin/human_resources/change/media/the-art-of-powerful-questions.pdf
• Greg Barnhisel, et al. “Incorporating Process-Based Writing Pedagogy into First-Year Learning Communities: Strategies and Outcomes.” The Journal of General Education, vol. 61, no. 4, 2012, pp. 461–487. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jgeneeduc.61.4.0461

About Beth Vigoren

Beth Vigoren (she/her/hers) was born and raised near Fosston, MN, and earned her MA in English at Bemidji State University. She identifies as a rural writer and focuses her attention primarily on stories that delve into the experiences of working-class women living in rural America. Her academic interests include creative writing and composition pedagogy, rural feminism, rural and working-class women writers, and the work of Willa Cather.

In addition to writing, Beth teaches English Composition and Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and hopes to pursue a professorship position after completing her Ph.D. in Creative Writing – Fiction, Women’s and Gender Studies certificate, and a Special Emphasis in Writing Program Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

She is currently working on a collection of short stories that center on the people of the fictional rural town of Nede. 

Music

“Fresh Fallen Snow” by Chris Haugen