I was passing through Cologne this week, en route from the UACES Annual Conference in Trento (which was excellent, by the way). I’d decided to take the train – despite the slowness and cost – to show my support for more sustainable practices around conferencing, and because I like trains.
To help pass the time, I was blurping – or whatever it’s called on BlueSky – my travels. Which was good for me to get more practice using the site, and to think about the different stimuli a journey like that can produce.
Cologne matters here as the place where I was thinking about teaching and how I learnt to teach. At the conference, I’d had a couple of conversations about how I coped with having to do an after-dinner speech in my capacity as Chair of the Association, since they felt it to be a bit daunting.
Part of my answer then was just about practising and being confident in your ability to do it, but I also realised that another part came from learning from the practice of others. Hence this post.
Many years ago, as part of my undergraduate degree, I came to Cologne on a field trip with my Geography professor, who hoped we’d learn about urban geographies and the relationship to political organisation.
What I actually learnt was that my professor didn’t know how to eat a kiwi fruit.
Continue reading “Things I Learnt About Teaching From My Teachers”