By Kim Hellemans, Undergraduate Chair, Department of Neuroscience
My first experience teaching university students was in the first year of my PhD in 1999. I had been chosen to take over teaching labs for a third-year neuroscience course (Introduction to Behavioural Neuroscience) from a senior PhD student who was graduating. After one semester shadowing him, I was on my own.
I remember feeling a great sense of ownership…and fear! I was responsible for teaching four groups of about 5-6 students for each of the four labs. It was both time and energy-intensive (I taught the two-hour labs twice in a given week). Although this was 17 years ago, I vividly remember the feeling of tapping into my destiny – the sense of joy that came from teaching students how to slice rat brains using a cryostat, stain tissue, or perform stereotaxic surgery.
But there was something else, something more that made these teaching moments so meaningful. In those two-hour sessions, six of us packed into a tiny room waiting for an image of a brain slice to develop, or between drug administrations, or as we scored turning behaviour: rather than silence, I asked the students questions – about themselves, their courses, what they wanted to be when they grew up – and they talked.
As the semester waned, the conversations became deeper. We delved into some difficult topics (a student spoke about the trauma of losing his mother; another about the fear of “never making it”), but we also laughed and joked more. And I realized, in those moments, that what made teaching so powerful for me was the ability to create these connections with, and between, my students. In the succeeding years, the pursuit and success of making these connections was the foundation upon which my teaching was built.
I was 24 years old then – much closer in age to the undergraduates. The questions I asked, the conversations I had, I wouldn’t even fathom today. Indeed, with increasing age and wisdom, I have become less of a peer and more of a mentor. But what hasn’t changed is my desire to create these connections with my students.
To be clear, this is not about striking a friendship – there is a very fine line between being “friendly” and being “a friend,” and I think I toe this line fairly well. It’s not to say I have not developed friendships with former students (I have, and I do), but I believe that the value of my teaching is in the authentic desire to create these connections with my students.
Over time, I have had semesters, years, where I’ve pulled away a bit more. Brought less of myself to the table and more of what some others might envision to be the kind of relationship a professor “should” have with their students. But it doesn’t feel real; it doesn’t feel like me. Because I know that in order for me to excel in the classroom, I need to create those connections with students outside of the classroom. I need to bring in my own vulnerability, at the same time as holding space for the vulnerability of my students.
This past June I participated in spring convocation. It wasn’t the first time, but it did have a special meaning: this was our first official graduating class of students in the neuroscience and mental health program. As students walked up to be hooded, I knew each and every one by name, who they were, and where they were going next. With some students, the hugs were a little tighter, the eyes a little wetter. These were my students, my community. Much later, a parent came up to me and said: “Oh, were you the professor up there laughing and hugging all her students?” Yes, yes…that was me; that is me.