USC educators stressed the importance of compassion, flexibility and exploration four years after the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the classroom experience.
Content Warning: This article contains references to suicide.
When students are struggling, whether because of physical or mental strain, and can’t find the accommodations they need, many rely on their professors for support. Addressing mental well-being in education settings has become an increasingly important question, particularly for upcoming graduates whose college careers have been profoundly shaped by the coronavirus pandemic before they even step foot on USC’s campus.
Supporting students’ mental health in the classroom is a process that changes throughout one’s teaching career, said Brett Sheehan, professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures. His approach is greatly influenced by his time as a faculty in residence at Parkside Arts & Humanities Residential College.
“When I first started teaching in the late 1990s and early 2000s, [mental health] wasn’t on people’s radar quite as much, and so I didn’t think about it as much,” Sheehan said. “I’ve become more aware of the stresses that students face … and having to deal with COVID, it’s made me even more aware of this crisis of mental health.”
According to Taiyaba Husain, an associate professor of writing, the transition from in-person learning to Zoom classes provided new stressors and obstacles for everyone, especially students.
“During COVID, many of our students didn’t have adequate connectivity to be able to participate in class,” Husain said. “By virtue of being home [students] had to take care of siblings and [deal] with noise and didn’t have space of their own.”
Pamela Albanese, a lecturer in the writing program, underscored the need for compassionate approaches that account for students’ ongoing struggle to comprehend the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic on mental health.
“It was a very difficult time for us, and I think we’re still processing it,” Albanese said. “I think a lot of people still struggle with that pressure to be present and in-person but also have the option to not have to stay home and not be around people.”
Other professors, such as Guilan Siassi, an associate professor of French, understand the benefits of online tools but raise concerns about the prolonged reliance on technology and its effect on well-being.
“To what extent is that constant interaction with technology also aggravating our mental health issues?” Siassi asked.
In the same vein, there’s a palpable loss of the spontaneous interactions that foster community and support mental health. More meetings online “create less opportunity for random interactions that can build into friendship,” which imbalances the “convenience of isolation while still feeling like you’re part of the community,” Albanese said.
While debate continues on how to manage student health best, some educators advocate for productive and safe learning environments. The pandemic served as a wake-up call to many professors and provided an opportunity to change how health is handled in classrooms.
“I feel like it was really important for many of us to not just go back to what it was before or try to recreate that sense of what a classroom should have been before,” said Brent Chappelow, an associate professor of writing. “It was a disruption to the system, I think it’s really important to take advantage of that in terms of students’ mental health and students’ well-being.”
For Christopher Hepburn, a postdoctoral scholar and teaching fellow, his reflection on how to properly deal with student mental health predates the coronavirus pandemic and started in 2018, after he grappled with difficult circumstances during his tenure at Texas Tech University.
“I had a student die, and it was hard on me,” Hepburn said. “I think that if people are doing their jobs as human beings correctly, one should never get to that point [of suicide]. I felt like I had personally failed in doing that, because I was the typical professor. I’d go in and pick up the chalk, write on the board for 50 minutes and leave, and I said, ‘It’s probably best to reframe my thinking in such a way that I don’t contribute to those thoughts.’”
Hepburn implements any changes in the classroom that will benefit his students. He is constantly trying to gauge the stress of his students and let that affect the amount of work he assigns. However, he admits he was offered this opportunity because he had such small classes.
“Anytime you have more than 25 students in a class, accountability just goes to the floor,” Hepburn said. “It’s really hard to be accountable for a very large class. I’m fortunate that the classes I teach usually aren’t more than 16 students. For somebody in biology who teaches 400 students, it might be really hard to effectively gauge mental health in the classroom just visually or implement changes.”
Siassi shared this sentiment, saying that many STEM courses, particularly those dubbed “weeder” classes, can be especially difficult for professors to moderate.
“You got three midterms and a final exam,” Siassi said. “You can’t be making 10 different tests and risk one student telling the other 199 what’s on it. There’s a lot of pressure on professors and being accommodating comes at a huge cost to your time. It’s emotionally consuming.”
Some educators emphasize not only the consistent work pressures while in college, but also how such culture manifests specifically at USC.
“USC is a very exit-oriented culture,” Sheehan said. When students get to college, they are so focused on getting the internship to get the job, and “it creates this culture in which, if you’re not hitting all those marks, you feel behind.”
At the end of the day, professors can do all they can to help students, but if a student needs help they need to know what resources they have at their disposal, Hepburn said.
“USC does a really good job of providing spaces that students can go to. I’m not entirely sure if all the students are aware of those spaces,” Hepburn said. “If anything would be done, it would be to make students more aware of what the university can offer in terms of free mental health counseling or spaces where you can go to scream and hit a pillow if you want to or these areas of safety where we feel safe enough to express ourselves.”
