My Most Cherished Teaching Award

Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to have been the recipient of a number of awards for my teaching and educational leadership.

Not one of them, not even my coveted 3M Teaching Fellowship, measures up to what I got on the last day of class this year.

A young man who had been in my 2P90, 2P91 courses, and who had already taken 3P90 last year showed up at the last 3P90 class this year and asked if he could sit in.  It was the very last class of his university career, he explained, and he wanted his last class to be my class.  In fact, he was skipping a class in which he was registered to do this.  My insides just collapsed into an emotional mess.  What a tribute this was, and how honoured I felt.

And as I went around the room asking for comments on what each had learned, I invited our guest student to speak.

Speak he did. 

He began by talking about all he had learned in his 3P90 about  games and about himself, and ended with a heartfelt thanks that soon turned emotional.  Needless to say, I was myself on the verge of a meltdown as this poignant, deeply personal testimony came tumbling out.  I had been offered the Gift of Tears, a gift of which I feel singularly unworthy.

Isn't it amazing?  Our teaching touches students on an emotional level, even as hard-nosed and thick-skinned as they must be to get through the maze of today's university power structures.

This act, performed ingenuously in front of a group of strangers, was humbling and so very, very moving.

This was a teaching award unlike any other.

Finding their own voices ...

Our first-year learning circle has explored all manner of things digital during our discussions and presentations this term, including interactive media, censorship and the Net, being a digital citizen, community and identity in a digital world, and video games and narrative.

I think each of us has a better sense of who we all are, certainly my colleagues in this learning community have more insight into who I am as a teacher, as a learner, as a thinker, as a digital immigrant in the midst of digital natives, and as a human being.

But the greatest accomplishment of this course, in my view, will not be found as a targeted learning outcome on the course outline. Rather, this achievement comes from within every member of our learning circle.

Each student has found his or her own unique voice in the Academy and has begun to exercise that voice.

For some, this has been a relatively easy step. They have made themselves heard since the first class. For others, it has been a more complex process, taking weeks of quiet observation and interior reflection before summoning the nerve to speak. But each and every member of our circle (or rectangle, as we were corrected recently) has found a piece of his or her unique voice that has contributed at least once to our discussions.

In our last meeting, I told them that I spar with them verbally before each class as a way of telling them, "I see you, as an individual and as a person. You and your ideas are important to me. I hear and welcome your voice."

I am very proud of this little community.

Facing the last class is going to be tough.