Introduction
“The way of teaching demands a long journey that does not have any easily identifiable destination. It is a journey that I believe must include a backward step into the self and it is a journey that is its own destination.”
– Robert Tremmel
Teaching sounds simple – it is familiar and inherent in many aspects of our lives. We have all taught someone something – to make a recipe, tie a shoe, or operate a drill. Despite how deeply ingrained teaching is in our lives, teaching is an art, requiring those who practice it to become masters of their craft. Teachers have the power to impart wisdom, inspire learners, and support students in learning both within and beyond face-to-face and online classrooms.
The practice of teaching within the college context is far from simple. Learners come to your classroom with a wide range of learning abilities and styles, cultural backgrounds, personal experiences, and unique characteristics. As a faculty member, you must consider and meet the needs of a diverse student body through culturally-responsive policies, curriculum, teaching approaches, and modalities. The learning environment you provide must build the capacity and desire in your students to continually learn and develop. This requires you to embrace and to role model learning with passion. To ensure this context of supportive learning, you must engage in continuous quality improvement through assessing and evaluating your curriculum, your assessment approaches, your delivery of services, and most importantly, yourself.
Centennial’s Academic Plan
To support your ongoing development and innovation in teaching and learning, you are challenged to align your growth with the strategic directions of Centennial College. Guidance can be found within the Academic Plan 2021-2025 Building Leaders and Changemakers. Mapped to the 3E’s of Enrolment, Employment and Empowerment, this plan provides Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) that when accomplished, will prepare our graduates for a new world of work and learning. These WIGs offer powerful and important direction for you as a teacher in areas such as inclusivity, internationalization, global citizenship, leadership, work-integrated learning, online and technology enabled learning and, research and scholarship.
Centennial College’s Academic Plan underpins and informs all College activities. As a faculty member, it’s critical for you to not only have a comprehensive understanding of the College’s Academic Plan, but actively ensure the facilitation of the specific directions and goals through your teaching practice. You have a responsibility to actively engage with these areas of institutional priority as you work towards supporting innovation in teaching and learning excellence.
Consider the following questions for reflection to check your understanding of the College’s Academic Plan and ways you may contribute to fostering its implementation with your own work.
As an academic leader supporting teaching excellence and driving quality forward, what is your level of awareness of the College’s Academic Plan?
Think about your current teaching practice. In what ways does it align with the goals outlined in the College’s Academic Plan?
Think about where you want to take your teaching practice. What are some concrete strategies you would like to implement to further advance and/or operationalize the goals outlined in the College’s Academic Plan?
