In an effort to prevent students from skipping in-person classes, several professors at the University of Washington are creating a more captivating learning environment by employing a novel educational method: “avoidant attached teaching.” This approach, which has become especially popular in the departments of Communication, Psychology, and Computational Finance and Risk Management, involves a constant alternation between letting students believe that their professors truly care about their education, then suddenly acting as if they are no longer interested. To learn more, we talked to Professor Kat Gyrles, the first UW faculty member to begin using this teaching approach in March of 2021. 

“When students are under constant stress looking for validation, and that validation is repeatedly denied, then in the rare moments when it is granted, this triggers the brain’s striatum - the reward center,” Gyrles explains. “In my past research, this was also the same part of the brain that was triggered in mice when we gave them a shit ton of cocaine.”

Gyrles showed us an email that she sent to her class on Friday evening to give us an example of this ethically ambiguous approach:

“Hello all, this is just a reminder to have read pp. 20-44 of Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience in preparation for Monday’s class… actually… nvm I don’t rly feel like seeing u on Monday, just forget I said anything.”

“I know half of my students wouldn’t show up to Monday’s class anyway. But by making them think that I don’t care about them showing up to class, I’ve put them on edge. Now they think I’m mad at them for something, and they have to show up to find out why,” says Gyrles.

Lincoln Parks, a student of Gyrles’s, tells us he will absolutely be in her class on Monday. 

“I skip most of my professors’ lectures ‘cause I’m making a business out of selling cilantro to freshmen, but Professor Gyrles is different,” says Parks. “Last week she told me that my rough draft for my final project ‘seemed like an excellent demonstration of all the materials we’ve covered in class so far,’ and now that we literally have a test on Wednesday she’s telling me that she just doesn't want to see me anymore? How does that make sense? Oh, I’ll be in class on Monday, alright. And I’m coming prepared with questions.”

Professors are not the only ones using this new approach, however. Freshman Mandy Garrison says she recently started to notice a similar pattern of communication from one of her TAs, citing the following message she received in Canvas:

“listen I know I said I would help u with ur analysis and all but lately I feel like we’ve just been spending too much time together, maybe we can take a break? Idk :/.”

“I guess I’m just confused because he was the one who said I should schedule a meeting with him in the first place,” says Garrison. “Like, I’ve only gone to his office hours one other time this quarter, and I felt like we had a really good vibe going. But now he says we need a ‘break’? What the fuck is this?”

This teaching style has been questioned by several staff members at UW’s Counseling Center, including one counselor who gave us the first and last name, student ID, and other extremely private information of a student currently under their care, unprompted. Off Leash has decided not to release any identifying information regarding this freshman in Professor Blaine Crawford’s “Intro to Social Psychology” lecture, but she has reportedly visited the Counseling Center nine times since the start of the quarter, which is remarkable considering that she lives on the 3rd floor of Trailside Student Living Apartments, approximately a 25 minute walk away.

Concerns for student wellbeing are not universal, however. The Counseling Center’s Clinical Director contends that “[d]espite several complaints about mental health decline, most students being taught under an avoidant-attached teaching style are also reporting a higher cumulative GPA this quarter than ever before, so I don’t believe there’s any serious problem.”