How might we rethink professional development in these dark times?
When I was a faculty member at SFU and teaching in the interdisciplinary program called Semester in Dialogue I was allocated professional development funds each year. These funds ‘rolled over’ meaning if you didn’t use them one year you could roll them into the next. I had twins about a year after starting my faculty job in a time when folks went to the university office at 8am and stayed til 5pm. It’s hard to imagine that I got up, rode my bike downtown, went for a quick swim and was sitting in my office at 8am most days. I was extremely busy managing a household, two kids and a full time job long before there was anything called ‘wfh’. I had no time to attend conferences in far off places and my pro d budget was untouched for many years.
I understood that in order to become a successful academic I needed to network with international groups to demonstrate that my work had impact at a global scale. How was this going to be possible with these little ones at home who needed me more than ever? I began to rethink my own goals and get involved in local projects with my students instead. At the time the universities had a strong focus on ‘global citizenship’ and ‘internationalization’ so I was going against the trend when I started working with the City of Vancouver on class projects.
Being a full time academic and a young mom of twins was beyond exhausting. I had little time to even think about going away on a long haul flight across time zones to network with colleagues. When I did travel to a conference in North America I would find myself sneaking out of the windowless ballroom back to my hotel room bed ordering a club sandwich via room service. Staring out the windows in far away urban landscapes, I was trying to remember who I was before having babies and becoming a faculty member.
I was so thrilled to have a moment away from work and home that I didn’t want to talk to anyone. The last thing I needed was to focus more on work. I needed space and time to remember my own voice. I had to pretend that the powerpoint presentations in the small breakout rooms were important to my so called ‘career’.
It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do with my professional development funds. I was teaching dialogue and it turns out the purpose of dialogue is to learn how to listen. If you are actually listening to the other person speaking in a dialogue then you have to be able to manage your emotional triggers and be present to the conversation. It was 2007 and the internet wasn’t yet filled with mindfulness quotes and courses on trauma informed practices.
I started to attend mindfulness workshops and focus my professional development on being in spaces that allowed me to hear my own voice. I started to find retreat centres where silence and nature was intentional. I found my writing would flow and my internal voice would re-emerge. Creative ideas need space to emerge and I never found them in conference ballrooms. I had many times where my professional development requests were challenged by the Dean - why are you taking a course on mindfulness when you are focused on sustainability education? I had to rewrite my proposals and make a strong case about why professors might want to learn how to handle their own emotions in order to teach students to do the same. These are not typically skills that we teach in a four year undergraduate program.
Fast forward to this spring as Adrian Sinclair and I are inviting folks to attend a retreat on Cortes island at Hollyhock and we are suggesting that professional development funds could be used to support the program. Why would connecting with nature and other leaders be important in this time of urban fires, massive political upheaval and climate chaos? Why might finding time to reconnect with our own voices and listen to other leaders who are also navigating this moment? It seems obvious to me but if you need support in filling out your professional development forms please reach out and we can get more specific about how listening and being immersed in nature without screens can be a transformative practice.
What is it that we really need as exhausted humans who have been working year after year on the same projects with the same people in the same institutions? We need a break to figure out who we are and what we are working towards. We need new ways to collaborate across systems and institutions. We need to lift our heads up above the boardrooms and staff rooms to imagine what is possible when we work together. We definitely need some new strategies.
We need time away from our screens and our colleagues so that we can remind ourselves why we do what we do. If we don’t have time to listen to our own voice, how can we imagine that we can listen to others?