Wellness in the Classroom Portfolio | Yan Xiong | Self-Care and Wellness Promotion in Classroom

ACCY 112: Intermediate Accounting II

Reflection on Instructional Change

After attending the Wellness Faculty Learning Community, I learned that self care and wellness are essential to both the instructors and the students. There are three strategies I implemented to promote self-care and wellness in my classroom:

I start at the beginning of every class to do wellness checks on students. I ask how they are doing, do some accounting jokes or share some current events. Sometime right before quizzes or exams, I do some breathing or stretch exercises with them. We also discuss self-care tips in class. I shared my self-care tips and the students added a lot more tips to my list.
I periodically conduct surveys to get students’ feedback on how the class should be conducted and how tests should be done to effectively assess them. When the students feel that their voices are being heard and they are in control, they tend to engage more in class.
I am planning to offer an extra credit assignment to students near the end of the semester. In this assignment, students are to write a reflective essay to reflect on what the things over the semester that they are most thankful for. I think that letting students reflect on the positive things in their lives would definitely promote mental wellness.

In general, I feel that after implementing the first two strategies in class, my students tend to be more relaxed and they are also more engaged in class discussions than before the implementation. The students seem to be willing to ask all kinds questions not just the questions about the class materials but also about what classes they should take and their future career paths. I feel that they start to put more trust in me. One student shared in the chat room after I presented my self-care tips handout at the beginning of a class " Thank you so much for taking time to share this with this. I know we have a lot materials to cover in this class, but self-care is so important for us especially during this uncertain time."

I feel that the exercises we did at the beginning of each meeting is helpful. In addition, I enjoyed doing the assignment on making a wellness handout . I made a handout about self-care. I did a lot research for the handout and ended up using all of those tips on myself and also shared with my students. The breakout sessions in each meeting is informative. Hearing from other faculty about the strategies they implemented and the methods they use to deal with various issues is definitely beneficial for me. I also learned a lot about how to deal with procrastination from one of the guest presenter.

In summary, I believe this is one of the best FLCs I have attended.

Evidence
A self-care handout I created for the class	I A survey I conducted at the beginning of the semester	First in person exam after practicing some self care tips

Moving Forward

I think moving forward I would continue two important practices:

1. Incorporate students' voice by doing frequent surveys through out the semester to get students' feedback in the decision making process and let students feel that they are in control.

2. Practice self-care often in class and promote wellness in the classroom. Spending a few minutes each class to share self-care tips and talk informally or share jokes with students to make everyone relax and ready to learn. In addition, I would always want to remind students about focusing on the positive things rather than the negative things in their lives.

Faculty Biography
	Dr. Yan Xiong is a Professor in the College of Business at California State University, Sacramento. She obtained her Ph.D. in Accounting and a Master’s degree in Accounting Information Systems from Washington State University. Dr. Xiong’s academic research has appeared as referral articles in such journals as Journal of Economics and Finance, Journal of Forensic Accounting, Journal of Theoretical Accounting Research, International Journal of Electronic Finance, International Journal of Business Information Systems etc. Dr. Xiong’s primary teaching interests are financial accounting and accounting information systems. She has taught both at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Sponsors
This work was supported by the CSU Office of the Chancellor, Sacramento State Division of Academic Affairs, and Sacramento State Student Health and Counseling Services.