I have reached mid-career, and am on sabbatical — a precious gift of time to think big and broad about the nature and scope of my scholarly work. So far, my year has been transformative in many ways. Because, I believe, “we teach who we are” (Palmer), it is time to reconsider how my teaching approach and practice is being transformed.
My teaching statement was last revised when I applied for my last promotion, to Professor of Teaching. It was 2018. Before the pandemic, before spending 4 years as Associate Head for Undergraduate Affairs, before spending 2 years as a Senator, before the Indigenous Strategic Plan and Black Lives Matter movement, before my dear Gran died — before all my assumptions about how and why I do the work I do were challenged, uprooted, rebuilt, torn down, rebuilt. The gift of sabbatical has given me time to peel back layers, to rest, to heal and learn to keep healing “from the inevitable wounds of everyday life“, to question and ponder and explore ideas, to work toward an integrated sense of self. I went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. I presented at conferences that took me from familiar London UK, to my first experience of New Zealand (adding a stop in Sydney for good measure). I’ve learned and explored outwardly and inwardly, seeking healing spiritually, physically, emotionally, and in relationships. Including my relationship to my job.
Last sabbatical I recalled the wisdom I learned at TAG (now CTLT) years and years ago (which I now realize probably should be credited to Brookfield): regularly put yourself in the place of learner. So I took a pottery class back in 2016, and wrote about it (see pottery | Catherine D. Rawn). Even without reading those previous blog posts, I remember regaining that disorienting and almost frightening sense of uncertainty, that ache for reassurance from the teacher, the hopeful thrill of attempt, the disappointment of failure and resilience in trying again. I did not keep up a pottery practice.
This year, I knew I needed to put myself in the place of classroom student once again. My goal was to rekindle empathy for my students. I’ve become keenly aware that the knowledge gap between me and my students is increasing each year. Although of course there is always more to learn about Research Methods and Statistics for Psychology Majors (i.e., the courses I teach most often, 2 sections each annually, for 15+ years), I now learn it from a place of relative expertise, which is fundamentally different than learning as a novice (references…). Yet my students continue to come to me as novices.
What I’m experiencing is sometimes called the “Curse of Knowledge,” which can be a tremendous barrier for educators, particularly as we develop increasing expertise (e.g., Shatz, 2023). Quite simply, the Curse of Knowledge means that once we really know something, we cannot un-know it. (See …add references… for elaborate explanations of this phenomenon.) To counteract this curse in the classroom, I rely on dialogue with my students. I am constantly asking them content questions, modelling, examining their work, and offering feedback as best I can, given our Teacher:Student ratio.
But although deliberate teaching strategies help me stay connect somewhat with their thought processes, I cannot anymore feel with my emotions what it’s like to look at an equation and not know how to read it. And as much as some educators might want to resist this idea, emotional reactions to content matter for learning.
This brings me to Drawing. For February and March 2026, I was a student in CDSR 100 Introduction to Drawing (Continuing Studies) at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Classes were three hours long, weekly, for eight weeks. There were 17 students in the class, from many walks of life, ages, and nations.
I kept a written and photo journal throughout the course, but didn’t know where it would lead, so I kept it private. After a few rounds of analysis, I’ve decided to share a few portraits that capture some core learnings and reflections from this experience. In addition to informing my next teaching statement iteration, I am assembling them into a research paper. The paper I’m planning is a scholarly personal narrative, approached methodologically as phenomenology, using methods of narrative portraiture–which is completely different than the post-positivist methods of quantitative psychology I have used and taught for decades. The research question guiding my research is: What are my lived experiences of being a student in a new (to me) discipline? (Which could not, of course, be answered quantitatively.) For now, I think the portraits can stand alone as blog posts, which I will separate. Stay tuned!