The element of trust just keep coming back central to me. I think it's very important for students to attend my classes. There is a reason that we are getting together as a group in the world That will never be together again after this class ends. But if i don't communicate that to them, then they may not have an understanding of that. And so the student is seeing these as barriers, whatever they may be. So working with the dence on that, i think, is a key to being able to have a both a functional class room, but also a supportive and educational class room.
Matthew Cheney describes Cruelty-Free Syllabi on episode 296 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.
Quotes from the episode
A lot of my work, a lot of my career, and a lot of the moments that were most tense were moments where I had forgotten to trust students.
-Matthew Cheney
Respect students as human beings.
-Matthew Cheney
Students don’t enter a classroom immediately trusting a teacher.
-Matthew Cheney
We get used to a bureaucratic academic language that we oftentimes just inherit .
-Matthew Cheney