(or why pedagogy matters…)

This was my last week of classes for grad school. My experiences in my classes have been about as powerful of a contrast as you can imagine. In one class, the professor created the most amazing atmosphere I’ve experienced. It was part personality, part experience, and also part pedagogy. Student ideas were valued. He taught about an ethic of care, and he modeled that for us powerfully. He taught about transparency in the classroom, and his teaching was. He talked about teaching as transforming, and he made us believe that our thoughts could change him in the same ways that his transformed us.

When he finished his closing remarks, the class gave him a standing ovation. We didn’t want the class to end. The most distracting thing about the class for me was that, as the class went on, I found myself getting meta in the class. How was it that he was creating that environment? How did he make a bunch of cynical grad students try to out-do each other in a friendly competition to create something wonderful?