Graduate students in education often leave the educational domain with less confidence and a fractured sense of self. Our guest in this episode, Dr. Emily Affolter, shares from experience and recent research the importance of respecting individual needs, fostering flexibility, and moving away from rigid, binary thinking in education in order to nurture student confidence and creativity. We discuss practices educators can adopt to maintain their well-being and sustain their passion for teaching, and strategies that can be implemented in graduate education programs to enhance the confidence and self-efficacy of future educators.