In our day-to-day commitment to create the best learning environments for our students, it is highly likely that we will find ourselves, from time to time, swept into the momentum of keeping the pace with our learners and the ever-evolving classroom environment. We’re active, we’re present, we’re engaged, and we’re responding to the buffet of requests, emails, and all of the other items that we can’t ever anticipate. In this space, our capacities are in beautiful synchronous humming forward with one eye on the term’s important dates and the other on meaningful moments of immediacy. We’re in the zone and this all feels within grasp… until…
And there is always an “until”…
Until the moment when we arrive at campus, after a commute for the Sheridan annals, and we are stopped by the realization: I have forgotten my wallet at home.
The wallet! It. is. at. home. (insert deflated emoji)
So, in this moment, you find yourself wondering: who can I ask to buy me a coffee?
If this hasn’t happened to you directly, you might find that it reminds you of other times when you have needed to lean on someone to bring some form of support to your day. We may be able to list people in our personal lives we can count on – gosh knows that I have dropped off my partner’s work keys to her more than either of us would like to admit – but when it comes to our teaching, and the momentum associated with teaching, I have to ask, how many of us have “our people” that we can rely on, confide in, bounce ideas off of, share resources, debrief with, and so on. And then, I have to ask myself, how might we foster an environment where our faculty feel that they can rely on each other in ways that are honest and real so that their best reflection, learning, and teaching can take place? We hope this for our learners – in fact, active learning demands it – and so what can we do to foster it among ourselves? If our basic social psychological needs to be included, to see ourselves in others, and to feel supported aren’t met, how can we expect ourselves to try new things… to take risks… to offer new ways of looking at the old?
Well, to start, we can continue to build connections by reaching out to our peers in our programs and Faculties. As research shows, teaching can be isolating, especially when we feel very performance-focused and “being a good teacher” seems to dominate our mindsets more so than “being a good learner” if you get what I mean. And so, can we create opportunities to form relationships and make disciplinary connections and extensions within and beyond our Faculties?
The answer is yes, collectively we can. This is why events like sparkTALKS on March 1st are so important. As the Associate Dean, Teaching and Learning, I am struck by how events like these can create communities that new faculty experience in the Teaching and Learning Academies and the Fundamentals of Teaching and Learning program. Launching formally on March 1st, and then running monthly between the non-teaching weeks, sparkTALKS aims to foster a space for all faculty and staff to come together to ask questions, share approaches, learn new techniques, and celebrate with colleagues within and beyond Sheridan’s walls.
So, to take this one step further (and bring this story home), one of our gifts to attendees is a coffee card exchange. When you receive your registration materials at the event, you will receive coffee gift cards to give out to new people you meet and exchange ideas with at the event. Who knows? This coffee gift might be the first step in a powerful teaching collaboration.
On March 1st, let’s take a moment as a learning community to pause, to build our networks and toolkits, and to connect. Register today for sparkTALKS!
https://sparktalks.weebly.com/
***I’d like to thank one of our faculty, Michelle P., who was the inspiration for this reflection after she had confided in me that she had forgotten her wallet at home.