The other week I got to be interviewed by our university’s Department of Higher Education, for their new podcast series.
We talked about how my practice has developed and what advice I could pass on to others, which mainly fell into the category of ‘learning to let go’.
Mostly, though, it reminded me that I like teaching and that’s the single most important thing, just as it is for any part of your working life.
I like walking into the classroom and discovering what’s happening with my students, building knowledge and understanding (theirs and mine) together.
I’m guessing you feel something similar too – otherwise you’d not be reading this blog – but you’ll know someone who doesn’t really feel that.
The trite answer would be to say that maybe those people shouldn’t be teaching, but we know that’s not often an option.
So instead, I’d remind them that ‘teaching’ covers a lot of different things: it’s no more meaningful than ‘research’ in terms of specifying what to do.
So experiment: try something else out.
Think about the things you really enjoy doing and try doing those. If that’s research, then make your students into researchers. If it’s engagement with practitioners, get them to develop those skills. If it’s being in the media, interview them.
It’s easy to be lazy about teaching, to reproduce the things you got as a students, to reuse the other guy’s notes.
So give it a whirl and maybe you’ll see why people like me like teaching so much.