Monday, June 23, 2025
Good afternoon Care & Equity Crew, This is our final week with the Care and Equity module, particularly topic #2. I will link back to the previous week’s dispatch for the suggested structure for engaging in topic #2. This week, I’m thinking a lot about the role of boundaries in our care. In “A Pedagogy of Kindness,” Denial puts out a call for faculty to leave behind the mask of the authoritative/ suspicious teacher, and to instead embrace an approach that is kind and trusting. This article has been core reading for Design Forward since its infancy, and the CoLab has been using Denial’s language around a pedagogy of kindness for years before DF was even a twinkle in Martha’s eye. However, I think it’s time that we have this conversation with more nuance, particularly with an eye toward the realities of caring in a careLESS culture. Denial writes: “And when we are urged to be kind within an educational setting, it’s too often to make up for a lack of institutional support for students and faculty in need, asking a particular service of women and non-binary individuals of all races, and men of color. Kindness can be a band