Back to school, with kindness

Why not be kind?

This deceptively simple question transformed Catherine J. Denial’s entire approach to teaching. It also provides the impetus for her compelling, revolutionary, hot-off-the-presses book, A Pedagogy of Kindness, which I just completed. I, too, now feel transformed—and inspired to share some of her ideas as a new academic year rapidly approaches.

I was introduced to Denial’s brilliance when I had the pleasure of interviewing her for 3QTL: Three Questions about Teaching and Learning, a podcast I produced in collaboration with the Taylor Institute. A Pedagogy of Kindness feels like the perfect read for our current moment: this strange, almost liminal “post-COVID” era, wherein many dimensions of our lives and broader social worlds may feel endlessly heavy and fraught. We can, perhaps, feel how profoundly the landscape of teaching and learning has shifted, but we might still find ourselves trying to process how it’s changed, how we should respond, and how we can best work in collaboration with each other and our students to move forward with care and courage.

Kindness, Denial emphasizes, is central to this project. Importantly, Denial’s version of kindness should not be confused with “being nice”—“of being agreeable in all circumstances, of masking disagreement, of refusing to ripple the waters in our institutions and professions.” Kindness, on the other hand, "is real, it’s honest, and it demands integrity. Kindness necessitates tough conversations. … It’s about reorienting ourselves to a new way of thinking so that it strips away much of the burdensome work we’ve been imposing on ourselves for so long. … It’s about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. It’s a discipline."

Denial organizes her book into four chapters, each of which puts kindness into dialogue with a particular dimension of teaching and learning. I thought I would share some of my key takeaways from these chapters with hope that you, too, might find some inspiration within them.

Kindness toward the Self

In this chapter, Denial returns us to the idea that caring for ourselves is vital if we want to care for others, including our colleagues and students. Boundaries (around email, work hours, and the moments when we choose to say ‘yes’) are important, but one practice that I’ve also adopted in recent years is to build what Denial calls “catch-up days” into syllabi: flexible, unprogrammed time that can be used for slowing down, processing events outside of the classroom, or just taking a mental health break.

Kindness and the Syllabus

Denial challenges us to thoughtfully consider the language of our course outlines. Do syllabi offer generous invitations into learning, or do they tend to focus on consequences for potential future actions? How might we work to build trust with our students instead of communicating that we anticipate their wrongdoing? We might also contemplate, for example, an exercise where we invite students into our courses by way of syllabus annotation.

Kindness and Assessment

As a scholar of English literature, one passage from this chapter strongly resonated with me: “It has taken academia years—and it is an ongoing process—to reveal people’s assumptions about who gets to participate in academic spaces based on the expectation that knowledge should be written down.” How might we give students multiple options for telling stories about their learning? If our discipline prefers a particular medium of communication, are we dedicating enough time to teaching that medium as we are the other content of our course? Additionally, we might consider experimenting with a transparency framework in assignment design.

Kindness in the Classroom

Denial points out that post-secondary education is often structured around a “hidden curriculum,” “a set of presumptions about who should be in college” and the knowledge, skills, and experiences these students are presumed to have. Particularly in first-year courses, for example, students might not have experience balancing class attendance with study, reading, work, family, and other commitments. Consider sharing resources that might support them in building a weekly schedule, assessing life balance, or taking care of themselves in times of intense stress.

Denial’s book features many useful resources in addition to those I’ve highlighted above. Related to kindness, teaching, and learning, I’d also strongly recommend the Taylor Institute’s excellent resources on mental health and wellness, designing learning (including alternative assessment strategies), and equity, diversity, and inclusion (including tools for creating accessible course content, inclusive course outlines, and universal design for learning).

“Why not be a kind?” is a question I’ll be carrying with me into this academic year as an intention—a guide for all of my interactions and connections, both personal and professional. I invite you to join me!