In the days of old, our job as educators were to prepare our students for the big, scary world outside, which meant indoctrinating them with the all encompassing powers of acquiring a university degree. Growing up I was sold on the idea of getting that coveted piece of paper, framing it and then just waiting for the job offers to start flowing in, along with the stable income, the several roomed house, the wife, and lets not forget, the perfect teethed children. But as I got into the later grades in high school, the conformity process became ever more cumbersome, infringing , jarring and taxing. I realized that parts of becoming the ideal Joe College didn’t fit my eccentric, free spirited and curious soul/innards. I didn’t want to do sciences. I didn’t want to become a doctor or lawyer. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I felt ill prepared and yet, here I was, set for five years of more tests, essays and academic competition.

Hurray! University! University = job. And so I graduated, I worked hard to achieve the highest accolades, the value induced letters, the awards, the scholarships and entered into university. After five years and thousands of dollars on courses and textbooks that I now use as weights, I had done it. I had the piece of paper. It was signed and dated. It was legit. Great. Wonderful. Hurray. A nice dinner with parents. “We are so proud”. Now what?

I walked away from university with a degree in theatre. A degree that said I could act. Apparently I couldn’t do it before that degree. And yet it didn’t feel any easier getting theatre work. My degree served no part in this affair either. No one ever asked for it, which didn’t come as too much of a surprise, as it didn’t seem useful during the audition process. In fact, when I finally had to present it to someone for an unrelated position, it was a task to find. It was no longer proudly up on the wall, but in a drawer somewhere, stored right under a series of tax documents. So what was happening? Where had I gone wrong?

Ten years later I was in the midst of doing my teaching certification. My Bachelor of Education. Yes. Another bachelor. And yet, I had taken the time away from school to consider what I needed to get where I wanted to go. The first bell rings. The students know they still have ten more minutes before class starts. I stare out unto the class, my practicum class, a buzzing, moving, laughing, belching, sitting, standing mass of individuals, seeing the world on their own terms, through eyes that no one else sees through, processing it through their very own brains and I am thinking, how can I teach them a singular lesson. And that’s it…you can’t. First off, a topic for another blog, it’s not what you can teach them, it’s what you can learn together, with you as the facilitator of this journey.  Secondly, you can have the intent of what your students will gain from your classes, but you have to remember that that is only an intent. You are ALWAYS going to have to check in, always formatively assess to make sure students are always on the same page. In the end, they are who they are and though they will be influenced greatly in their formative years and that your class play a small or big role in the creation of their own identity, you cannot force feed them anything. It won’t work. Well, it may convince them for an indefinite matter of time, but it isn’t helpful. You will have tricked them, as many others have that university equals all students’ successes. That’s just not true. Your students’ futures are up for discussion, but it’s a wide open discussion and the ball should be more in their courts than your own.

Remember, as an educator, in my humble opinion, our jobs are to facilitate critical mindedness, discussion, exploration, self-discovery and promote our students own abilities, desires, needs and hopes. You don’t have to come up with everything. Let them tell them what they are interested in, what they want to know and most importantly, where they want to go. It’s a lot easier, fulfilling and helpful for them. It’s my job to help them figure out what they want to do and if their not sure, giving them the confidence to be okay with not being sure and that that’s perfectly fine as well. Not what I think you should do, but what do you want to do? What are you good at? What do you like doing? Work takes up most of your life. Work becomes one of the biggest regrets of people’s lives.

University is not for everyone. University is not the answer. University does not guarantee you a job or happiness or wealth. University could, in fact, give you the opposite. We need to be honest and open with our students, giving them the best opportunity to succeed. That means allowing them to succeed in their own way, not predetermined and embedded in curricular goals, which to me, involves a bunch of unneeded spinning plates.

You want to paint? Great. Join the circus? Wonderful. Become a molecular biologist? Right on.

Why not? Really. Why not?