By Dr Deborah Barros Leal Farias, UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture
Published 19 April 2023
This is a story of how chocolate and Tim Tams changed my life. To be more precise, how handing out free chocolate and Tim Tams to students taught me a great life lesson and helped me overcome my imposter syndrome.
For over 20 years I have been teaching university students in Brazil, Canada, and, since 2018, in Australia. And one truth about teaching is that teachers are always learning in this process. No matter how much experience someone has, there are always new questions and challenges. And surprises.
Probably my most life-changing experience came in the form a student anonymous feedback at the end of a course. I came from an undergraduate course ran right during lunchtime, from 11am to 1pm. Now, I don’t like to cook but I love to feed people. So, every week I’d go to the supermarket and buy different things to offer to students. As someone with a sweet tooth, my go-to choices were things like biscuits, cookies, and chocolates. The idea was simple: students would just grab one goodie from the bag and passed it around class while the lecture was happening. This means I was not paying attention to who was eating – an important element in this story.
Everything went as expected with this offer, as signalled by the absence of leftovers after every class. Until student feedback came in at the end of the course. As with every reveal of all students’ feedback, I was prepared for negative comments, which is a normal part of this process. But I was not prepared for this feedback: “Teacher only offered cookies and chocolate, never offered healthy snacks”. Wait, what?!
I showed it to my husband, who chuckled at the unexpected complaint. Days passed by and I couldn’t get this out of my head. Why would someone complain about no-strings attached, non-mandatory, free sweets? As I said, I wasn’t paying attention to who was eating or not, so there was no way I could have made anyone feel forced to eat them, as if I’d be personally offended if they had refused to partake in the collective sugar rush – the question “how dare they not take a Coles Ultimate Cookies 40% Chocolate Chip that I bought (four dollars per bag)?” did not cross my mind. Still, I asked myself: was I a bad teacher, supplying them with weekly morsels of potentially heart clogging, diabetes-inducing food items? Should I resort to the Reddit “AITA” community and ask the internet’s collective opinion?
At some moment in this self-reflective path, it dawned on me that I could take this feedback as life lesson - the point of this short piece. A case of food for thought (all puns intended).
"I was one of those teachers who read students’ end of term comments, dismissed the positive one and focused only on the negative."
Logically, all indication has been that I’ve done a good job as a teacher throughout the years. I’ve mostly received great feedback from students, and I have gotten a couple of teaching awards that have made very happy. But the feeling of being an imposter was a frequent companion throughout most of these years. Like a student who always sat in the front row and never missed a class, the imposter syndrome was always there staring me in the face. I was one of those teachers who read students’ end of term comments, dismissed the positive one and focused only on the negative. These revealed the ‘real’ me, followed by thoughts of “I knew it! I am a fraud! I’ve been made!”.
But the no-healthy-snacks comment “hit differently”, as the kids say nowadays. Someone was complaining about free chocolate and cookies.
Over time, the no-healthy-snacks comments made me realize two important things.
First, that if the only thing this student had to complain about my course and my teaching was my failure to offer celery sticks or rice cakes, I was doing quite fine. This was a surprising turnaround in how I usually dealt with negative feedback.
Second, no matter how much effort and love you put in, or overall positive reaction you get, you will never please everyone. Anything can be an object of complaint. And that’s OK. It doesn’t mean you are incompetent, nor a failure or an impostor – the “aha!” moment I so much needed.
The bottom line is that we should all pay attention to how we can do our work better. Constructive criticism from students is a fundamental component in this process, and they can really help teachers change and improve their course and their teaching practices. But people like and dislike different things. When applied to students’ feedback over how we teach means that not everyone will like us and our work, sometimes for things we have little or no control over or would never think to be a problem in the first place.
In the end, the reflection made me appreciate my work and stop doubting myself term after term. In my very good days, I think of myself and my teaching like chocolate: most like it but not everyone. And that is OK.
Life, as teaching, can be bitter but I’d rather focus on the sweet.