Meg Houghton – learning strategist, student services programmer, education consultant and soon-to-be psychotherapist – gave us the title for our episode about five minutes into our conversation, and the power and seriousness of her message came through clearly from that moment onward. Meg doesn’t mince words when she describes the dire need for action in all phases of our personal and public lives as we seek to address the challenges and crises that present so much uncertainty in this moment when we are searching for a coherent cultural narrative to gather around.

These are big ideas that may seem beyond the scope of an education podcast, but as anyone who listens to this episode will soon realize, our learning and education systems are exactly the spaces where the sort of world-changing thought and action required by this cultural moment need to happen. We wrapped up our Season 2 Resilience series with an in-depth conversation about the state of uncertainty in our education systems and culture at large, how theories of Wellbeing and Resilience are being put into practice in educational institutions, and how students and practitioners are responding to related programs, systems and theories.

Meg is generous with her wisdom and the lessons she’s taken from her years working with students and staff in post-secondary education, highlighting some recent successes moving towards more effective care in these settings , and complicating the picture by emphasizing the difficulties that students continue to face in accessing the supports and resources they require to lead academic lives of dignity and vibrancy. Our conversation with Meg also sets the stage for the podcast’s upcoming focus on Accessibility and Inclusion in education, coming in Spring 2024. We hope you’ll follow along on this ongoing journey and take something away to help you, in Meg’s words, “let the ceiling come off of your life and find new levels that you didn’t know existed.”

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

• Su Ting Teo and the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health
  
• “Our Time to Lead” (TMU Academic Plan for Mental Wellbeing)
  
• “Postsecondary students dealing with multiple mental-health issues” (Globe and Mail, 2013)
  
• The Five-Factor model of Resilience
  
• Albert Bandura, esp. Self-Efficacy and Social Learning Theory
  
• Angela Duckworth and “Grit”
  

If you haven’t listened to our last episode click here