If I have a teaching philosophy, it’s not something I’ve consciously developed yet. I’m new to the teaching world, so it is a work in progress. And since, in my teaching time line, I’m still so close to the beginning, let’s go back to it…
To be completely honest, I started teaching with a far-from-altruistic reason: I needed something more from my career as a User Experience Designer (UxD). At the time, I suffered from conflicting emotions about being the lead designer for the company at which I was employed. I had recently had my passion for design reignited after being in the industry for over 10 years, but I felt no real creative charge from my surroundings.
While I truly enjoyed mentoring my reports, and I LOVED UxD, I needed to find more creative energy to tap into, to feel more artistically alive again, like when… well, like when I was in college. While returning to art school as a student wasn’t much of an option, returning as a teacher had suddenly become one. Many people (including my hiring AD) said I would make a great teacher, and while I never understood or believed them before, I decided to put their faith to test, and took the plunge.
I didn’t know HOW to be a teacher. I knew how to be on stage, singing or dancing in front of 100 or 200 people, but I had no idea how to teach twelve. My first day, I was butterfly-stomach, twitching, sweating nervous. All I could think of was how big of a responsibility I was taking on just to try and get my creative juice fix.
Consider it this way: If I make a mistake on stage, I look bad. Maybe the group looks bad. I just have to take the hit, recover and move on, hoping i can create a great experience anyway. But if I make a mistake in the classroom, give my students bad information, fail to inspire them, let them leave without the knowledge or skills they need… THEY take the hit. And I don’t know if they can recover and have a great experience in the future. As I saw it, I was holding the careers, the futures, of other people in my hands. And that’s when things changed.
My being in that room wasn’t about my needs, it was about the needs of the students. My contribution to their education was far greater than anything I needed. It was about their future, not my past. So I gave myself over to it.
I jumped in and gave my students every drop of relevant knowledge, experience, and advice I had on the subject… and a couple of irrelevant, hopefully entertaining, bits too. I answered every question as sincerely as I could, and asked questions I knew would reveal more than the answer. And because I understood that while this quarter, these are my students, next quarter some will be peers, I developed connections on educational, professional and personal levels.
To connect, I talked to them about school, work and life. I gathered feedback about classes and made adjustments. I listened.
I cared.
Because I cared, I expected more from them than many of their teachers had in the past, and likely more than they expected from themselves. I pushed them hard and graded even harder. I made it clear that their reward in the classroom would be my working as hard for their academic success as they worked for me, and their reward in the real world would be true professional success and respect. It wasn’t about grades to me, it was about learning knowledge, building understanding, developing skills, and growing passion… and applying them all to become great designers.
Academically, I was playing with different techniques, different styles, different methods. I just thought about all my favorite college professors and past bosses. I thought about the ones that made me WANT to be a better student or employee, and that helped me grow into that person. I tried to emulate them, to honor them. I just hoped that if I truly CARED about the results, the techniques would follow.
The results were tremendous. Some of the techniques I was employing by instinct were being passed on by my Academic Director to other teachers for them to start, or increase, using. I turned some struggling students around and inspired them to WANT to learn more and produce better, and gave them the skills to do so. I had some students retake a lower level class (one, auditing it) SOLELY because I was teaching it the next quarter. I messed up a couple of GPAs in the process, but those same students literally screamed at my boss to have me teach more of their classes. I may have been Forrest Gump-ing my way through teaching, but whatever I was doing was making a big difference in people’s lives.
So I continue doing what works. And I look for constant feedback to assess what isn’t working. It’s something I do almost every week, not just between quarters. If necessary, I abandon parts of the syllabus mid-quarter to better address teaching the course competencies. I also take classes or find other learning sources on HOW to teach as well. Recently, I took part in “The Art of Teaching” course provided by my institution. I already have changes in technique and principle that I want to make the next time I teach these classes. I’m not happy that I could have performed better for my students, but I’m excited to make even more improvements in the future.
I suppose if I had to boil down my teaching philosophy into a couple of points, they would be:
- Be honest with students. Earn their trust. You can’t lead if no one will follow.
- Give constant and kind (but honest) feedback to help them grow.
- Be passionate and inspire students about the subject and your craft.
- Understand that teaching is not about you.
- Care about your students personally, academically and professionally.
- Connect in some way with each student.
- Trust your experience and your instincts, but also…
- Be humble. Listen to and respect the ideas of your students, superiors and peers.
- Seek out learning and growth the same way you want your students to.
- Embrace change in your class, your syllabus, your mind.
I don’t have all the answers. My philosophy might not work for everyone, or ANYONE else, really. But, so far, it’s working for me. More importantly, it works for my students… which is really all that matters.
P.S. I did, indeed, find my source of creative energy to tap into. As I give to my students, they give to me. It builds in a circuit and is a beautiful, wonderful thing!
