I am a life-long learner. I walk across wide swaths of the open territory of a concept to touch on all the diverse ideas and possibilities connected to it. I tuck into thick woods to find the hidden or marginalized areas of thought. I find cool pools and take deep dives to immerse myself into ideas and subjects close to my heart. I am constantly reading and listening. When I return from my learning journeys I bring tattered journals, ticket stubs, special stones and shells as evidence to show and tell what I’ve learned and how I’ve changed.
With my students and colleagues I strive to show up as my full self. I strive to be human and silly, genuine and authentic, and create connections through shared experiences. I model learning by talking through processes, sharing emotions, and being transparent.
I am guided in my work by a compass that points towards creativity, curiousity, art, design, joy, wonder, delight, and love. I use technology to build relationships and for fun, interactive, creative expression. Aesthetics matter, and I seek to create and curate a beautiful and engaging learning experience for my students.
I am honoured to be part of the learning journey of the learners in my courses. I make way for learning by creating pathways to new structures, knowledges, information, ideas, and ways of thinking and knowing. I sweep leaves and sticks out of the way, and illuminate the learning path with fireflies of idea and inspiration. I lift up students and the wisdom, prior knowledge, and lived and living experiences they bring to learning. I amplify student voice by providing spaces to practice speaking up, and surfaces to echo off of. I respect learners as whole people, with choice and autonomy, and teach in such a way that honours that they have full and complex lives outside the classroom.
I strive to decolonize my teaching through placing value on relationships, wholism, information sharing, and place-based learning. I celebrate Indigenous artists, authors, activists, advocates and heroes with my students. As a white-settler on stolen land I am committed to the responsibility and accountability I have to decolonization and reconciliation.
My teaching is informed by radical pedagogies, anti-racist and anti-capitalist organizing, and abolition theory. My work is grounded in a fundamental belief that teaching and learning can be part of the path towards liberation, dreaming new visions, and care for the Earth.
How I wrote this:
This Teaching Manifesto was written by following the guided process laid out in the Charlotte Burgess-Auburn’s book You need a manifesto (2022). In summary, I began by brainstorming what I like to do in Teaching and Learning and what really lights me up and makes me glow (Nolan, 2023). Next I developed metaphors from that list to describe what each item was “like” (for example, “Celebrating Indigenous heroes is like unleashing a million fireflies into the night to light the way”). I then highlighted and grabbed key words and metaphors from those items and sentences and put them into a new list.
The next step was to go out looking at other people’s teaching statements and manifestos and creating a digital collage of cut-outs, ideas, and inspiration from the outside world. After that was the “steeping” stage where I gave myself time to think about all that I had collected and started to group my original list as well as the collected materials into themes. From there I began the writing stage and wrote a brief paragraph for each theme.
My Teaching Manifesto is a living document that I will continually revisit, edit and change. As Burgess-Auburn explains, the manifesto acts as a mirror for me to hold up to my own work and test how my work is matching up to what I have written as my grounding values and guidelines. From there I can reflect, question, and adjust to be sure my work is matching up with who I claim to and strive to be.
References
Burgess-Auburn, C. (2022). You need a manifesto; How to craft your convictions and put them to work. Ten Speed Press.
Nolan, C. (2023). Joy as an antidote. Keynote talk. Studio23 Conference, BC Campus. Vancouver, BC.
Image Attributes
Photos by Marnie Rochester (stones and daisy), Tim Mossholder (joy), Josh Boot (lights), Ugne Vasyliute (forest path), Ameer Basheer (slot canyon starry sky), and Cezanne Ali (woman with balloons) from Unsplash.com.