Enhancing Trust and Embracing Vulnerability in the College Classroom
This reflective essay offers a thoughtful, real-world account of what it means to build an inclusive classroom community through the practices of ungrading and co-creation. The authors don’t just describe new strategies—they share how leaning into trust and vulnerability with their students created space for deeper connection, shared authority, and meaningful collaboration. If you’re exploring ways to reimagine how power and partnership show up in your classroom, this piece offers both inspiration and honest insight into what that work can feel like in practice.
Trust must be felt on the part of an instructor who makes evidence-based decisions about pedagogy rooted in the scholarship of teaching and learning, between instructors in co-teaching course contexts, between instructors and students (i.e., instructors trusting students), between students and instructors (i.e., students trusting instructors), and between the students and their peers. While instructors can make specific, intentional moves to develop the trust of their students (Felten et al., 2023), in the ungraded CCTL classroom, trust needs to be reciprocal and shared amongst all course participants.