Learning to be Human Together

Abstract

This resource explores what humanizing teaching and learning means: to acknowledge that our relationships are foundational to the work that we do. It means to make learning inclusive with connection, access, and meaning-making at its core. When you have something to say that you hope can empower people and encourage inclusion you yell it from the rooftops and in as many formats as possible. To that end, you will find the materials of this project in a number of formats — to meet you where you are and how YOU choose to interact with it. This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a deeply humanized experience. This material is not a book, nor a guide, nor a checklist–it’s an engagement with complex issues, with social entanglements, and with ways of doing (and not doing) things. This work also foregrounds the importance of twelve core super themes, such as trust, vulnerability, re-framing failure, and friction. These super themes are not discrete units or siloed entities, rather they are multi-layered ideas that intersect and weave together across the humanizing learning spectrum. Module 1: Unlearning & Unsettling. How do we know what we know and what is our educational value system? To move forward, we must interrogate our teaching and learning practices - the work of unlearning and unsettling. This module explores how the process is more important than the outcome, and highlights the importance of moving slowly, giving ourselves time to think, process, and reflect.

Module 2: Students as Agents of the own Diverse Destiny. This module explores the importance and role of vulnerability and failure in humanizing learning. It emphasizes that we are all learning and explores how, since education is relational, power is especially present.

Module 3: Co-Creating Inclusive Communities. This module acknowledges that diversity is our greatest asset, with inclusion being our most important challenge. It explores community guidelines, participation standards, ethics, social justice, co-design and co-creation, and highlights how these concepts can fundamentally challenge and disrupt power.

Module 4: Sustaining Change. This module acknowledges that change is hard. How can we sustain change, complexity, and care in a system that was not designed for what our society demands of it? How do we foreground care and frame it as a reciprocal process? This module explores this apparent friction and highlights steps we can take to make this work both foundational and sustainable. This resource also includes an exploration of the co-design experience - the process of creating and nurturing a community that collectively did this work. Coming out the other side of this work are a group of people who came together to share our love for learning and our passion for education. We hope you find something here that changes even one small aspect of how you move through the world.