“Anna, you’re always so… cute when you’re teaching!”

– a student

This comment by a student recently made me question my position as a teacher. Who am I in the classroom? How do I come across? What are my ways of being as an educator?

In a paper with the title “Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers” Gloria Dall’Alba (2005) addresses the importance of a course such as the PGCert I’m on, when studying to teach at university, that it addresses not only theories of knowing but also theories of being. That it challenges and transforms the way of being a university teacher.

She points out that “knowing is not simply something we possess, but who we are.” (Dall’Alba, 2005, p.363) While I started this course hoping to take away a set of skills or tools that tell me how to teach, how to transfer knowledge, I’m beginning to understand that the course might challenge me to reflect on who I am (or who I want to be) as a university teacher.

One thing I love about teaching is, that I learn a lot. I have to learn a lot when preparing for classes and lectures, I also learn a lot from being in the classroom. I learn about new technologies students use (Notion, Tiktok – this makes me sound old), ways of communicating and what students care about. Returning to the comment at the start, I also learn about myself. While ‘cute’ is not what I was going for when becoming a teacher I, as painful as it might be, understand where this student is coming from. While at first the comment was quite shocking for me, upon reflection and after reading a bit of bell hook (1994)’s book “Teaching to Transgress” I see where this unease is coming from. The student sees me as a whole person rather than the ‘object’ of being a teacher. 

Rather than being feared by my students I accept, and prefer, my position of being cute in the classroom. If I am striving for education of a practice of freedom, as bell hooks writes, “students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess.” (hooks, 1994, p.21) Empowerment cannot happen if we, as teachers, refuse to be vulnerable.

Dall’Alba, G. (2005) ‘Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers’, Higher Education Research & Development, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 361–372.

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress. New York: Routledge.