Priorities of a Post-Secondary Educator
It has been quite a while since I wrote a post. This is not due to too much teaching responsibilities, but rather that I have been working on my own work since the month of May. It has been fulfilling to work on my own research and in turn it has allowed me to gain a new perspective about what it is we do as educators at post-secondary institutions.
This post is about priorities. Specifically what our priorities should be as post-secondary educators. As I approach yet another milestone I am faced with what is seen as the "reality" in my profession. Much more than the trite "publish or perish" that we hear from so many departments,the reality is that as a professor at a university, whether associate or assistant, your priority is always to research, research, research. Wrapped into that is the belief that you in turn should in some way get grants, scholarships or any other financial backing for this research.
It is well known that the path to grants in the sciences and engineering is much more straight forward than the path to grants in the humanities and social sciences. If you are lucky, if you are studying English literature or anything that falls under that umbrella, you can get a SSHRC, an OGS, or if you are really good-- a Vanier. Then when you are done graduate school you can try for a Killam or maybe a SSHRC post-doc, again if you are really good -- or if you are really lucky. I have spent the past 7 years of my life trying to decide whether these scholarships are truly based on merit, luck, or a combination of the two. Yes that might sound cynical, but it is what it is, especially when you look at how these scholarships are adjudicated.
But I digress. What all these scholarships have done is prioritize research which is not all bad. However, do you know what other priority usually suffers? Teaching,teaching skills and pedagogical applications suffer because a scholar can't possibly be everything to everyone simultaneously. Unless of course you never sleep (I'm working on that-ha!).
Today I spent a good two hours searching post-doctoral opportunities, grants, etc. for those scholars who wish to either 1. continue their research at an Ontario college or 2. want to focus on teaching rather than research. Do you know what I found: ZERO, ZILCH, NADDA. Yes universities are traditionally the place where post-doctoral research is done, mainly because they have the libraries, the research facilities, etc. But what about colleges? Why is it that this constant divide between applied and theoretical necessarily negates a college as a place where very valuable research intensive work can be done?
Having recently completed a 40+ page report based on my teaching experiences with the College English course that I have taught for 5 semesters now, I really want to continue my work and my research on ethical pedagogical practices. Specifically I want to look at:
1. how to create more effective teaching practices/spaces for students who have university degrees from international post-secondary institutions; and
2.the intersection of pedagogy and technology, as something that aides/hinders the teaching experience/environment.
I want to reposition the belief that there has to be a divide, that you are either a good researcher or a good teacher but you can't be both. I love to teach, I want to continue teaching. However, I want to use my teaching experiences as learning/research experiences.
Our priorities should be on teaching. If our priorities are placed elsewhere, this is when a culture of apathy is created. Students can tell when you really don't want to be there; they can tell when you are doing this cause you "have" to, and not because you WANT to. This lack of commitment and failure to prioritize teaching is one of the latent causes of student absenteeism.
I have seen many of my friends over the past few years crumble under the pressure of research driven priorities in their respective departments. Friends that spoken passionately about teaching, about their experiences with students, are now writing FB posts about how they wish they weren't bothered by students, or how they want peace and quiet from the people they have a responsibility to keep informed.
Yes there is a fine line between our own personal time and "work" time. Yes I do get annoyed when I receive emails at 1am sent from an iPhone and then an email again at 8am from the same student upset because I have not responded yet. Firm rules need to be put in place so that students understand the protocol for responses. I always tell my students to expect a 24hr turn around. So my email will repeat this 24hr rule before responding to the "urgent" question.
All this to say, sure the relationship between teacher and student has been modified greatly with the inclusion of technology, however, our priority should still be to them, to teaching. Looking at teaching as some sort of annoying thing that happens to be part of your work at a post-secondary institution, means in my opinion that you should not be a teacher at all.
Maybe it is time for a truly tiered tenure system. Have teaching only tenure positions. Alternatively mandate that one needs to either attend teaching workshops or publish one paper on pedagogy. We need to put that passion back into teaching. If we fill our universities with research drones, incapable of relating information to students in an effective manner, our universities are doomed.
I am really excited about this new project that I want to work on and I have a meeting next week to discuss options. I want to make colleges in Ontario a place where great teaching AND great research are done, simultaneously.
This post is about priorities. Specifically what our priorities should be as post-secondary educators. As I approach yet another milestone I am faced with what is seen as the "reality" in my profession. Much more than the trite "publish or perish" that we hear from so many departments,the reality is that as a professor at a university, whether associate or assistant, your priority is always to research, research, research. Wrapped into that is the belief that you in turn should in some way get grants, scholarships or any other financial backing for this research.
It is well known that the path to grants in the sciences and engineering is much more straight forward than the path to grants in the humanities and social sciences. If you are lucky, if you are studying English literature or anything that falls under that umbrella, you can get a SSHRC, an OGS, or if you are really good-- a Vanier. Then when you are done graduate school you can try for a Killam or maybe a SSHRC post-doc, again if you are really good -- or if you are really lucky. I have spent the past 7 years of my life trying to decide whether these scholarships are truly based on merit, luck, or a combination of the two. Yes that might sound cynical, but it is what it is, especially when you look at how these scholarships are adjudicated.
But I digress. What all these scholarships have done is prioritize research which is not all bad. However, do you know what other priority usually suffers? Teaching,teaching skills and pedagogical applications suffer because a scholar can't possibly be everything to everyone simultaneously. Unless of course you never sleep (I'm working on that-ha!).
Today I spent a good two hours searching post-doctoral opportunities, grants, etc. for those scholars who wish to either 1. continue their research at an Ontario college or 2. want to focus on teaching rather than research. Do you know what I found: ZERO, ZILCH, NADDA. Yes universities are traditionally the place where post-doctoral research is done, mainly because they have the libraries, the research facilities, etc. But what about colleges? Why is it that this constant divide between applied and theoretical necessarily negates a college as a place where very valuable research intensive work can be done?
Having recently completed a 40+ page report based on my teaching experiences with the College English course that I have taught for 5 semesters now, I really want to continue my work and my research on ethical pedagogical practices. Specifically I want to look at:
1. how to create more effective teaching practices/spaces for students who have university degrees from international post-secondary institutions; and
2.the intersection of pedagogy and technology, as something that aides/hinders the teaching experience/environment.
I want to reposition the belief that there has to be a divide, that you are either a good researcher or a good teacher but you can't be both. I love to teach, I want to continue teaching. However, I want to use my teaching experiences as learning/research experiences.
Our priorities should be on teaching. If our priorities are placed elsewhere, this is when a culture of apathy is created. Students can tell when you really don't want to be there; they can tell when you are doing this cause you "have" to, and not because you WANT to. This lack of commitment and failure to prioritize teaching is one of the latent causes of student absenteeism.
I have seen many of my friends over the past few years crumble under the pressure of research driven priorities in their respective departments. Friends that spoken passionately about teaching, about their experiences with students, are now writing FB posts about how they wish they weren't bothered by students, or how they want peace and quiet from the people they have a responsibility to keep informed.
Yes there is a fine line between our own personal time and "work" time. Yes I do get annoyed when I receive emails at 1am sent from an iPhone and then an email again at 8am from the same student upset because I have not responded yet. Firm rules need to be put in place so that students understand the protocol for responses. I always tell my students to expect a 24hr turn around. So my email will repeat this 24hr rule before responding to the "urgent" question.
All this to say, sure the relationship between teacher and student has been modified greatly with the inclusion of technology, however, our priority should still be to them, to teaching. Looking at teaching as some sort of annoying thing that happens to be part of your work at a post-secondary institution, means in my opinion that you should not be a teacher at all.
Maybe it is time for a truly tiered tenure system. Have teaching only tenure positions. Alternatively mandate that one needs to either attend teaching workshops or publish one paper on pedagogy. We need to put that passion back into teaching. If we fill our universities with research drones, incapable of relating information to students in an effective manner, our universities are doomed.
I am really excited about this new project that I want to work on and I have a meeting next week to discuss options. I want to make colleges in Ontario a place where great teaching AND great research are done, simultaneously.
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