Successfully Failing

I was ready to pack my bags and head back to the East Coast when I read the course evaluations. It was my first semester at this university and my course load was different from what I used to. I could feel the tears that wanted to fall had me and there was a heaviness in my chest. I'd spent that semester trying to be like someone else and I'd successfully failed. I thought the best way to grow and be successful was to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor and boy was I wrong. Focused on what I perceived as negative had me stuck in a cycle of playing victims for weeks.

I’m not perfect and therefore can not all bad helped me shift into a growth mindset. I accepted the compliments found in the evaluations and used the others to create goals. All roads aren't meant for me to travel and so I had to do the work of building my own. It was my youngest sister that helps me the most through this part of my challenge. We shared stories from the view of the professor and that of the student and I built a new course structure based on our discussions. I ran my new course policies and procedure by college-aged daughter and highschool aged son to get their opinions. I pride myself on being a good educator, so I needed to grow. One of the biggest changes was the increased student input. I currently survey my students at least twice in the semester to hear their ideas about course content and structure... their responses continue to be shocking. I mean we know that we are all different but when you have several sections of 50 plus students in a course, you really get to see how different we are.

I have not perfected a style of andragogy, but I am committed to growth. I feel that the student are more engaged and the last person to conduct my student survey was surprised by both the number of responses and my ability to build a rapport with students during the pandemic. I decided to be unapologetically transparent about the imperfectly perfect I am and it has made a world of difference.

✨There will be times we miss the target but these moments are our true lessons.

✨If you are committed to growing, there’s no losing only winning and lessons.

How has your commitment to growth helped you?

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💛Mya

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