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A Pedagogy of Kindness
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 11, 2024
I had high hopes for this book, and they were met and exceeded. What an engaging, useful book! I've got a list of small changes I'm planning to make to my classes (the chapter on syllabus design alone is worth the price of the book), and I'm excited to see what ideas emerge when my colleagues meet to discuss this book this fall.
August 27, 2024
An excellent distillation of what centering kindness in our pedagogies means
September 8, 2024
Reflect for a minute on your history of learning. If you are typical, you have probably had professors set up adversarial relationships (and positive ones), obsess about cheating, and respond as though there must be winners and losers, but that we cannot have both faculty and students win. Catherine Denial asks, instead, that we respond with kindness. But, she notes,
people confuse kindness with the idea of “being nice”—of being agreeable in all circumstances, of masking disagreement, of refusing to ripple the waters in our institutions and professions. But real kindness is not about individual pleasantries or letting injustices pass. Niceness, in contrast to compassion, is often unkind, a Band-Aid we’re urged to plaster over deep fissures in our institutions, wielded as a weapon instead of as a balm. (pp. 1-2).
Denial's kindness is compassionate and just rather than merely nice. "Kindness is real, it’s honest, and it demands integrity. It’s unkind to mislead people or lie to them, for example, meaning that kindness necessitates tough conversations. Boundaries, too, are a form of kindness, a way of respecting and honoring our physical and mental energy so that we do not deplete ourselves in the service of others" (p. 2). Such kindness considers accessibility and equity in all corners of academic life, recognizes the value of self-care, examines the language in syllabi, advocates for greater transparency in assignments, and uses universal design for learning in every corner of the teaching environment.
As someone who has read a fair amount on teaching college students, I was not surprised by much in Denial's book; nonetheless, what made Pedagogy of Kindness an interesting read is the greater umbrella (compassion) that it set out encompassing and explaining all these other ideas.
I read Pedagogy of Kindness with my university's CFE.
people confuse kindness with the idea of “being nice”—of being agreeable in all circumstances, of masking disagreement, of refusing to ripple the waters in our institutions and professions. But real kindness is not about individual pleasantries or letting injustices pass. Niceness, in contrast to compassion, is often unkind, a Band-Aid we’re urged to plaster over deep fissures in our institutions, wielded as a weapon instead of as a balm. (pp. 1-2).
Denial's kindness is compassionate and just rather than merely nice. "Kindness is real, it’s honest, and it demands integrity. It’s unkind to mislead people or lie to them, for example, meaning that kindness necessitates tough conversations. Boundaries, too, are a form of kindness, a way of respecting and honoring our physical and mental energy so that we do not deplete ourselves in the service of others" (p. 2). Such kindness considers accessibility and equity in all corners of academic life, recognizes the value of self-care, examines the language in syllabi, advocates for greater transparency in assignments, and uses universal design for learning in every corner of the teaching environment.
As someone who has read a fair amount on teaching college students, I was not surprised by much in Denial's book; nonetheless, what made Pedagogy of Kindness an interesting read is the greater umbrella (compassion) that it set out encompassing and explaining all these other ideas.
I read Pedagogy of Kindness with my university's CFE.
July 24, 2024
"We deserve an academy that is kind." Denial offers entry and expansion points for higher education faculty to center kindness. While I like to think that I center kindness in my work (more so for my students than myself), Denial presents so many ways for me to continue on this journey. While the audience is higher education folks, I'd definitely encourage secondary folks to give it a read too!
September 6, 2024
This is an important book.
Denial clearly articulates the ways in which academia is unkind--the often toxic and competitive nature of the professoriate at many institutions, the increasing demands on faculty time, the lack of preparation many (most?) people are given before they're thrust into the classroom, and so on--and then advocates that we practice kindness to ourselves, our students, and our colleagues as a response.
I appreciate that this book is practical rather than simply inspirational like many books about teaching. Those books are important, too, but for those of us who see teaching as a vocation, a calling, focusing too hard on that facet of the profession can lead to too much emotional labor and too few boundaries. Instead, Denial focuses on specific personal, professional, and classroom strategies to implement that foreground kindness.
I know I will be taking away many of these to use in my academic life.
Denial clearly articulates the ways in which academia is unkind--the often toxic and competitive nature of the professoriate at many institutions, the increasing demands on faculty time, the lack of preparation many (most?) people are given before they're thrust into the classroom, and so on--and then advocates that we practice kindness to ourselves, our students, and our colleagues as a response.
I appreciate that this book is practical rather than simply inspirational like many books about teaching. Those books are important, too, but for those of us who see teaching as a vocation, a calling, focusing too hard on that facet of the profession can lead to too much emotional labor and too few boundaries. Instead, Denial focuses on specific personal, professional, and classroom strategies to implement that foreground kindness.
I know I will be taking away many of these to use in my academic life.
Want to read
March 24, 2024From Derek Krissoff’s 2024-03-24 Substack post
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews