“The framing that many educators approach teaching as a vocation, approach it with care, is not new or odd. Some people are like this”

Of course people are like that – but my point is it should not be a *requirement* in an economic exchange which is what a pedagogy of care would make it. In the same way attempts to make academics unpaid and unqualified mental health workers is dangerous to all and should be resisted.

I just find the whole Pedagogy of Care and the language used very North American (and I know you are not North American) and frankly a bit dodgy. Almost cult like. To give you a practical example from your post:

“And when one day I discovered a really close friend and her family had contracted covid, getting this news just an hour before my class, my students listened to me and comforted me in that moment.”

I think there is a just a fundamental paradigmatic incommensurability in how we see the world – I just don’t think students are there to listen to us and be counsellors in this way and moreover many of us simply don’t want to interact with students on this level – my work and private life are separate things I don’t mix.

(Which by the way isn’t a critique of you personally but just to point out that the whole underpinning approach would be rejected by many – me included. So as a pedagogy approach it’s completely limited in scope because many would reject it on first principles).