A Love Letter To My Teaching Self

Special thanks to Jessica Knapp, Krista McCracken, and Maddie Knickerbocker for their encouragement and comments on a draft of this piece.

Dear Teaching Self

Hey it’s me. I know we don’t talk often. And I know that you’re not teaching right now. But since it’s almost Valentine’s Day, I just wanted to write you this little note anyways to let you know that I get it. Teaching is super hard. It can totally be awesome, and I know how much you love telling stories and talking about history. But it’s also a ton of work. Coming up with a syllabus is really hard, and it’s challenging to pick just the right readings. Preparing lectures and PowerPoint presentations always seems to take longer than it should. Most of your students are awesome, but there are always a couple who seem to want to make your job harder (omg, remember the student who tried to correct you with Wikipedia? In front of the entire class?). And while you’re in class, you feel great, but as soon as it’s over, you feel like a train wreck, simultaneously “on” and exhausted?  And you often find yourself wondering what it is you’re doing in the first place, and whether anything is even getting through?

Well, I just wanted to let you know that you’ve got this! You are a fantastic teacher, and you got this!

Do you remember that first time you ever gave a lecture? It was Fall 2010, and you had spent so much time preparing your lecture on Confederation, trying to incorporate a social history angle. You walked into class, with your printed-out notes in hand and your PowerPoint slides ready to go. But you were so nervous that you forgot to actually read the notes you had prepared. Before you knew it, you reached the end of the lecture, and you still had a half hour of the class to go. You let your students go, and then went home and cried. You felt so defeated, like there was no way you could ever be a good professor.

But do you remember how your husband took you out for sushi, and encouraged you to try again? How you practiced with him, learning to incorporate breaks and audience questions? And how your next lecture was amazing? And how ever since that day, you stopped relying on prepared words, and started talking off the cuff? And how this became your super power?

I know there are days when you come home and feel like you just can’t keep doing this. Like when you used to pass out after each class from exhaustion. Or after you told your department chair that your student was sexually harassing you, and he said there was nothing he could do about it. Or when you had to wake up at 5:30 am after teaching until 8 pm the night before, to be able to make your 8:30 class in another city. For an entire semester. Or when you felt like if you had to refer your students to the syllabus one more time, you would scream.

Click to Embiggen. Courtesy of my Women in Canada course at UVic.

But do you remember all of the students you did help? The Women in Canada course where everything just clicked, and your entire class made you a bouquet of yarn when you successfully defended your dissertation? Or the time one of your students made cupcakes for the class, with flags featuring feminist icons? Or all the young female students who thanked you for being a role model for them? Do you remember the amazing moment we had the first time we talked about the biggest traumatic events in our lives, and then students cheered you after you shared yours? Do you remember the feeling you have every time you catch up with one of your former students, and see all of the amazing things they are doing?

Click to Embiggen. Cupcakes by Aleisha Ross.

Do you remember how you sometimes felt like nothing you were saying was getting through to students? But do you also remember how one of your male students came to you after the end of one class to tell you that because of your lectures, he now considered himself a feminist?  How for every student who complained about how you only talked about “first nations and women’s history,” there were a hundred other students who thanked you for making them feel like they, too, were part of history? Or do you remember all of your male colleagues who told you that you were too nice and too friendly to be a teacher, or that what you were teaching wasn’t real history? But do you also remember how many students have thanked you for making your classrooms inclusive and how inspired they were by your passion and enthusiasm for history? Or how another male colleague that you admired told everyone that you were “naturally talented” at teaching? And how some of the most profound conversations you’ve had with your students about history have taken place during our weekly Friday-after-class trip to the ice cream shop? (Rain or Shine on UBC campus – I always get the chocolate).

You have so much love and compassion within you, and the work that you do changes lives. When you feel so tired that you just can’t go on anymore, remember this: you don’t have to do it alone. You have such an amazing community surrounding and supporting you, not to mention a really cute and sweet husband. And your work has a much greater impact than you will ever know. So keep up the awesome work!

Love,

Andrea

We’ll be back on Sunday with our regular Canadian history roundup. See you then!

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