What kind things do you do daily for yourself, your local community, the broader community, and for other living beings and the planet?

May 20, 2021 at 2:50-3:50 PDT: Graduate Students in Teaching Conference

Kindness Matters

Presenters (on paper and others allowed to support, so please drop in on the day!)

Laura Super

Sarah Zhang

Kshamta Hunter

This session tackles how to apply kindness in post-secondary teaching, specifically with five learning objectives. Kindness contributes in multiple ways to improving delivery of research and teaching. This session will model kindness (generating a kind tone, etc.) and use engaging methods on Zoom such as breakout groups, JamBoards (interactive whiteboards), discussion, and free writing. We will begin by defining kindness and then proceed into discussing its place in post-secondary teaching, particularly in how it can improve student performance and wellbeing. In addition to discussions, we will provide references and real-life examples. At the end of this workshop, we expect participants to be able to apply the principle of kindness to their own courses, whether large or small. This session is relevant to all graduate students across disciplines, given kindness is relevant for everyone, and the Kindness Project has a transdisciplinary, interuniversity team. The Kindness Project facilitators of this workshop have experience garnered from their own experience, teaching, mentorship as well as running a weekly working group — discussing kindness — that has faculty, staff, students (undergraduate and graduate), and off campus partners.

1. Participate in fostering a kind space
2. Identify and discuss personal and professional reflections of kindness, exploring kindness in their own lives
3. Brainstorm and select methods for implementation of kinder practices in classroom and other learning settings
4. Brainstorm and select approaches to encourage buy in for kinder approaches in learning
5. Reflect and select methods of assessing the impact of educational approaches that foster kindness

*Estrada, M., Eroy‐Reveles, A., & Matsui, J. (2018). The influence of affirming kindness and community on broadening participation in STEM career pathways. Social Issues and Policy Review, 12(1), 258-297. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12046 and https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/sipr.12046
*Gorny-Wegrzyn, E., & Perry, B. (2021). Inspiring educators and a pedagogy of kindness: A reflective essay. Creative Education, 12(01), 220. https://www.scirp.org/html/17-6305429_106777.htm and https://www.scirp.org/pdf/ce_2021012516570349.pdf
*Super, L., Hofmann, A., Leung, C., Ho, M., Harrower, E., Adreak, N., & Rezaie Manesh, Z. (2020). Fostering equity, diversity, and inclusion in large, first‐year classes: Using reflective practice questions to promote universal design for learning in ecology and evolution lessons. Ecology and Evolution. x(x):1-9. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6960 and https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ece3.6960