 For me, I've come into contact with so many different types of people in my personal and professional life, and I've had the wonderful opportunity to see the strengths of each of those sources for a variety of reasons. So coming into my classroom with the same mindset that each of my student colleagues has something incredible to offer, not just me as an educator, but our entire class and the learning climate in our class, makes me inspired to seek out what those things are about them, what those unique qualities are. And so I found my pedagogy in empathy as a way to bring that to the surface. When we're talking about empathy in the context of my courses, we're looking at ways to improve our interpersonal communication in both our personal lives and our professional ventures. And to facilitate that, I engage the students in challenging their own assumptions about who they are and their place in the world in relation to other people. And often that manifests in the spark to go out into our community and continue their work because they come into contact with populations and organizations that they may not otherwise seek out. And that provides a really great space not only for collaboration, but for the growth of the student as a citizen in the global context. By engaging in my own act of praxis, I invite and encourage student feedback on a regular basis. I embed extra evaluations into my final exams. I link to external evaluation sites beyond course evals so that other potential students can investigate me as an instructor and so that I can take the anonymous feedback that's given through those spaces and adapt my approach in coming quarters. Essentially what it comes down to is finding ways to connect with each of my students individually and learning from them, being open to learning from them. Yes, I am their guide and yes, I do have expert knowledge that they haven't yet developed, but they have expert knowledge that they bring me to. And by leveling the classroom experience and bringing us all to the same table, I really do come away from the experience feeling like a better educator with each passing quarter, with each passing assignment, with each passing conversation by giving my students that space to feel valued for whatever their experience is and whatever their forward trajectory may be. That validity piece alone allows connection that empowers growth beyond measure in my students.