Prior to the MAAI summer independent study break, all of the tutors were asked to create a lecture based upon the Learning Outcomes of the course. I was assigned “Being Proactive – The ability to take responsibility for your self-direction and show informed decision-making and originality in planning and scoping a major project. (AC Process)”
I was quite nervous about this lecture to begin with, because usually my interactions with students are centred around tutorials and I have a slight fear of public speaking. Aside from this, all of my colleagues have been teaching for a long time and are much more established in both their pedagogical and creative practices than I am. If my lecture had been centred around the learning outcome of Impostor Syndrome I think I would have been eminently qualified.
When planning my lecture, I began by thinking about how I could translate my teaching practice during tutorials into a presentation format. I tend to use my personal and professional experience as examples during my tutorials, as I feel that students respond better to personal reflections rather than purely academic examples. On a personal level, I prefer it when my teachers use examples from their own careers to contextualise what we are learning for this reason. Additionally, many of the students are currently facing several setbacks to their projects as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have had loved ones become ill, while others have been unable to reach stakeholders due or use the UAL library for research. In order to give these students a boost, I decided to use the concepts of radical vulnerability and radical empathy (Nagar, 2019) to create a lecture that reflected some of the challenges they may be facing now.
As someone who was diagnosed with several chronic illnesses during their first year of University and still managed to graduate on time, I know something about experiencing medical difficulties during a stressful academic time. I have also ‘failed’ professionally a number of times. One of the core aims of MAAI is to teach students to embrace setbacks as opportunities for learning and development of “out of the box” thinking. This lecture was my attempt to give real life examples of how students might utilise proactivity to adapt a ‘failure’ and use it to create lasting and empowering change.
After delivering the presentation, several of my colleagues contacted me privately to say that they thought the lecture was an excellent example of reflexive practice. A senior colleague mentioned that they thought I showed “real leadership” in my approach. This helped to boost my confidence and silence some of the impostor syndrome voices I have been living with since I began teaching on the course. Part of that is due to me teaching on an MA course despite not having an MA myself. However, receiving praise and encouragement from colleagues who have been teaching much longer than I have was helpful in boosting my confidence.