Teaching and Learning with Kindness and Care
May 3 & May 4, 2023
For our 14th annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference, we explored pedagogies of care and kindness in higher education to give us space to support one another in our teaching and learning journeys. Based on mutual trust and respect, educators using these pedagogies undertake purposeful strategies to demonstrate kindness, care, compassion, sympathy, and empathy when they interact with students. These pedagogies are learner-focused, with relationships between learners, instructors, and peers central to how we construct our learning environment. Important to this overarching theme is fostering a sense of belonging for learners that is inclusive, equitable, and supportive for everyone, even when the learning environment is challenging.
Despite the many efforts of instructors, instructional designers, support staff, and educational developers to design thoughtful and meaningful courses, assessments, and learning experiences, being a learner is challenging. For students, the experience is often characterized by feelings of stress, loneliness, disconnect, and anxiety, all of which may be compounded by the intensity of work and high expectations. Instructors are not immune to this either, with feelings of burnout, overwork, and stress being particularly heightened in recent years. Wellness in general, for students and instructors alike, is paramount to an effective learning experience, but how do we enact it and embody it in our teaching and learning practices?
Support, care, and relationship building can occur in all aspects of the learning environment: through assessment, during teaching and learning activities, and within various learning modalities. It is our hope that conversations around this theme will allow conference presenters and attendees to share research and experiences that find the appropriate place for kindness and care in the learning experience, while also maintaining our expectations in our various learning environments.
Keynote - Zhawenjigewin miinwaa ganawenindiwag: Cultivating embodied learning through pedagogies of kindness and care (Dr. Barbara Moktthewenkwe Wall, Trent University)
Cultivating and maintaining relationships of any kind requires kindness and care. This extends to the ways we, as teachers, build and nurture learning environments and communities that facilitate embodied learning. When we operationalize our relational responsibilities and apply kindness and care we can simultaneously uplift each member of the learning community, their gifts, and cultivate an acceptance and inclusion of a plurality of knowledge systems. Care and kindness are embedded in Indigenous pedagogies, and inherent in our ways of knowing and being.
Bodwewaadmii Anishinaabe ways centre relationship; relationship with land, water, and within the cosmos; and with the more than human beings of creation; and with other Peoples. Our ways of being also centre reciprocity and responsibility, and the respectful application of both to all relationships. Our ways are place- and relationship-based, and Indigenous Knowledges are relational in source and transmission.
Barbara shared Bodwewaadmii Anishinaabe philosophies and theory and how she has applied both to course design and creating interactive learning communities in small and large university classes.
Dr. Barbara Moktthewenkwe Wall is a Bodwewaadmii Anishinaabekwe of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Shawnee, Oklahoma and a traditional Knowledge Holder. She is a storyteller, educator, professional engineer, writer, and dreamer. Barbara retells Anishinaabe stories to audiences of all ages, weaving together teachings, humour and song. Barbara’s essay “Nokmisag: Bemnigying” is the final piece in the forthcoming Grandmothers and Grandmothering: Creative and Critical Contemplations in Honour of our Women Elders. Wall lives near Peterborough, Ontario where she is a professor teaching in the Indigenous Environmental Studies in Sciences program within Trent University’s Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies. She is a frequently requested guest speaker
Barbara is a mother, auntie, daughter and Grandmother. Her interests include reclaiming, remembering and revitalizing women’s knowledges and practices, and decolonizing education using Indigenous pedagogies. Barbara holds a BS in Geological Engineering from Michigan Technological University, MS in Civil Engineering from University of California Berkeley, and PhD in Indigenous Studies from Trent University. Barbara lives in rural Ontario, where she spends time on and in the beautiful waters, nurtures traditional Anishinaabe foods, and turns sweetwater into maple sugar.
Igniting our Practice
Tamara Maciel, MSc. is the Program Director for the School of Anatomy and a staff instructor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo. Since graduating with an MSc in Clinical Anatomy from Western University, Tamara has spent the last decade teaching at the post-secondary level. Each winter she teaches a first year human anatomy course to a class of 350 students. Tamara is passionate about her subject area and tries to create the same enthusiasm in her students. In 2019, Tamara received the AHS Teaching Award and was appointed the Kinesiology Teaching Fellow.
In her Igniting Our Practice session, Tamara taught us the anatomy of the shoulder region. Tamara demonstrated how she helps her students recall and review course content, interact with peers in a large class setting, and stay engaged for the duration of the lecture.
Dr. Sanjeev Bedi, founder of the Engineering IDEAs Clinic, is well known for his energy, mentorship and connectivity with students. Sanjeev Bedi is also a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and specializes in Precision Machining Control.
Undergraduate students come to Waterloo engineering with big aspirations. They want to solve big and small problems and change the world into a better place. However, to their dismay, in first year they do little to no engineering. This pattern continues into second and sometimes into the third year. By now much time has passed, and they lose interest in engineering.
To retain and cultivate student interest in engineering, we in the IDEAs Clinic, allow students to engineer solutions to real world problems in a stress, free environment. The students deal with ambiguous, ill-defined problems, and develop solutions, while working in teams. Here in the IDEAs clinic the students get to interact with faculty, engineers in residence from industry and graduate students to obtain a better understanding of design engineering. The IDEAs clinic works with all stakeholders to build a learning experience for students in all programs of engineering. This talk discussed the premise behind the establishment of IDEAs Clinic, its successes, its challenges and its structure.
Resources
Conference Program with Session Descriptions
Contact
Visit our official conference website to learn about current and future conferences.
For questions about the conference, please contact Kyle Scholz at the Centre for Teaching Excellence.