Just wrapped up another Pedagogy of Compassion workshop, this time at College of Dupage! it's always cathartic talking to instructors who want to be more flexible & compassion with their students and are working on concocting new ways to do it.

*compassionate. Also, a really important point that came up in discussion: instructors frustrated with students who can't break out of rigid ways of doing things. ie, the five paragraph essay when they're being encouraged to be more creative and expressive. about that:

Why would you expect yourself, as a single instructor only spending a few weeks a student, to somehow magically free that student of years or even decades of really rigid, often downright oppressive institutional conditioning?

We want to encourage our students to think in new ways, to be creative and dynamic problem solvers, but they have been punished for creativity for decades. No matter how warm and encouraging we are, no matter how hard we try, we aren't gonna undo decades in a few days.

Like yes, continue to encourage your students to use resources, to solve problems in unique ways, to write in their own voice, but if all their teachers in the past punished them for doing those things... it'll take a long time to coax them into actually opening up

One person in the workshop was a math teacher who shared that even tho he emphasizes to his students he does project-based learning, not closed notes tests, his students still constantly approach class as if they're studying for an exam. and he didnt know what to do.

and it seemed to me he was putting WAY too much pressure on himself to undo the decades of closed-note-test-based assessment his students have been conditioned to expect. of course he'll have to reassure them, like, dozens of times he actually wants them to have agency, instead

sometimes you do everything right as an educator and it's just not enough because you're just one person and your students have a litany of bad educational experiences that predate you. so like. it's okay to like, keep your view of your role in its proper size.

that doesn't mean not trying, it just means accepting you can't change a student's whole worldview and work style in a single class. and you'll have to show them how to go outside the box. and reward it. and develop their trust. because they have been burned like hell before.

THAT SAID if you have found particularly effective ways of breaking your students out of the five paragraph structure, or hyper-academic passive writing voice, or closed-note-test-based thinking etc BLEASE let me know what worked for you