This article takes a recent interview with Chaya Czernowin, ‘5 Things Harvard's Chaya Czernowin Suggests You Do as an Aspiring Composer’, as a point of departure for a series of reflections on compositional pedagogy focusing specifically on inclusion. It proposes a less restrictive definition of a ‘composer’ and a decentring of career expectations in favour of embracing a range of creative sound-making practices. It goes on to underline the importance of transnational and transcultural perspectives, of experimentation and the risk of failure, and of listening skills that transcend style and culture. In these latter two sections, specific classroom techniques are cited: Maria Chavez's creative workshop on failure, and Thea Musgrave's ‘critique’ sessions, in which students listen critically to compositions without prior knowledge of their title or author. The final section addresses the question of evaluation, positing that lowering the stakes of individual assessments encourages students to branch out and take risks. It also calls into question the weight given to forms of evaluation, such as recommendation letters, that may pose particular problems of bias. In the conclusion, it looks to recent decolonisation movements in music for models of structural changes that could help to enact the essay's propositions.