Is "Too Kind" Too Polite?

Module 3: Collaborative Communities

Wow, what a week this has been. I learned to push my own envelope in the "too polite" realm. And my classmates challenged me to go there! That was pretty fantastic, because they nudged me very politely, actually. Wow! In our small group, the Blue Group, we were addressing these issues led by our fellow student, Connie, who started us off. And off we did fly!!! It is so nice to be learning together with other adults who are also so committed to their own learning. I almost got rude by learning to challenge in my own way but found out later that it wasn't rude; it was standard online challenging behavior and I was learning it! We all pretty much agreed, as well, how important it is to disagree!

In the large group it was even more challenging because we had to express our feelings to our fellow students - as if we were their students! Our assignment was to write as a teacher to a student to correct something they were doing. We were tackling the issue of tone, which is so important in regular life but even more important to be conscious of online. Because without eye contact or voice inflections it is so hard to intuit the intention of the speaker - indeed, writer! Therefore our writing style becomes super-important - we must write so as to not possibly be misunderstood! So important in all communications but especially online where there is so much back-and-forth; it takes time but the time is well spent.

What was so hard for me was to express my vulnerability, when I read the teacher's message as their student. Because after writing to our pretend students we were then supposed to read our fellow students' posts to these fictitious students and give feedback to them, pretending we were their students! I lost quite a lot of fear. Very often I liked and was comfortable with what a fellow student had written to their prospective student and it was easy to make a constructive comment then. But a couple of times I wrote that my feelings would have been hurt by that post. And this was hard because a) I was afraid I would be blasted for expressing such vulnerability and b) I was afraid I'd hurt the feelings of my fellow students! But it worked out OK, I think because I worked very hard to be as kind and gentle as possible in my communications. I got a chance to figure out my own style for when I am a teacher. I also learned more of a habit of pointing out features I liked before I ever-so-gently lambasted. I also learned more deeply the value of being genuine because other people like students pick up on that, even in the written word.

I don't think there is such a thing as "too kind," although there may be such a thing as "too polite"!