Chris Friend (Kean University) talks with Brenna Clarke Gray (Thompson Rivers University) about finding hope in education, even—or especially—in today’s world. Along the way, Brenna explains the importance of learning technologists, the dangers of cruel optimism, and the critical need for honesty at all levels in academia.

A complete episode transcript is available. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. This episode’s cover art is by Aaron Burden on Unsplash. The show is hosted on Anchor.fm, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The full catalog of episodes, including show notes and complete transcripts, lives at hybridpedagogy.org/podcast.

Chris Friend (Kean University) talks with Cate Denial (Knox College) about her pedagogy of kindness and ways to make teaching easier by trusting students.

A complete episode transcript is available. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. This episode’s cover art is by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash. The show is hosted on Anchor.fm, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The full catalog of episodes, including show notes and complete transcripts, lives at hybridpedagogy.org/podcast.

Laura Gibbs believes feedback—giving advice and support—makes learning and growth the center of any class. Hear her thoughts on providing meaningful feedback, separating feedback from assessment, working alongside students, and ungrading.

A complete episode transcript is available. Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. This episode’s cover art is by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash. The show is hosted on Anchor.fm, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The full catalog of episodes, including show notes and complete transcripts, lives at hybridpedagogy.org/podcast.

An earlier release of this episode contained time-offset audio that has now been corrected.

In October 2021, the University of Michigan hosted a panel discussing Critical Digital Pedagogy. Moderated by Jesse Stommel, the panelists included Sean Michael Morris, Ruha Benjamin, and Martha Fay Burtis. In that discussion, Martha made a comment about wanting to say she loves her students, but that she’s not always comfortable using that specific term. In this episode of Teacher of the Ear, she discusses her concerns and shares her thoughts about loving students. She frames her thinking in the context of a pedagogy of care, turning the traditional authority- and expertise-focused education model on its head. Martha views loving students as a situation that involves giving students freedom and flexibility while changing the nature of the work done in our classes. She explains how we need to change classroom work and not simply offload it onto students. That change, then, also entails setting limits for ourselves to avoid burnout. Care for ourselves and caring for students is all connected because at the heart of it, isn’t teaching really a labor of love?

Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. This episode’s cover art is by Nick Fewings on Unsplash. The show is hosted on Anchor.fm, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The full catalogue of episodes, including show notes and complete transcripts, lives at hybridpedagogy.org/podcast. This episode has a complete transcript available.

Back in October 2021, Jessica Zeller posted a tweet about a particular class session. She said her class “went everywhere” and that she already missed being in that class by later that same day. Jessica said they discussed “not passing down our own pedagogically-induced trauma; the problem with ideals; ego, power, & responsibility; how words shape students' feelings about their bodies; & pedagogic optimism.”

Hear Jessica’s take on the inherent optimism of teaching, what we could all learn from ballet pedagogy, and the benefits of ungrading, regardless of content area.

Our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. This episode’s cover art is from Sandy Millar on Unsplash. The show is hosted on Anchor.fm, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The full catalogue of episodes, including show notes and complete transcripts, lives at hybridpedagogy.org/podcast. This episode has a complete transcript available.

Hear from Kaitlin Clinnin (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and sarah madoka currie (University of Waterloo) as they discuss the problems and prospects of attending to our own mental-health needs as the global pandemic enters its second year. We discuss ways to care for ourselves and our students to help make our classes more inviting and successful environments.

Theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions. Episode cover image from Kate Stone Matheson. Full transcript also available.

I talk with Dr. Mia Zamora about ways the work we do at our institutions should benefit others outside our disciplines, our silos, even our institutions themselves. We talk about ways to blur the lines between school and community, between class and real-world, between disciplinary expertise and broader experience.

In this episode, I talk with the Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed Collective, which fosters queer, feminist, and anti-colonial approaches to digital humanities teaching. The collective consists of Ashley Caranto Morford, Arun Jacob, and Kush Patel, representing the fields of English, Indigenous, and Filipinx/a/o studies; Information Studies; and Architectural History-Theory and Design Studies. They lead workshops, deliver talks, author texts, and teach courses within coalitions in and across the Global North and Global South that challenge the overlapping injustices of historically white, upper caste, and heteropatriarchal orders, while illuminating the specifics of those injustices and education-centered counternarratives in a given place.

Theme music from Blue Dot Sessions; full episode transcript available.