A Slacker’s Guide to the Teaching Track

So, when I get asked to come and give careers advice, I think about all the strategic advice that gets passed around and that I was a recipient of not too long ago. I’m sure you’ve heard all this advice about what you have to focus on, and work hard at, and grind through, to be successful in our line of work. And there’s nothing wrong with being strategic, of course. I’m sure I’ve given lots of ALPS readers strategic advice from time to time. I’ve certainly been helped by strategic advice from others. And we absolutely do want the ‘teaching track’ to be a place where people can do well and get on.

However, as you might know, one of my main aims in life is to be a bit more joyful and encourage others to do the same. This is not because I’m not a serious person or because I don’t take my work seriously. On the contrary, I think that when we enjoy ourselves in our teaching roles, we do better work, learn more, engage curiously with the world and have better relationships. These are all things that make the university go round. And I think that success has something in common with happiness and joy. If you met someone who told you they were putting all their energy into really working on being happy, you might have some concerns about their wellbeing(!) Perhaps you share my intuition that happiness is a thing that happens while you’re focusing on other things.

Correspondingly, when I look back at my very enjoyable and moderately successful career so far, I don’t think it would be at all truthful to say that I’ve followed much of the strategic advice. I’ve made a variety of choices and they were all for good reasons. But I’ve never made a decision about what project to start on next with a list of promotion criteria in mind. Some of my decisions were actively the opposite of what a strategic person might do, as anyone looking at my CV can very clearly see! And whilst it’s certainly true that I’ve been lucky, I also don’t think that my non-strategic approach and all that happiness and luck and success have been coincidental. On the contrary, I think that holding success lightly and focusing on other things that matter has been genuinely consequential in terms of the outcome.

To put it another way, when I think the things I’ve done that I’m proud of, and the things that have got me recognition, praise (my favourite! and yours too, don’t lie!) and progression, I did them not to be strategic but because I cared about them and I wanted to do them. So, rather than giving you advice about what I should have done, or you should do, I’m going to provide a few do’s and don’ts based on how I’ve actually made career decisions and the lessons you might be able to draw inductively from that. I should stress that this is all very personal – just my take on what has somehow, miraculously, worked for me. If you don’t want to slack, though, that’s fine with me. I’m far too much of a slacker to try to make you!

Don’t: try to everything!

You are probably already familiar with the idea that we only have 4,000 weeks in the average lifespan to fit everything into. This is absurdly little, even disregarding the fact that for a lot of that we were babies or struggling to write a PhD thesis. With this ludicrous finitude in mind, we need to be laser-focused on what we’re going to spend our weeks on, given that most things you could do, you’re not going to have time to.

Do: figure out what you are going to focus on

Slackers don’t waste their precious time on this earth rushing around looking busy. They are serene and focused. They choose wisely, based on where they find enjoyment and meaning. Maybe – even in a world obsessed with research and REF and grants and citations and ‘top’ journals – maybe they even dare to focus on teaching?

Even though this actually isn’t in the UCL promotion criteria for the education track, I’ve spent a huge amount of time in my career in the classroom, talking to students, assessing, and thinking about being in the classroom. That coalface teaching practice has made me the leader and pedagogical researcher and reflective practitioner I am; it’s been the bedrock for everything else. It hasn’t got me promoted on its own, but I wouldn’t have been promoted without it.

Don’t: follow your passion

Slackers necessarily follow desire paths because they want to enjoy their lives. However, there is a danger to following your passion above all else. Most obviously, as anyone who has done a PhD knows all too well, anything worth doing really well is going to be quite hard and you will fall right out of love with it at some point.

Also, I am wary of the narrative of the brilliant, individualistic academic following their heroic dreams. Not only does that sound a lot too much like hard work for the dedicated slacker, it also might make you a bit selfish. And a good slacker is far too reliant on the support, solidarity and fellowship of colleagues to risk that.

Do: figure out where you can contribute

I think, on reflection, the things that have made me happiest in my career have not been about pursuing heroic dreams, but rather finding those spaces where I could make a contribution and be of service. For example, I was the lead for student wellbeing in my department for a long time. And it was great, because every day I felt as though I was helping students, and colleagues, and keeping the department turning. It was a perfect fit for my skills – which, of course, also got better as I practised – but it wasn’t a job I’d always dreamed of. Every day, I got up and did the work because people were relying on me, and because I ended up getting meaning and enjoyment out of it, and because it mattered. And that’s still the case for me, whether it’s teaching or Vice Deaning or blogging…. Feeling passion is the endpoint of effort, not the starting point. (And I think all those things have helped me in promotions too.)

Don’t: Make a plan and follow it

Or, you know, feel free to try. But good luck with that! My experience has been that no-one’s career runs to plan, and flexibility and being nimble on your feet are a great virtue. As someone very wise on my social media feed once said, ‘life isn’t chess, it’s bumper cars’.

Do: decide what your values are and then roll with the punches

All the most exciting projects I’ve been involved with – whether it was student-focused projects on combating antisemitism or decolonising the curriculum, or working with colleague to set up the UCL Centre for the Pedagogy of Politics, or developing new approaches to assessment jointly with students as a Vice Dean, or implementing ungrading in my module and advocating for it more widely – came out of chance conversations, or a moment where an opportunity presented itself, or a group of students I particularly wanted to work with, or a thought that particularly attracted my attention, or just an opportunity to get out of doing something boring for the 9889742th time! I didn’t plan for them, but once I was committed to them, I did keep going with them. There is a skill to being able to spot and grasp opportunities when they come up, rather than doggedly following a fixed path.

Don’t: pore endlessly over the promotion criteria

By all means, be aware of the criteria you will be judged by. But I would honestly say that being directed by a set of criteria devised by a committee is just no way to live your life.

Do: do the work you’d choose if no-one was judging you against criteria

A good slacker thinks creatively about how the work they already want to do fits the criteria, not how to create more work in a million different ways. I have tended to find that if I’ve done good work that reverberates beyond my own classroom, I can usually find a way of showing how it demonstrates the criteria. And it’s much easier to keep going when you’re focusing on what you can achieve for your students, colleagues, institution and (modestly) the world, rather than thinking about how you measure up. Be good at reading these criteria and advocating for yourself, for sure, but don’t put the cart before the horse.

Don’t: churn it out

I really struggle with writing. When choosing which stresses and strains I’d rather put myself up for, I’ve always opted for the hard work of education, rather than the REF* or trying to get big research grants. That said, one thing I will say in favour of the writing I’ve done is that I only write when I have something to say, and I want to persuade other people. I don’t write to get promoted; I write to communicate.

But now that the teaching track is becoming so much more secure, and therefore prestigious, desirable and competitive, we do risk falling into the ‘publish or perish’ strategies that beleaguer our colleagues in more research-orientated roles. I think we can, and should, resist that. It’s no fun for slackers and the risk is that it makes for very boring articles that no-one wants to read.

Do: write about stuff you care about and write it really well

So, learn from my mistakes and do write more than I do, but write judiciously. And try to publish it in places where people will actually find it and cite it! We need great SoTL and pedagogical research from education-track folks and ideally we need it published in places where the rest of us will read it and learn from it. Hit us up at ALPS if you have work in progress, or published work, you want to write about and publicise.

Don’t: network and influence people

There is no joy in this.

Do: make friends and let friendship be more than its instrumental value

One of the best things I’ve done in my career has been create spaces for people who love teaching to get together and build community. I used to be a terrified person standing on the outskirts of coffee breaks at conferences. But now people actually sometimes stand in queues to talk to me! (Let us know in the comments if you thought that queue was worth it! Actually, maybe don’t….) And I’ve met some of my dearest friends in those queues, as well as hatching some of my favourite work projects.

You might think that it’s borderline unprofessional to have a work friendship that you’d prioritise ahead of getting the job done, but happily, there might well be a win-win here. It seems like there is some evidence that if you have a professional friendship so good you’d prioritise it over work….. then this also provides the most professional benefit in the workplace itself! So, relax, make friends and let the influence take care of itself.

Slacker pro tip: co-author! Twice the fun for only a little bit more than half the work!

Don’t: vigorously enforce every rule

Talking of friends, I heard a podcast where the presenters were saying that what often sparks up a great friendship is a mutual dislike of something. And I’m always happy to make friends with anyone who, like me, hates the propensity to trash talk the students. So, if you’re standing terrified at edges of the coffee break and I’m there, and you also prefer mercy to justice, come and chat! We can bond over a shared revulsion at the obsession for catching students out and apprehending them and become friends for life.

Do: be a teacher not the cops

Slackers don’t have time to double up as prosecutors or police officers. We’re too busy teaching and that’s a very different job. It’s very, very hard to do both. It’s also exhausting being constantly on the alert for wrongdoing. Choose to be a teacher instead.

Another top slacker tip: if you tell your students that you’re in the job to teach them and not catch them out, you might find it easier to teach them. They might confide in you in ways that help you support them to know and not break the rules. You might even enjoy your relationship with them more.

In all seriousness, I think pretty much all the success and happiness I’ve had in my job stem from (almost always) liking my students and being on their side.

In summary….

So, look, if you’re a real slacker you might have scrolled down here for the tldr. Here it is: invest your time in things you intrinsically value, care about your relationships, honour your obligations to other people and try not to worry too much about things that don’t matter.

Doing good work, having great friends, doing right by your students and colleagues…. these things all matter more than getting promoted. But they might just get you promoted anyway.

*non-UK readers, you can just ignore this, I’m too much of a slacker to explain