Treating people as human beings
I’m preparing for teaching this afternoon and I keep stopping and wondering what the point is. I’m feeling the loss of Dr Emma Lindley really keenly today. I didn’t know her well, we went to the same school, she was kind when I arrived as the new kid but even then she was in a different league. I was aware of her progress through academia, her PhD and her work on mental health. We didn’t meet up or chat on the phone or anything; we were friends on Facebook. Then, roughly 18 months ago my friend Rachel died suddenly. Emma’s post on Facebook in reaction to that news was something like ‘this is as unfathomable as everything else’. In the emotional chaos all around me Emma had somehow managed to capture it all in a simple statement and it was suddenly ok to feel anger and the unfairness of it all and that it didn’t make sense. Emma was there at Rachel’s funeral and her presence somehow helped me. We met for a drink a day or two after, that’s the last time I saw her… and now she’s gone. But this post wasn’t going to be about loss or being sad. It was supposed to be about something far more important and even less tangible than loss: the importance of treating people as fellow human beings, of valuing, not dismissing, taking seriously and being genuine. Both Emma and Rachel, in very different ways, had a knack of connecting with others on a genuine personal level. They could both make you feel like you were the only person in the world that mattered to them and that you were the most important thing at that moment. We all spend so much time rushing around not really taking in the people around us and as a lecturer I often talk to a lecture theatre full of people or a classroom full of students. I see student after student but do I truly engage with them or even see them as individuals, as someone other than a student? Probably nowhere near enough. So today in memory of two amazing young women, I’m not going to have meetings with students, I’m going to have meetings with people; I’m not going to teach my Employment Law class, I’m going to help a group of individuals learn and as I go through the rest of the day and week, maybe, just maybe I’ll manage to convey the same sense of being valued that both Emma and Rachel so often managed to convey to others.
Lovely to hear a ‘thanks for today’
‘Thanks for today’. Just three little words made all the difference to me earlier this week. I’d been teaching my first ever Legal Skills workshop block which runs over 4 hours from 9am to 1pm. I was pretty happy with it. Some of the timing was a little off and it could do with a little more activity based stuff in the first half but essentially it worked well. It was quite hard to gauge the student reception. They were pretty alert, mostly on time, they came back after breaks, they did the tasks, they asked some sensible questions… and many said ‘thanks’ in the sort of generic way you say thanks when you are leaving somewhere where you’ve had a not too horrid time. However, 3 students separately did more than that and made an effort to come by, make eye contact and actually say ‘thanks for today Jess’. None will have known how nervous I was before I started that session and none will have known how welcome their comment was after 4 hours of pretty full on teaching. Knowing that to some students I made a little bit of a difference is why I do what I do. So, the nerves have gone now (see earlier post) and have been replaced with a very familiar end of September feeling – a sense of happy exhaustion.
Teaching is about to start and I am getting more nervous by the minute
Why? I’ve been doing this for a while now. My first lecture is an Employment Law lecture providing a brief history of employment law and an overview of the key institutions. I first gave it in September 2007 and it hasn’t changed substantially. I know what I’m doing – and yet, the little butterflies are slowly turning into big winged dragons in my tummy. And it’s not like I am not prepared. All my materials are ready, copied and laid out in my office for the first week, the second week is ready – in fact apart from a total of 6 lectures across my 4 modules, everything is prepared. If I fall under a bus today, someone can come in and just run with it… so the nerves.
I don’t like being the centre of attention, not really. I’m too self-conscious. I’m not naturally extrovert. I’m not shy exactly and I do have confidence in my abilities but I’m actually more of a ‘behind the scenes’ kinda girl. But let’s face it, a lecture theatre full of about 100 strangers or pretty much strangers is a scary prospect and it’s even scarier if it falls to you to keep those 100 strangers entertained and informed. It’s a performance and performances are nerve-wracking. The adrenalin is part of what makes a good performance – so I keep telling myself. I will therefore be focusing my efforts not on trying not to be nervous, I know that won’t work; but on trying to channel those nerves away from dry mouth, can’t speak, sweaty palms kind of nerves to productive nerves.
For all those of you new to teaching who are nervous about it, I’d love to tell you it gets easier and the nerves go away but they haven’t for me, not at the start of term anyway. It’s just that I have experienced all of this before and therefore know that I will get to the end of the lecture and when I do I will have loved it. I will be exhausted but elated and because I know that, stepping into the lecture theatre on Monday at 11am will be tummy – churning hell – but in a good way, if that makes any sense at all.
My Conversations 