how can you practice humaness in your class? please answer it in two pages.
Answers
Answer:
The thing I miss most about the way school was before COVID is the human-ness of it all. Even though I'm pretty introverted, I miss the sounds of voices in the hallways, the smiles and waves and hellos and laughs and handshakes (remember those?). I miss the moments of electricity when you connect a young person with an idea they've never seen before, and all of a sudden their world has expanded. I miss sitting down in a quiet classroom after a day's work, the social parts of me happily fatigued the same way my legs are after a long walk.
Explanation:
I'm not just asking selfishly, either. These are questions of equity, of outcomes, of mental health. These are a piece of the root of whether our online learning spaces are places that promote the short- and long-term flourishing of our students.
And in a world drowning in bad news, take heart! I have such good news today: many educators have gone before us, and the field of humanizing online learning spaces is not new. Best practices exist — let's explore them.
Below, I'll share all that I've learned from folks far more expert than me in this realm of humanizing a distance education. Like usual, we'll lay some grounding principles first — because great teachers are great understanders — and then we'll get practical.
(And for an excellent complement to this post, consider last week's “How to Build Strong Relationships with Students if You're Starting the Year Online: Principles and Practices.”)
Grounding Principles for Humanizing the Distance Learning Classroom
Principle 1: Human beings are mostly hidden.
This principle cohered for me recently while listening to a talk by a late USC philosopher named Dallas Willard. Human beings are invisible creatures, Willard claimed, in the sense that we have bodies, which are visible, but these bodies are only a fraction of what a human is. The body cannot be subtracted from any definition of what a human being is, but the body is a different thing from the invisible thoughts and feelings and intentions and social relationships that compose the fuller picture of who we are.
Principle 2: Humane environments are those in which less of who we are is hidden and we feel less of a need to hide.
A humane classroom or school is a place where students feel warmly seen — like they are known, valued, and respected — and feel like it is unnecessary to remain invisible — as in, they feel safe in being seen.
We could say that these are four hallmarks of a humanized learning space: feeling valued, known, respected, and safe.
In such an environment, our students are far more likely to be eager to learn and to persist in learning.