Zeal invited me to write about pedagogical kindness

I was asked to respond to Cate Denial's beautiful and thoughtful book, A Pedagogy of Kindness. Now I'm talking about lightning.

The thing about being a lightning rod is that thunderstorms are going to roll in, and the crackling electricity will be attracted to that sparkly, shiny, metal.

Lightning strikes. Photo by Philippe Donn.

Some among us are just more likely to stand out, to speak truth to power, to protect the most marginalized, to seek justice and authenticity, even at great personal cost. Those among us who live the life of a lightning rod have complicated lives, filled with challenges, ostracization, bullying, discrimination, hardship, and loss.

But those lives are also full of the true joy that it is to go to bed at night knowing that you did everything in your power to stick up for the little guys, the other lightning rods, the ones who can’t afford to be the ones drawing ire.

In this response to Cate Denial’s A Pedagogy Of Kindness¹, I spend some time thinking about our students who are the lightning rods, those made to feel small, those who are pushed out — sometimes by unlikely life circumstances, sometimes by bad actors — and I consider what they need to help them learn when their lives are falling apart.

So, without further ado, I present my submission to Zeal: Elevated Baseline Cognitive Load: When Pedagogical Kindness May Feel Unkind. Please check it out and then let me know what you think.

Elevated baseline cognitive load is where many of our student sit all the time. How can we consider their cognitive load as we plan our teaching?

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1. Buy Cate Denial’s book here.