Mission Impact v2.0 — A Dark Cliff…

Welcome to the next installment of the mission impact chronicles. My autoethnography unfolding of trying to design and enact more regenerative forms of higher education for the ecological university that connect with sustainability transitions. This installment roughly covers the third phase of the second iteration of the Mission Impact course. A 30 ECTS full semester course offered at The Hague University of Applied Sciences through the Industrial Design Engineering programme. In each installment, we share experiences and engage with critical and friendly dialogue with these experiences as a form of ongoing and unfolding analysis through writing. Tso an open process, and reflections or responses are warmly invited. This phase includes a deepening for the students with their design-driven research. However, the majority of this texts engage with the challenges and barriers that they have experienced in this process.

Warning signs

Late November into early December of 2021, a number of warnings started to emerge from a few different stakeholders. The first, came from the students participating in the course, albeit through our teaching assistant. We asked our TA at the beginning of our course to take over the collective reflection sessions, bi-weekly circles where the students can share their experiences and frustrations about the course so far with the TA. We purposively decided to ask the TA to do this, because we felt that there would be increased accessibility derived from his shared status of being a student, as well as being an alumnus of his particular course.

Hey guys, I just finished hosting the thursday tutoring today since I had the opportunity to have them in-person.

And to be honest there are some (i.m.o. very) concerning things that have been raised which I think needs to be addressed collectively (with both tutors and students present). To oversimplify, the students are dissatisfied and to some extent disappointed with how the minor is going, and I think it would be important for us to address this for many reasons which I hope you can imagine.

I would suggest that we do this as soon as possible, perhaps next wednesday since that’s when everyone is free, although I am aware Gaby you had already scheduled something with Martha.. so I’m not sure how this might work, and would love to hear your guys’ opinions on when we should address this.

— Message from the TA to the lecturers, late November 2021

Perhaps by happenstance, although, because of the strong focus that the course places on connecting with place. I highly doubt it was happenstance. Around the same time we were getting similar sentiments from our partners in the field.

I saw the second message first, and truthfully, I have to say I am a bit ashamed to admit that my first response was: ’it is clear that students do not listen that well or are not reflexive enough in their engagement with the place to adjust their plans (a bit stuck in their way)’. Of course, this is an incredibly harsh, and unfair judgment that is also quite one-sided. Perhaps taking these leaps is a negative character trait of mine in a larger context. I think in part, this response as a result of my own activism, of how badly I want to help create change. Not realizing that may not always be the thing to push for from a pedagogical-didactical and that my activism may blind my duty of care towards those under my temporary ward. It could also be that the moment I read it I had more negative input from my arthritis that clouds my judgment through the overwhelming nature that pain has.

Luckily, I am not responsible for this course by myself and have the luxury of having wise compatriots joining me on this journey. In an emergency meeting that we organized amongst the teaching team (including the TA) my colleague shared this wisdom:

Everyone is trying to figure out their role, as we are in a bit of a starting place with this lab. We are collectively trying to figure out if it makes sense. For Tina, it is very important that the intervention of this student’s work really adds value as they has to work with the [Region] for a longer time. If the students don’t deliver something meaningful they is in a very vulnerable position. We need to do some expectation management and figure out how to make it work… — paraphrased from my co-coordinator Gaby Bustamante

This misalignment or communication about the roles, and expectations, across the course, is leading to frustrations across the different stakeholders. Of course, no one wants to be in this position. To some extent, I also believe it is just part of working with ecological complexity across organizations and disciplines. I think we also keep running into a miscommunication, or a misaligned expectation, between us and the students. Namely, that we perhaps expect the students to be more familiar and able to exercise research agency than they have been trained to be able to handle. I.e. expecting them to push back if we are pushing in the wrong direction without giving enough attention to the power differences that exist in hierarchial rank as well as knowledge backgrounds.

To some extent, a better alignment between roles and expectations is also being recognized by our partners in the field. While I am both a bit sad that the current iteration isn’t going as I had hoped, while paradoxically being aware that this is probably not even possible. It does highly, for me at least, that some of the stakeholders and partners in the field are struggling with similar difficulties as I am in terms of navigating their roles and expectations. While also acknowledging the warmth in the heart of all of us to continue working towards more ecological forms of education.

I want to leave this point by sharing the reflections of the TA based on our rapid response for an emergency meeting:

Okay so firstly, it’s nice to see your concerns for the students and I can understand why it might be a shock if you feel like it’s coming from out of the blue. For one reason or another, I guess they felt that they could reserve these thoughts and feelings, or perhaps it had just reached a boiling point. At the end of the feedback session today, some of the students reflected on the session as feeling as if they had just ‘vomited everything out’, which can also be seen as a positive thing — that they’re not still holding it all in. For me personally, even though I hadn’t really been involved with the minor as much as I would have liked to these past few weeks, I also felt this distance that was growing. Not only between me and the minor (because I had to work on other projects), but also between the students and the tutors.

I will start with a positive note. In general, a lot of the students were really excited in the beginning of the minor because they really felt that they were going to learn a lot during the semester. They really enjoyed Bas’ first class where the materials of the book were discussed and explored in a very organic way. They felt that there was a reason to keep up with the reading because it would allow them to participate in the discussions and connect to regenerative theory and practice (both to the project and for themselves). This was also felt during Thomas’ class with comparing the movie to the book, although they expressed that besides that, this energy and potential that they saw in the minor has dissipated greatly.

In the past month or so, the students feel that the Wednesday classes have also been so heavily focused on preparing for the workshop that they have essentially only been struggling with the barriers that they face around the workshop, and not learning much else alongside it.

The students also developed a sense that there is a lack of communication between the tutors. This notion was born from the some of moments in which they felt that they were receiving different messages from tutors or recognizing points where one tutor was unaware of something about a specific part of the assignment/approach/structure of the minor. They felt that these inconsistencies often cost them time, which they feel like they often have very little of when they’re juggling other parts of the minor.

There were also complaints about the nature of the assessments and feedback that they were given and I think that most of these are context specific so it would be best to for the students to recount these themselves. Additionally, some of the feedback that they gave for the minor, they felt weren’t fully recognized or acknowledged, wondering why they were asked in the first place.

Overall, I got the message that the students felt like that their hard work isn’t being reciprocated in a meaningful way. By all means, this summary isn’t exhaustive of all the things that were said or the emotions behind them. I think the power or impact behind these points aren’t fully conveyed through text as they are when confronted face to face, which is why I suggest that we take some time to unravel these things, in-person together. A lot of the students still think that there’s still a chance to make the minor (and their work) meaningful in someway, but it won’t be possible without addressing some, if not most of these feelings. Furthermore, they are also very curious to hear how you as tutors have been experiencing the minor from your end.

PS: In a reflection of my own thoughts and feelings, while it was difficult to receive all of this today, I think this also presents a chance for the minor to show up for the (regenerative) vision and values it promotes — to heal places and people. I’m still hopeful that these can be worked through and turn some of it around, although I do have the intuition that it might require a significant change with the way things are at the moment, and that it could only begin with us confronting these things openly.

— Personal reflections of my TA after the collective reflective session.

I am glad to say that we took the advice of our TA to set up such a regenerative healing place. Our main intention for this session, and I believe we did achieve that, was to create a space for listening. While the researcher inside of me wanted nothing more than to record this session. The teacher inside of me was saying that this was not the space or time to do so. Instead, we rely on notes taken by one of us to share some of this experience with you. It doesn’t happen often that the duty of care as a teacher outweighs my responsibilities as a researcher. For me, this was one such occasion.

The following includes parts of the dialogue from the session we collectively had to reflect and respond to (with the teaching team).

Gaby
I understand it’s very frustrating to work in these kinds of projects…

Thomas Wissingh
…for dealing with students, wouldn’t it be good to have like Nicolas said session with them to look at their expectations?

Gaby Bustamante
I think yeah, for sure.

Bas van den Berg
Besides creating a space to listen, which I completely agree with, and we should do that this Wednesday, and may also be important for us to highlight that that they are dealing with this hyper complex situation, and that no one can force a positive result from them. Like that we don’t really like failure in terms of the project is fine, as long as you can show us what you have tried and you know all of that. So maybe also reiterate that. If it doesn’t work out, that’s not necessarily failure on your part. That can also be fine. Without them, giving them a free ride to not do anything.

Gaby Bustamante
Exactly. I was just going to say that because they need like the free ride. Here’s your ticket.

Thomas Wissingh
But I get the point of the students that if you work on a project in which you know it’s not going to have an impact, it maybe feels a little bit redundant to really work on it.

Nicolas Landriati
Yeah, so yeah. And I think also in the sense that like, like, if is whether this project like and they have like an impactful intervention in the region or not, like they also ask themselves like Okay, what else are we learning? Besides that? I think, in the past month or so, like a lot of the windows have been just focused on the workshops or like, they somewhere kind of would have liked to have content delivered to them in terms of, you know, regenerative ideas and talking more about the content. Related in the book. But then they’re just kind of like come to class and say they say, like, Okay, what do you what do you guys need help with so and so? And I think that’s also something that they’re thinking about.

Gaby Bustamante
Yeah, I think it makes sense. And I was reflecting on this already, for a few weeks, because, I don’t know. I also made the assumption that the workshop was something that it was very relevant for the you know, because it’s also part of the sub competencies and but at a certain moment, I started having second thoughts because looking at it from the creative action research, a workshop is not necessarily the approach.

Bas van den Berg
Yes. And also to, to add a little bit to that. In terms of the planning of the coursework itself, one of the things we already discussed, of course, was to not spread it out across you know, several weeks, but to have more intensive, like boot camp type style trainings for the theory. And then, so let’s say like if you have a face of five weeks, for example, the first week you only focus on diving into the theory practising, and then the next four weeks you purely focus on Okay, let’s bring this in action. I think that will also help, at least, not so much with giving more information because it would still have to give more you know, theories and methods and tools, but at least we’re setting also expectations but in terms of the no like, Okay, this week, we’re only focusing on playing essentially playing with ideas with research methods. And these weeks we’re really focusing on Okay, let’s try and use them and then also to come back to what Thomas was saying, I think, in terms of the challenge itself is some one of the things that we’ve been really struggling with, and also something that came out of the data set with the podcast is that it’s very important that they tackle urgent and relevant challenges, transition challenges, so the problems that we should be tackling, they should be experienced by the students that they are important and that they are important now. And I think we’ve been trying to find the right balance between giving them the space to co-design the challenge but also keeping it relevant and urgent. And for the first time and now the second for the pilot and the second time we’ve been maybe pushing it too far on the co-design part was the challenge itself, at least initially. And maybe something to learn for the next part is also to go define at least a starting challenge with the stakeholders right at the start so in the next semester that we go design go to find the problem that they’ll be tackling in next year. I think that will also help a lot because, well, I think there are still some of the themes seem to still be searching what to focus on. To be honest, they could probably keep on doing that for two or three years and still not find it somewhere. You just have to make a choice.

Gaby Bustamante
I think added to that. We also like some sort of because I also talked about this with [name], there needs to be some sort of commitment from the client to either support the process of working with stakeholders or participation together with the students within their activities.

Yeah, so that there is some sort of commitment of having a group of stakeholders participating into there or facilitating or contacting the students, you know, supporting the students to contact stakeholders. Because the I can, I mean, for the students who don’t have any experience and all that it is very challenging.

Nicolas Landriati
Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s like, obviously, that there’s this kind of, I don’t want I’m not sure if like power is the right word, like just the relation between the stakeholders that are there who have an expectation about students that cannot deliver, you know, meaningful or an analysis would add value. But you know, like, I think part of this whole process is for us to help the stakeholders question what they mean by value and whether that actually fits a regenerative idea or feature and you know, like, it’s very difficult for students to even bring up these kind of conversations. There is this barrier involved and I think they’re, they really need help from either the, the miner itself, tutors or the or someone on the inside of the stakeholders to be able to have that conversation as well.

Bas van den Berg
No, definitely. I think there’s once they we just have to focus on listening and engaging with them to see how can what can we do now for the remainder of this semester to make a few more hurts and make you make you feel like you’re contributing in some way? At the same time? I also have to say that I’m struggling with some of the feedback because I think one of the things that I’ve at least I’ve told them multiple times now is that they are in charge of the project. And perhaps that’s an unfair amount of responsibility to put on them. But I’ve also added very clearly that if you need any help at some point, feel free to ask one of us because if we see that you are struggling and we are in a position to help you move on, we will do our best to do so. And then they don’t ask, at least for me. They don’t ask anything. So I’m constantly dealing with this internal struggle that yes, I know what I can do to help them move forward. Even blocking a day of my schedule and just designing interventions with them. I’m fine doing that, but I don’t want to take that step and take their agency away. So I at least I noticed that I’m constantly dealing with that struggle, like okay, I really, really want to step in now. But I also really, really want you to ask me to help you.

Nicolas Landriati
Yeah, yeah. I understand that. And I understand that point. And they think maybe that wasn’t so clear to them or like while it is clear conceptually like to build the capacity to do so. was lacking is still lacking. And I think that’s perhaps like one of the important capacity building exercises or you know, things we have to present to them. Through content in the class, as well.

Gaby Bustamante
Yeah, I think I mean, I agree with what you’re saying Bas in a certain way. I think. I don’t know. Sometimes I maybe I have a very harsh approach to certain things. I am. I am not somebody who is very, you know, protective of people. And I’m like, jumping to the pool and swim I have that approach, but I do recognise that there are some students not all of them, but there’s some students that need more containment. I can think that the first step is challenging to ask for the help that that’s also one thing and and then I also see a certain pattern where because I have seen the students every week, for one hour, at least, greenport students, and they never mentioned anything to me anything any of these feelings. But I don’t know I don’t know if it’s this vision of like, authority, or that I have a certain expectation, so I can understand that. They with you, because they see you as the peer. You know, it’s like, like, your kids are like, you know, when I was growing up, I would tell my friends things that I would not tell my parents because I was already either assuming the reaction of my parents. Yeah, right thinking that my parents would say, I don’t know what. So I can imagine that there’s a little bit of these dynamics in there. And it’s okay, we’re not going to change it.

Bas van den Berg
Because that’s how it works. It’s not possible to change them. No, but It will always be ther… there will always be those power dynamics, but I think the big question is, how can we navigate them?

We originally intended the session with the students to be 45 minutes, but they needed more of a listen, and had a lot to share. they shared their concerns and ideas for about 90 minutes. Most of it was very relatable and clear. Some of it was hard to listen to. But I dive more into that in the next part. Below you can see some of the notes that we took from this listening session.

Notes made during the larger session to reflect and listen, notes made by my colleague Gaby.

In our response, we have brought back the Wednesday sessions to focus on engaging together on the literature, by direct request from the students. I addition, we will also include ‘First-aid for your research’ sessions where we can dive into anything related to designing and or doing research. For example, the students did not realize that the frequency and feelings they experience can in fact be interesting data in its own right. As it is quite possible, that this closedness that they run into, could also be a larger cultural difficulty that is limiting the ability of the place to transition. These are the type of things I would like to zoom in on during these first-aid sessions. As well as more pragmatic things like how to analyze data, or translate it to artifacts that people can relate to. Finally, we will build in time in these sessions for the two teams to present their work of that week to each other, and to reflect on their collective experience with trying to engage with ecological education. We hope that for now, doing this can bring back some of the feelings that were highlighted about the first part of the course. I would also like to thank the students for their openness and bravery in asking for this session and thinking with us on how we can make this a more meaningful experience for them.

Mid-term evaluation of the course

During this period we also had a chat with the programme manager of the Industrial Design Engineering course. The programme that hosts the Mission Impact course. The overall sense was positive, a written summary of the learnings (particularly as they related to the design engineering programme in which the course is situated) can be found below.

Mission Impact: Ecological Higher Education Review in Progress.

We are just over midway through the second iteration of the Mission Impact minor, the goal of this minor has always been to discover the design qualities and criteria of ecological higher education [HE]. An HE that connects with and contributes to sustainability in the broader place in which the university is embedded. To do this, we are primarily using a design-driven auteothnography approach, that combines educational design research with (auto)ethnography and that has been chronicled extensively in the Medium publication — Mission Impact — and has also resulted in academic publications.

We learned a number of key insights so far as we are in the process of moving from the second to the third iteration. It is important to highlight that the third iteration (Designing Regenerative Futures) will be a KOM [kies-op-maat, or open for other universities] course.

While comparatively, the international programmes (such as International communications management, user-experience design and industrial design engineering (IDE)) seem to have better developed research skills, they are still quite basic and frankly below where you’d expect them in the penultimate course before graduation as bachelors of science.

The culture of the IDE students also seems to lead to a strong distinction between what students consider ‘designing’ — particularly sketching/building/making artefacts and ‘research’ — primarily (poorly done) surveys and interviews. A stronger vision, perhaps throughout TIS [the faculty of technology, innovation & society], of researching through design and designing through research, that is translated into a standard course for multiple programmes with a clear developmental line (including the very basics of research methodology) could be a way to navigate this in the future. Supplemented with additional courses that dive deeper in specific forms of researching through design or methodologies based on student interests and professional goals (e.g., technology-based design/research, indigenuous research, arts-based approaches etc).

Within the course, it remains a challenge to bring together practice and students in co-creating change without moving back in existing roles and perspectives. Like I am the client and tell you what I need vs. We are collectively facing challenges that are too large for any one of us to be in charge of but all of us have to play a part in.

Gaby: ‘I have the idea that ‘clients’ have more trouble with this than students. How do we help our students help their clients understand the importance of this? Maybe this approach needs to be clear to everyone since the start of the project. I have the feeling that for now both clients and students are separately ‘coping’ with this.’

The openness [of the course design] was too large, i.e., engaging with co-design with students for the challenge they face is possible, but limiting it to a specific transition (such as energy or foods), provides an additional layer of psychological safety to do so. It is important to add, that this does not remove the possibility or likelihood of the above frustration from occurring, but may help them in navigating it when it does occur. In the third iteration we will limit the course to agro-foods for this reason (as well as the strategic interests of MZ, PFT, and IDE [research centre Mission Zero and educational programmes Process & Food Technology and Industrial Design Engineering] to do something with agro-foods. Please note that IDE refers to both the English and Dutch version of the programme.

For the future, gradually increasing the complexity and openness of the challenges (i.e., also defining the criteria that challenges or projects should be based on per semester or where the course is in the curriculum) may be a way to also build the capacity of students to engage with wicked problems as they move through their course. A good friend and fellow PhD student Nina Bohm at TUD could perhaps help with this.

For the future, we will use the Regenerative Design Education Practices Tool for further improvements of the course. This may also be a helpful tool to engage with for other semesters/courses within TIS. This tool has been added on the next page, please don’t share this yet as it has not been published yet. This tool has been derived from The Regenerative Education Podcast.

The assessment structure remains a challenge, particularly to include the subjectification dimension of sustainability. While I do not know now what alternative assessment culture and set-up is required, I do feel the competency-matrix approach by itself is inadequate. An additional comment about this was raised by my colleague, ‘I have the feeling that ‘grading’ disrupts the creative and research process because students are more worried abut their grades or if they pass or not… For teachers it is a conflict because we are supposed to stay objective and evaluations are supposed to provide that [objectivity].

What is most interesting for me is that there seems to be relative agreement on the course so far from the three different perspectives, external partners, the teaching team, and the students. This could be a sign that we are looking in the right direction together, or perhaps that the population is too homogenous to propose alternative perspectives. Judging by the diversity amongst the teaching team (four people from three different continents with different ages and levels of education) or the student team (more than half are non-Dutch) I doubt this latter is the case.

Embracing Humane-ity

In this last period, I have personally struggled with the dying of my grandfather. Now, I embrace death and even welcome it as part of life’s process. Looking through a regenerative worldview, anything that lives has to at some point die to make space for continued evolution. In fact, the course that we use for this research Mission Impact, has always been designed with the perspective that it would die. Once the lessons that could be derived from this living system of education were learned, the intention was, and is, to consciously close this chapter. What I struggle with is death without dignity. Those that know me well, know that I am an activist for the right to a dignified death, arguing that as conscious beings we ought to be able to choose to opt-out. To finish our stories when we consider the epilogue to be over. Instead, my grandfather’s process of dying highlights for me the difficulty that my Dutch culture has with the realm of death. Instead of offering or helping him go through the process of dying with dignity, all we are allowed to do is reduce suffering. Delirious and end-stage kidney failure withstanding, actively assisting in his death is somehow morally reprehensible. In this phase of the course, several of my students (outside of the course) have had to deal with death and dying in their families as well. While it is not my story to say more than that, it does highlight two important elements of regenerative education. One, embracing kindness as a way of creating safer learning spaces and costs you nothing as an educator. And, two, doing so requires engaging with flexibility and personalization. If a student misses a deadline and then reaches out to you to share about a process of dying they are dealing with in someone (could be more than human) they love. You have a choice. Do you follow protocol? Do you say ‘tough luck, you should have warned me in advance?’ Do you send them to the exam board? Perhaps. But I will always choose to walk a more gentle path. Perhaps that is my Judo training rubbing off on me years later. Judo, the gentle way, would tell me that you leverage the forces to create change. Or in systems speak, Judo teaches you to find leverage points to disbalance your opponent. But what does the gentle way teach when there is no opponent but someone in front of you, vulnerable, who is already imbalanced. Someone you have a duty of care for, who doesn’t need to be thrown by much more than a leaf blowing in the wind to fall. I realize my position within the organization (outside of faculties and exam boards) allows me more freedom in this. But I choose to stand in front of the wind until this person has found their balance again. If I ask students to bring their whole selves to the learning experience that we are co-creating as it unfolds, this also means I have to be ready, and willing, to engage with the shadows.

Death

The morning of 12–12–2021, we got a call from the care home that my grandpa was rapidly deteriorating. You know, we’re talking a matter of hours of expected life as I write this. He has already lost consciousness. My parents offered me the choice if I wanted to go there with them. I decided against it, as I wanted to preserve the memories of a man who has been partially responsible for raising me. For making me who I am. As I write this, I am sitting, crying, on the couch in our living room reminiscing about some of those cherished memories. Mundane stuff like gardening at the campsite, stealing corn from nearby fields, going to the bingo, picking blackberries and making fresh jam, or ‘sneaking’ away to get a McFlurry. I say ‘sneaking’ because years later I learned my grandmother was obviously into it. I just didn’t know it in my childlike innocence. Having cared for his wife for almost fifty years after botched hernia surgery. In that way, he was the strongest man I have ever met, and I used to be a strongest man competitor. I don’t know if I could do what he did. But that is the kind of man he was. He went out of his way to care for others.

I felt numb for the last few days until that call this morning. When it hit me how much of my identity of what it means to be a good person, a caring and strong man, has come from him. Those who know, know that I am not the most expressive person when it comes to emotions. I have always struggled in communicating how I feel. Now, with this loss, I feel both grateful for the privilege of having had a loving and caring grandfather in my life for almost twenty-seven years. A luxury few have. I am also sad knowing the Earth loses a kind and caring man. And I am sad that I will never be able to go to their house anymore and see them. The only thing I can do is accept this grief, and cherish the lessons. The only thing I can do is to carry his lessons of caring and kindness with me moving forward. He was a man of few words, mostly because it was hard to get any words in when my grandmother, who was a force of nature in her own right, spoke. Instead, he showed care and kindness in stoic actions. Perhaps that is where my affinity with practice-based research comes from, his lesson that actions do truly speak louder than words ever could.

I realize that dying and death are part of regeneration, and without them, we would quickly go out of planetary balance indeed. It still stings. Even though he had never gone to secondary education, there are few, if any, men in my life who I have learned more from. I promise opa, that I will take your lessons with me, and step forward towards others with the same kindness and care you have shown me. Dankje opa, ik houd van jou. I am not religious, but my grandparents were both catholic. Although I do not expect it to be the case, I sincerely hope they are reunited in the afterlife.

A precarious balancing act

Bringing all insights and elements together, engaging with regenerative higher education, at least in my constellation as a teacher, researcher, and administrator with conflicting responsibilities feels a bit like continuously balancing on the line of a cliff. Or like I am being pulled apart in different directions. Of course, I also fully realize that my position (as both a member of a management team and as teacher-researcher) comes with a great deal of privilege. And at times, I find myself being mad at myself for even struggling with the feeling of being pulled apart by these different responsibilities exactly because of my privilege. Before going into more depth, I will provide a short outline of my positionality. I am relatively straight, white, male, 26, neurodiverse, and disabled (although the disability is invisible most of the time). The privilege that particularly, the administrative dimension, of my job provides me includes a tenured contract and accessibility to a for any practical reason, unlimited amount of student-assistants. To make the tensions that I struggle with more pragmatic: I get caught in between protecting external relations with key stakeholders, while also providing care for the students that are under my custodianship, and conducting research on both. I suppose any researcher deals with these types of challenges. I constantly have to navigate the feeling of being a failure, a sense of hardship or lack of self-compassion, that I inflict on myself when I feel I disappoint any one of these groups of stakeholders. This precarious act was heightened on the 8th of December when I was surprised (or ambushed) by a film crew at the university. They were recording footage for a TV programme (for Dutch national TV) called ‘Helden van het Onderwijs’ which roughly translates to ‘Heroes of Education’. A show dedicated to highlighting teaching professionals from across the educational system who went above and beyond during the pandemic to help and have a positive impact on young people’s lives. Apparently, one of my former students recommended me for this programme. While I greatly appreciate the sentiment and was quite touched by that, I struggle with the title of the programme. Or the implication that I am somehow a ‘hero of education’ when I do not recognize myself in such an image. I also realise that the title may be hyperbole, it is a word we throw around very casually, and from a pragmatic perspective accept that these types of things are both an honour and good for your CV, but I can not stop to wonder… How can I be a hero if I feel like I am being a failure? How can I be a hero if I feel, constantly, like I am inadequate, not-whole, not-enough, not-worthy of being?

So the students gave us a lot of feedback yesterday about the mission impact course. And all…that made a lot of sense. It was perfectly fair. I didn’t notice that…I really did take it…I think as a personal failure, maybe more so than others. Like for some reason, I just I don’t know I think…I expect perfection or like to be much better than everyone else, maybe as a way to compensate for my disability. And it just really hurts me when Yeah, we make mistakes or things don’t work out the way I envision even though I know that’s part of life and research.

— Recorded self-reflections 2–12–2021 after a open reflection circle session the day before.

I also believe that even though I opened this piece with ‘…A dark cliff’. This title warrants some additional exploration. As yes, at times, it feels like we are all staring off the edge of a dark cliff right now. Especially now. Perhaps even wondering if we haven’t yet already stepped over the edge into the dark abyss. But I also see a lot of meaning and personal development that is nurtured at the liminal space at this edge. It is a cruel part of the human psyche that we are most sensitive to profound learning at times of great vulnerability. So, I see this cliff not only for the darkness and the potential to fall. I.e., to lose balance in this precarious balancing act. But also as an edge to hold, a tension to play with perhaps. That allows us to explore more regenerative forms of education. For the trust… and I suppose faith, the students, and my colleagues place in me to be able to play a part in guiding us along this narrow path. I will be eternally grateful.