Talk about Teaching with Pride

As part of the #everylittleactioncounts initiative Siân Stephens advocates for talking about teaching with pride, to bond with colleagues and boost professional esteem.

Siân Stephens - Wed 2 Oct 2024 16:01 (updated Tue 13 Aug 2024 16:46)

As I have commented before, teaching is one of the loneliest aspects of academic life - but it is also one of the least competitive. We might feel a bit jealous of a colleague who wins a teaching award that we think we would also deserve, but we tend not to envy someone who tells us their class went well in the same way we might a colleague who has a paper published in a journal we’ve been trying to get in to.

For these two reasons alone, talking about teaching is a great way to bond with colleagues and to our own boost professional pride. The ‘little action’ I suggest taking here is talking about teaching with pride – boasting if you will. We need to start paying attention to what constitutes an achievement in teaching, and articulating our own successes is the best way to do this.

Have you marked 150 assignments and managed to pay more or less the same attention to each submission? That is hard! It is impressive! It reflects well on you as a person and a professional. Tell everyone about it. Did you deal well with a difficult question in class, maybe admitting that you found it difficult to answer and showing a bit of vulnerability in a safe way? That is amazing! Not everyone can do that. Tell everyone about it.

Talking about teaching in this way will allow each of us to notice how much we achieve on those days we berate ourselves for not doing any writing because we’ve been teaching all day. Talking about teaching in this way is also an act of generosity – the person you’re speaking with has probably also done something impressive in the classroom recently, without noticing. Inviting them to notice it is a gift.

Tips for getting started

Ask a colleague how their class was – press for details, listen and respond enthusiastically (or compassionately, depending on the content)

Tell a colleague how your class was – especially if it went well! Give specific details and use the conversation as an opportunity to reflect on what specifically you did that was good, and how you know it was good.

Start a (self) promotion journal – keep track of teaching successes and evidence of these successes; e.g. increased attendance, better participation in in-class or online activities, positive student feedback, whether formal or informal.

Post about teaching on social media – keep any student-identifying details out, and focus on what you did and how you felt. Post about what you admire about colleagues’ approach to teaching too #positiveacademia.

Join (or start) a teaching-related group in your department; I have started two – one didn’t work out (teaching support group) one is thriving (teaching and learning research group) and despite being research-focused has been a great forum to talk about teaching.

Join existing teaching-focussed groups, e.g.:
British Academy of Management: Management, Knowledge and Education (MKE) SIG
Cygna Teaching and Scholarship Research CYG

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Siân Stephens is a Senior Lecturer at the Middlesex University Business School, and the co-lead of the Business Ethics, CSR and Governance Research Cluster there. Her work focusses on the interactions between businsess, society and government with a focus on energy and extractives.

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