I am incredibly fortunate to have benefitted from exceptional teaching in multiple contexts: not just within formal academic spaces but outside them. Susan, my first-grade teacher in a small inner-city community school, encouraged me to write and illustrate my own series of picture books (in a growing pile of dog-eared Hillroy scribblers). Linde cared for and guided me as a teenager, always conveying her belief in my fundamental capability. Dr. Ron Bonham supported and facilitated my first-year undergraduate field linguistics project, seemingly unruffled by the controversy it caused.
These excellent teachers unfailingly treated me as someone worthy of their guidance and care. They provided a safety net that allowed me to experiment, to make mistakes, to discover the joy of learning. They all approached their roles as something to be taken seriously, and they carefully and thoughtfully cultivated their skills. These and other teachers altered the trajectory of my life.
It is these experiences of teaching and learning that form the foundation of my teaching philosophy. Teachers can make a difference. They can create a space where learners (re)discover and experience the joy and liberation of learning. Creating this space requires teachers to carefully cultivate their skills, to undertake the sometimes difficult discipline of seeing the learners fully and connecting with them, to support their autonomy and approach learning as a cooperative endeavor.
Cultivating Skills in Teaching and Learning
My first experiences in the role of formal teacher were as an adult literacy tutor for a community agency. I took my role seriously and engaged in all the training I could get my hands on. I learned about the importance of lesson planning to create a sense of safety and predictability for the learners. I learned about working with the learners to identify their goals, and customizing materials to support them in moving closer to those goals. Above all, I learned from the learners, who told me what was helping them (and what was not). I learned from their courage and determination and was inspired by their joy as they achieved each milestone on their personal learning journey.
Literacy tutoring is very different from classroom teaching, so it was somewhat to my surprise that I eventually found myself at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) teaching anatomy and physiology and an assortment of other courses. Once again, I eagerly engaged in every opportunity to learn, taking in-house courses, reading articles and books, and ultimately embarking on a graduate education program.
As I learned more about learning, my courses gradually changed shape. I began to see the course content and the learners’ prior knowledge and understanding as pieces in a puzzle that could be connected to create a beautiful picture, and started to weave in more opportunities for learners to reflect on and explain what they already knew. My courses became increasingly interactive, with an expanding array of technologies to support the learners in both collaborative and autonomous learning; technology and pedagogy became fully entangled, inseparable parts of a whole. Learners began to tell me more often that they found the course content deeply meaningful.
Seeing and Connecting with Learners
From my earliest days as a literacy tutor, I recognized the importance of seeing the learners: not as an undifferentiated mass, but as individual humans with individual histories, desires, and needs. Seeing learners fully requires both effort and discipline. Some learners prefer not to be seen (and it is essential to respect this). Some learners will only very cautiously allow themselves to be seen, tiny step by tiny step. Others are wide open from the start.
At NAIT, all my courses were open (that is, they had no prerequisites). I taught 17-year-olds who had been homeschooled and were attending an educational institution for the first time. I taught people in their 50s who had little prior formal education. I taught people for whom English was an additional language (sometimes their fourth or fifth). I taught students whose life circumstances included experiences of violence, poverty, and racism. Many of the learners were wary: they had learned that teachers, and schools, would shame them, or exclude them, or harm them in some other way. Building trust and connection was a careful process, and I calibrated my approach with each student as I came to know them over time.
Connecting with learners whether in person or online starts with actions as simple as getting to know their names as quickly as possible, coming to class a few minutes early and chatting with students, and attending to body language and off-the-cuff comments. I strive to remain fully present with students and to consider what assumptions I am making and what I might be missing. I am also mindful of the power wielded by instructors and deliberate in creating a mechanism for ongoing anonymous feedback. Numerous students over the years have told me that this helped them feel safe and taught them I cared about their feelings and needs. It enhances connection by supporting students in expressing their needs without obscuring the structural difference in power between instructors and students.
Supporting Learner Autonomy
I am deeply committed to recognizing and supporting learner autonomy and to approaching learning as a cooperative endeavor. Every day, I resist what Paulo Freire called the “banking” concept of education, wherein teachers “deposit” information into students, who are positioned as passive and empty recipients. As a teacher, and as an instructional designer, this means choice and flexibility are baked into my courses to the greatest extent possible. Learner expertise is acknowledged and leveraged through collaborative learning, through projects designed and selected by students, through opportunities to co-create knowledge. Learners are recognized as colleagues and collaborators. Co-design of case studies, creation of research posters and student poster sessions, collaborative note-taking, and choice in assessment mechanisms are just a few ways in which I have supported student autonomy.
Joy and Liberation in Learning
Creating a space for joy and liberation in learning both in person and online is a neverending project. I continue to strive to improve my skills, to find ways to see and connect with learners, and to support learner autonomy. I continue to work to find ways around the barriers with which all of us in postsecondary are familiar: institutional resistance to change, limited resources, demands to treat students instrumentally. I look forward to building new relationships with colleagues across campus (faculty, staff, and students) and to working together to support students and each other.