The core of my pedagogic practice for the past year has transitioned from working in a subject-based teaching context (Graphic Design at Chelsea) to now teaching professional studies; a broad base of nuanced skills (soft skills) to enable design students to develop their professional practice. Ultimately preparing students for the world of work, developing agency and the ability to identify and create opportunities. The departure from subject-based teaching to experiential learning has been a welcome change, as it also reflected some of my personal educational practice: Let’s Be Brief, a platform I co-run, which produces professional development content for creative practitioners through workshops, media and events.
Many of the topic areas are transferable, such as positioning, brand building, creating a job to preparing for a self-initiated project with a workshop called From Idea to Action. An area where ‘creatives’ are infamous for procrastination and can be debilitated in translating their ideas into tangible outcomes. American entrepreneur Scott Belsky has partly built an empire on such a notion with his first book Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality and founder of Behance. Having been so adept at teaching such concepts, it has been a humbling experience to reflect on my own challenges of translating and adapting my knowledge and behaviour in situ i.e. undertaking my PgCert.
Throughout this process, I have transitioned from a precarious living circumstance to buying a new home, and am currently undertaking renovations—all whilst teaching, other work commitments and last but not least, maintaining a family life.
Becoming a student again has challenged my own approach in regard to time management and prioritisation. The experience has reconnected me to the acute challenges some students face whilst at university, highlighting the significance of care and empathy — and the pivotal role pastoral support can play in shaping a student’s educational trajectory. A significant part of my role involves pastoral care for students whilst on their placement year. My experience so far has highlighted the impact of issues such as mental health and low self-esteem—issues that seem to have been exacerbated since the pandemic.
Bell Hooks, asserts that “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.”
We currently have a cohort whose predominant experience of university education has been shaped by isolation. Through my ‘First of the Month’ group tutorial sessions, I encourage my cohort to reflect on their experiences and achievements under a series of headers informed by the course learning outcomes.
The purpose of these sessions is to help students recognise the power of reflective practice by way of general empathy and interest in their peers — a process that gives them the opportunity to validate their personal journeys via peer-to-peer interest and feedback in an informal online setting. A sense of community is essential to creating a successful, mutually inclusive and outward-facing approach. Through empathy, we can learn as much about other as we do ourselves, because Trading Places is more than just one of the best movies of all time.
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Hooks, B. (1994) book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge),