The Kind Academic

By now, you know I’m on kinda a kindness kick in my academic life, right?

I underpin all my interactions with students with respect, compassion and empathy. I build these into my course design, assessment, teaching style, and student communication. I encourage my tutors to do the same. I build networks with other academics who are also committed to using our privilege as educators to build kinder universities.

I reaaaaaaaaally believe in this kindness stuff!

However, two experiences at a recent educators’ conference made me realise that creating kind classrooms takes more than just kind educators.

Both incidences occurred when we were asked to pair up and share personal reflections with other participants. In the first, I shared my personal distress at the rising levels of antisemitism in my home city of Sydney. My partner quickly dismissed my experiences and reminded me that other groups have it far worse. In the second, my partner, while friendly, didn’t seem particularly interested in my reflections, glossing over them and immediately jumping to their own stories.

These interactions, particularly the former, hit me hard. I’d made myself vulnerable by sharing personal truths, which made being rebuffed painful. Luckily, I’m pretty resilient, but in the following days, I thought about how experiences like these could impact students in my kind classes.

I may intend to create safe spaces where students can show vulnerability and be seen, heard and accepted, but what if their classmates don’t adequately honour this? The result could be students who leave the class feeling emotionally battered and broken – the opposite of what I strive for.

These experiences taught me that I need to be far more intentional when I run these kinds of activities. I need to set up the space carefully and build consensus with my students about listening respectfully and creating supportive spaces for others, even if they have different life views or are a little boring.

Building kind relationships is a powerful life skill that we shouldn’t expect as a given from our students. This term, I’ll be working hard to make sure that students understand the vital role they have to play in creating kind classrooms.