No matter how skilled, thoughtful, and well-prepared professors are- or how motivated and engaged their students might be- things sometimes go wrong. In this empowering, smart, and refreshingly frank book, Jessamyn Neuhaus offers college educators a roadmap for anticipating and navigating these inevitable snafus - and keeping the course of teaching and learning on track. Clear-eyed about the rarely acknowledged foul-ups that teachers invariably confront, Snafu Edu provides evidence-based insights into why these things happen and practical, workable strategies for recognizing, responding to, repairing, and reducing them. Snafu Edu identifies five major reasons for systemic and individual snafus in the field - inequity, disconnection, distrust, failure, and fear - and shows how understanding underlying causes can help educators perceive the problem and take appropriate measures. These measures are part of a problem-solving approach that Neuhaus calls STIR: stop, think, identify, and repair. She details course design principles and pedagogical practices to reduce major teaching and learning snafus by increasing equity, building connections, fostering trust, enabling success, and increasing agency for both educators and students. Looking beyond 'classroom management' and 'conflict resolution,' Snafu Edu carefully and clearly grounds its lessons in the real context of education, where institutional structures, systemic injustices, individual and collective history, and the complexity of human interactions mean there will always be snafus. Like a preparedness kit for natural disasters, the book gives teachers an educational 'go-bag' of insights, strategies, and practices to have at the ready when things go sideways.
Jessamyn Neuhaus is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. She is author of Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers and editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. Her website is https://jessamynneuhaus.com/.
"Enjoyable and engaging... Through a narrative infused with humor as well as deep seriousness, Jessamyn Neuhaus offers recommendations, not prescriptions, for leaning into the demanding and essential work of striving for equity, connection, trust, productive struggle, and agency." - Alison Cook-Sather author of Co-Creating Equitable Teaching and Learning: Structuring Student Voice into Higher Education "Snafu Edu is the trusted BFF we all need when things go wrong. Neuhaus invites the reader to set down their defensive shields and be honest about the things that can be most difficult about teaching. She will give you ways to calm your jangled nerves and move forward productively. It's a joy to read." - Elizabeth A. Norell, author of The Present Professor: Authenticity and Transformational Teaching
