Reflect 1.

Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn.(Heidegger, 1968, p. 15)

I really like this concept of to “let learn”, and I’ve always thought of myself of an enabler of learning rather than a teacher even when I was a teacher on paper and CV. I’ve always had issues with the hierarchical approach where someone allegedly wiser or smarter than you stands at the front of the classroom while you all sit (partially for your own comfort of course) and they impart their knowledge on you. I much prefer dialogic learning or learning through doing. Not least because my brain just works better that way but also because to me that’s transactional and I try to not approach much in that way, and encourage my students to not approach their career or practise in that way either.

Now that I’m writing this I realise there are elements of my teaching that do the very thing I’m saying doesn’t work for me! Is it entirely circumstance? is it because of the way the university, even physically, is set up. Lecture theatres, classrooms etc. Or is it also partially ingrained in me that that’s what teaching looks like?

It makes me think about my playwork days, this beautiful concept within playwork that you’re present, present but almost invisible. Invisible until someone needs you. I take a lot of this into my teaching, or try to….

Martin Heidegger(1998) points out that lack of attention to ontology has meant we ‘increasingly instru-mentalize, professionalize, vocationalize, corporatize, and ultimately technologize education’

A lot of my teaching is around professional practise or getting students to whatever their idea of success is. Launching products, getting funding, starting a business, running a social enterprise, registering with HMRC, negotiating a royalty contract, thinking about IP and so on. So you’d think this approach or tendency that Heidegger talks about in ways might make sense. The very nature of what I do is about students and graduates ‘professional self’. Although this is really interesting to me, and my team and I have had many conversations and reflections on it. I’m always in the camp of encouraging students to present them professionally as themselves. Getting away from this idea that being professional means you can’t dress a certain way (within reason obviously, I’m not telling anyone to turn up to an interview in a bikini- although it would at least make an impact) that it’s all handshakes and dear sir/ madams, handing out business cards at dry networking events and minding your P’s & Q’s.

Having ‘work clothes’ is completely alien to me, I just have clothes. Being one person at work and another outside is also completely unnecessary to me. This speaks a lot to my privilege though and I am acutely aware of that, I don’t have to sensor in the same way some people might feel they have to. My white skin and double barrel surname get me easy access to certain rooms. For the record it’s not posh – I’m a child of divorce but that is never what people read from it.

For me approaching your professional sense is about knowing yourself, about really being! & thats what I try to teach students. I compare professional interactions to friendships in many ways. They take effort, require authenticity and reciprocity. If you’re presenting a stereotype of a ‘professional’ or being overly formal when that isn’t you, you’ll likely end up in a professional environment that doesn’t serve you. If your comfort zone is suits and pleasantries and corporate – thats cool – do that. But not because you think you should.