The “About” page of this website gives you some of my professional cred and a bit of my background. What I’d like to add here is a bit more about my values, and what drives me to create spaces like this one.
My mission-oriented bio statement goes something like this:
Sara Schley is a tenured full professor in a teacher training program serving future teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students. She is also a director of a research center focusing on teaching and learning, and a director of learning sciences in a biomedical engineering program. She is a former productivity and work/life balance coach from the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity’s flagship Faculty Success Program. Sara uses a coaching-informed consulting approach to work with clients on identifying, designing, and implementing inclusive pedagogy strategies, and she coaches clients who value social justice and inclusion in using their creativity, agency, and confidence to approach their careers and lives with clarity.
It is no secret that I engage in regular reflection and ideation processes about planning my life goals, and creating action plans for reaching these goals. For a number of years now I have participated in an annual planning “retreat” process that I learned from Kerry Ann Rockquemore (an overview of her process is here). I have also been engaged with some of Katie Linder’s work including her newsletter, her Academic Creative blog, and this podcast and this one and this one), where helping people identify their core values is part of her own life’s purpose. I capitalized on some of the reflection parts from these sources to really think about what drives me to pursue the goals I pursue:
Justice. Creativity. Agency. Confidence. Clarity.
My kids are now young adults (ages 21 and 24). A parenting priority for me was their social access to what was important to them. My eldest was a social kid: She thrived on being with her peeps as often as possible. My youngest had some physical challenges that made this at times difficult: Peers’ houses were not accessible for wheelchairs; and at some ages peers got very fast and “physical” in their play which was something that just didn’t work for a kid with their version of CP (cerebral palsy). Social access is about JUSTICE for me: People should have access to all ways of interacting and engaging with their environments, and relationships are rooted in that. My career has been deeply rooted in thinking about how to make educational spaces more socially interactive for and with students who have diverse ways of communicating.
Creativity shows up in my life in a myriad of ways. In my transition to nearly empty-nested, I downsized my house to one that happened to need a ton of updates. I put in newly refurbished 1950s metal kitchen cabinets, installed my 1958 Chambers range, put in a tin backsplash and stainless range hood, and generally created a funky retro and wheelchair accessible kitchen. I’ve been approaching the rest of the house with similar updates with attention to quirky creative and accessible solutions. I have been a knitter for decades, which also feeds my creative soul. CREATIVITY shows up in how I plan for teaching too: I am always experimenting with ways to increase interaction and collaboration in the classroom.
I have always reacted strongly to characteristics of “helplessness.” As an undergraduate psychology major, I read about correlates of depressive behavior (I KNOW that depression is much more than “depressive behavior;” also see Maier & Seligman, 2016 for a current review). I grew up with several people in my immediate and extended family who managed various “close cousin” mental health challenges (depression, BPD, anxiety, alcoholism, etc.). My own reaction to this has been a consistent effort to find “AGENCY points” in hard situations. This was reiterated in NCFDD’s Faculty Success Program and discussions of “limiting beliefs,” alongside tools to reframe these narratives into more helpful and supportive self-stories. (There are dozens of places to learn about this practice. Here’s one.) I carry this forward into all things pedagogy - there are so many agency points that faculty can influence with respect to increasing inclusion, interaction, and collaboration in their teaching spaces. [See also: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Note: I am not a trained therapist, and do not pretend to be one. Please consult a trained mental health professional for therapeutic advice and help.]
As a kid, my family moved every couple of years, and I ended up attending schools in several different states and three different continents. I learned a couple of languages fluently in addition to English (my native language), in both conversational and school contexts. This also means I was frequently navigating spaces that varied according to cultural norms and expectations. As an introvert who was still becoming fluent in these languages, I reacted by becoming super skilled at observing and intuiting what was going on - and constantly questioned whether I was interpreting things correctly. CONFIDENCE has been slow and hard-won for me - it took me a long while to be generally confident in myself and what I present to others. It’s certainly a skill that can benefit from coaching, and, it’s a skill that can be built.
CLARITY: I am absolutely clear in what really matters to me. Partly, this comes from my regular reflection process. Partly, it comes from coach training I have been going through. Clarity of the “why” and core values can be a powerful way to inform decisions and to decipher a path forward at crucial points of juncture. This can also inform discerning paths forward through teaching and learning. While knowing what will work may not always be clear, there are ways to clearly identify what you can try next, and how to assess whether it works and whether or how it needs to be adjusted for the next attempt.
What are some of your core values?
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological review, 123(4), 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000033