Thank You Notes, Please.
The most underrated skill in education and in life is the ability to say thank you and mean it. It costs nothing and changes everything.
I am going to say something that has nothing to do with AI, ed-tech, adaptive learning, or proficiency scoring. I am going to talk about thank you notes.
Write them. Write them on paper if you can. Write them by hand if your handwriting is legible. Write them by email if it is not. But write them.
When a colleague covers your class because your kid is sick, write a thank you note. When a student comes to office hours and asks a question that shows they are actually thinking about the material, tell them. When an administrator does something that makes your job easier, and you notice, say so.
Higher education is a difficult place right now. Budgets are tight. Morale is low. Everyone is doing more with less and hearing about it constantly. In that environment, a moment of genuine recognition is not a nicety. It is oxygen.
I kept every thank you note I received in 30 years of teaching. Not many. Maybe forty. I can tell you what each one said and who wrote it. The student who thanked me for not giving up on her when she failed the midterm. The colleague who thanked me for defending his program in a faculty meeting. The dean who thanked me for telling her the truth when everyone else was telling her what she wanted to hear.
Those notes sustained me through semesters when nothing else did.
You want to build a better department? Write thank you notes. You want to retain good faculty? Write thank you notes. You want to change the culture of an institution that feels like it is losing its soul?
Write thank you notes.
This is the lowest-tech, highest-impact intervention available in higher education. It requires no budget, no committee approval, and no strategic plan. It requires only the willingness to notice what someone did and tell them it mattered.
Please.