March 12, 2020. The last time my students and I physically shared classroom space. We were moving into spring break—a week off from coursework and the exciting opportunity to return re-energized to further discuss student development theories. Specifically in this course, the midpoint in the semester is when students started “to get it”; to reach what, for many students, were new “ah-ha” moments that accompanied the understanding of development theories.
As a faculty member, my biggest concern was the online (re)creation of a deeply engaged and rich environment, while simultaneously supporting students battling various challenges due to COVID-19 including but not limited to the loss of jobs, mental health conditions, and deaths of family members. In the shift to remote learning, I was intentional about student check-ins, providing space for them to process feelings associated with, and impacts of the pandemic—personally, professionally, and academically. One recurring classroom conversation was the lack of compassion experienced by many students, professional staff, and faculty across higher education. We were collectively astonished at the lack of humanity during a time of crisis. After several discussions about the benefits of exercising compassion, humanity, and grace (noting the importance of those components to the learning process), I invited my class to co-author this op-ed with me. It was obvious I was not the only one struggling with the idea that compassion—a human gesture incorporating love, grace, kindness, understanding, and patience—needed to be embodied and executed. While compassion is crucial, we call for the adoption of Hao’s (2011) Critical Compassionate Pedagogy, a commitment to openly critiquing institutionalized policies and practices, as well as engaging in self-reflexivity while centering compassion as a means of reshaping higher education, our communities, our students, and ourselves.
In the following sections, we reflect on our commitment and highlight the transferability of pedagogy to practice outside the classroom. We encourage education stakeholders to (re)consider ways to move toward embodying critical compassion in academic environments, noting that while exercising compassion is important during a pandemic, it should not be limited to moments of crisis. To create a critical compassionate environment is to create one in which open communication is valued and students, faculty, and staff are free to be their authentic selves.
As we engage in efforts to create campus environments that embrace critical compassionate pedagogy, we provide the following questions as a foundation to help move us forward: (a) How do we operationalize compassion in higher education? (b) How do we create a culture of compassion both inside and outside the classroom? (c) How do we challenge educational systems that view compassion as weakness and/or a threat to rigor? (d) How do we prioritize the overall well-being and holistic development of our students in the face of a crisis? And lastly, (e) How do we commit to ALWAYS humanize learning?
Learning from the Pause: Compassion in a Pandemic
The current pandemic is a crash course in pedagogical flexibility for all in higher education. What previously was established as “normal life” is now on indefinite pause. Educators are forced to rethink syllabi and methods of instruction, while students are figuring out how to survive while remaining successful with new ways of learning. Our resiliency is being tested with added stressors of working from home, losing jobs, facilitating children’s education, having limited access to the outside world— all while experiencing trauma of a life-threatening virus. Our daily routines have been disrupted, small businesses are struggling more than ever, and some corporations are marketing the pandemic to their advantage. Is this our new society? Take-out food, staying six feet apart, wearing masks, trucks with refrigerators being used to store bodies at major hospitals in highly impacted areas—and still, homework due at midnight.
The overarching paradigm of higher education upholds dominant ideologies of individualism and meritocracy, seeking to maintain oppressive hierarchies. Such structures have required perfectionism and hyper productivity even under the current pressures of a pandemic. During this time, inequities faced in the academy and society have been heightened, reinforcing power and privilege across institutional structures.
