ABSTRACT
Pedagogical caring can take a variety of forms, and requires people to be alert to potential student struggles in unique ways. Sitting in a classroom and being paralyzed by an inability to either understand or contribute to the conversation is a daunting and terribly isolating experience. Student struggles may not be so clear, as is the case with the increasing numbers of Middle East war veterans returning home and finding repatriation a daunting, bewildering task. Domestic violence victims, too, tend to take pains to make their misery invisible to outsiders, as people have unfortunately seen with a handful of our female students. There have been, however, zero instances where people's caring behavior toward a student was for naught, where people did not notice a dramatic change in performance, attitude, or both. What's clear is that people can no longer blissfully deflect obvious student distress under the guise of students' owning their own learning experiences.
