The Gap Between the Teacher We Are and the One We Want to Be

Recently, I shared a brief post noting a newly published meta-analysis showing increased perfectionism rates over time (using 35-years of data from college students). After I posted that, I felt conflict. I felt like it was important data when considering efforts to support faculty and foster change in higher education. But I also felt like that post warranted more. This is the more.

When I started teaching, I was in my late twenties and was teaching part-time at a community college. I worked a full-time job during the day and taught one night class each semester. Back then, night classes were the flexible option for what we call “return students” — students who are, generally, older and returning to school to advance their skills and may be pursuing a first or second degree or certificate to advance their career. I share that with you because it means many of the students in my class were my age or older than me. At the time, I had not built the self-awareness to recognize how much that dynamic influenced the way I approached my teaching and the way I suppressed my authentic self. Yes, part of this is simply being new to teaching and needing to find who I am as a teacher, but like all aspects of being human, it’s more complicated than that.

When I taught my first couple of classes, I can remember feeling extremely nervous about getting a question that I wouldn’t know the answer to. I also resisted being too kind. In response to these vulnerabilities, I donned a teaching persona that was intentionally tough and relied heavily on pre-scripted lecture notes to shut down inquiry and discussion. In short, I armored up through my teaching.

Fortunately, for both me and my students, my “armored” teaching didn’t last very long. I think I owe a lot of the growth that followed to my curiosity, which inspired me to want to know what my students were thinking in my class, and my experiences as an art student. They taught me to be vulnerable — I just needed some nudging to get there. I suppose it was my curiosity that drove me to voluntarily survey my students at the end of every class. I read every comment. Many gutted me. But there were others that held glimmers of light that I used as guides me. Those student comments gave me courage to change. One I will always remember because it was so spot on went something like, “Your class is so much more interesting and engaging when you walk away from the podium and leave your notes behind.”

For me, change happened slowly and consistently. Decades later, after moving away from teaching as my primary role and towards supporting faculty development, I began to learn about the scholarship of social psychology. Oh. My. God. It rocked my world. I began to understand the powerful ways that our innate need for human connection influences everything we do as humans. I learned about stereotype threat and how it interferes with a person’s ability to achieve their full potential, a significant contributor to equity gaps that disproportionately impact black and brown students and, in STEM disciplines, women — as well as other, less researched, populations. In retrospect, I recognized that my early behaviors in my classroom were influenced by my fear of falling into a stereotype of being too soft and lacking knowledge of my discipline. And, as a white, cisgender community college instructor serving students who are minoritized, I recognized how intentional I had to be to create an environment where students would lean in and trust me. For if they did not lean in, they would not achieve what they’re capable of achieving.

Last year, I shared a word cloud comprised of responses to an open-ended prompt I asked over 1,200 educators. I asked them to reflect on their past experiences and identify one memorable educator who influenced them in some way and then share two separate words that describe that person. The most frequently used words in the word cloud are: caring, kind, encouraging, compassionate, passionate, and supportive. Let’s put that another way. In the eyes of many educators, care, kindness, encouragement, compassion, passion, and support are the characteristics of a memorable educator. These are not armoring behaviors. These are courageous and behaviors that stem from “connective labor” (Pugh, 2024) and human connection.

Don’t we all want to be that person that our students remember later in life?

This brings me back to perfectionism, which I suggested in my previous post is a barrier to change in higher education. I still believe that to be true, but leaving that statement without unpacking it further feels very problematic. First, because it positions educational transformation in a deficit-based paradigm that falls squarely on the shoulders of faculty. I have far too much empathy for educators to suggest that they just need to be more willing to make mistakes in order for higher education to transform and be responsive to the skills needed in the AI era. It is not that simple.

So, let’s consider for a moment what perfectionism is and what it is not. Perfectionism, based on research of Brené Brown, is rooted in the question, “What will other people think?” Striving for excellence is driven by, “What do I want?” And that — right there — is a gap that holds potential for transforming education. If we want to be that educator our students remember later in life, we need to embody the characteristics that we value.

In my experiences, professional development is most often designed in response to, “What resource can we provide to support faculty with improving their teaching.” But if we are responsive to the moment at hand and the deep re-imagination that needs to happen in higher education, we must recognize that the resources faculty need more than anything else are connection and community.

Perfectionism is about the perception of others; it is a barrier to living a life that is aligned with our authentic values. That disconnect is an important component contributing to armored behaviors from in-person and online classes to the meetings we attend each day (in person or online). These behaviors keep our institutional systems stuck in a cycle of detection and surveillance, which sustains the type of power that privileges some humans and leaves others out.

Perfectionism has increased among college students and this, I believe, is a place of common ground that educators can lean into. Connective labor — the act of seeing another person and the experience of being seen by another — holds the antidote to perfection. Holding space for students and for colleagues has to be part of our road ahead.

Community replaces judgment with trust, which are conditions that bridge where we are and where we want to be. To find our way forward in the AI era, institutions of higher education need to invest in developing communities that support educators with recognizing the chasm between their current teaching behaviors and the teacher they want to be — and all of us need to strive towards creating workplace cultures that inspire and build the courage to bridge that gap.