I started teaching because a course needed coverage for a few classes when the regular instructor needed some time off. This snowballed into the next semester when I had three courses given to me with two days notice. There was little time to prepare, few materials for me to draw from and incoming students who I knew were coming out of a rocky first semester.
I picked my battles, preparing for economics as best I could and leaving the other, business ethics to be whatever came up. Sounds like a casual approach but also I should say I was sleepless that entire first semester. The stress was the worst.
I cannot say I taught ethics because I did not teach. I welcomed topics each class from the students. Half of our students were from northern India, the other half were Canadian students from the region. It became a forum for discussion. By the time I got some lesson plans even drafted we had already talked about cultural differences, caste systems that were explicit versus inequality in our city that was not talked about openly, we had discussion about the land back movement, social housing, social enterprise, colonization, the climate crisis and fish farms. We talked about what it was like for our new students to Canada to be having their first ever jobs, having to cook and clean for themselves and leaving homes where some of them had never even had to rise from a table to get their own glass of water to drink (insert gasps from our Canadian students here). I had instructors who were trying to teach down the hall from us come and close our classroom door so their students could hear their lessons above the cacophony coming from my classroom.
During that semester we ended up with more people in our classroom than registered. Students were popping in to join the conversations from other disciplines. I was receiving photos of students meeting outside of class in each others’ homes sharing meals, learning each others’ customs and becoming friends. We had to move to a larger venue. Fifty students were showing up and I had seats for thirty.
It’s funny I often think of that as my best class ever. No intention, no design, I opened the door and things just happened. I was part of, but not centred in the conversation. I opened the door each class not even knowing what we might be talking about that day and we negotiated final grading. Everything since then has had some formula for design or prepackaged or pre-thought out agenda.
With some of the readings we are looking at now. I wonder if the positive responses in that class were really a symptom of something else, some relief from tensions the students were experiencing at the program level. I feel sad I didn’t evaluate it better at the time. While it was a positive experience if we had properly evaluated it at the time we could have captured some learning as practitioners that would have fed back into our program. Being a few years out and trying to evaluate? Not ideal. I think if I happen to come across this unicorn of a class again I will most certainly attempt to evaluate it so I can capture some of the magic and carry it forward into other classes.