"Trust the student" is something that @Jessifer continuously reminds those us #ungrading. In the past, I've nodded my head in intellectual assent of this truth. Of course-- it sounds sane! But it wasn't until this semester that it really resonated with me . . . #UngradingSlowChat
And I think it's related to the "power" dynamic involved in so many of our educational experiences. Remember the profs who taught via the pedagogy of confrontation, the adversarial power struggle? . . . As if learning was a chess game to outwit the competition.
Even today, when a student misses a learning opportunity or ignores my communication efforts, part of my reptilian brain signals, "You need to teach this person a lesson. How dare they ignore my assignment reminders?!" Part of my growth in #ungrading has been to reform this. . .
automatic reaction to engage w/ a student from my position of "power" or even from my seat of privilege as a white male. Yes, reform is necessary to truly "Trust the student" because it means ceding control (as if I even had this!). It's crazy to think I can (or should) . . .
attempt to "control" a learner's growth or path to knowledge. "Trust the student" is also reforming myself. Hypocrisy alert--when faculty complain about admins who "don't trust us, how dare they!" Yet we do not enact trust in our students. What's the difference? None that I see!
For me, trusting my students was liberating. They gauged their learning, made necessary adjustments, were honest when they weren't make good-faith attempts at labor, told me when life was getting to be too much, and guess what? . . .
We got through it together! Trusting wasn't related to "quality" or "rigor" (as in, "I'm the prof., so we're going to submit to my expertise."), it was related to my students' knowledge of themselves & what works best for their learning motivation and labor. With compassion . . .
we built a "natural critical learning environment" where we pursued meaningful, important, and even beautiful questions. It wasn't perfect -- nothing ever is. But the #ungrading approach is so related to trust. Every time a student writes to me about their joy in the course . .
I want to tell them, "I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just a hack!" but I'm trusting their comments. That the #ungrading approach is moral imperative as an educator. I will not violate the trust the students have placed in me. I just hope that I'm worthy of it!! END
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