Education
Introduction
As I write this in spring 2025, I am both a post-secondary student and an instructor. With an MFA and an M.Ed (forthcoming), I’ve spent many years in and around educational institutions as a learner, a teacher, and a precarious worker. Over time, I’ve developed complex, often conflicting feelings about education: what it promises, what it demands, and what it actually delivers. This page is a space for me to reflect on my relationship to education, beginning with a positionality statement that outlines where I’m coming from and how that shapes the work I do.
My Positionality
Since 2020, I have worked as a sessional instructor in post-secondary education, following a background in community-based, non-profit arts education that began in 2015. My academic and professional life has been defined by precarity: I never know how much I’ll be working from semester to semester, which means I cannot plan, save, or meaningfully improve my living conditions. Coming from a background of poverty, I’ve found that this work does not offer the upward mobility or security I was led to believe it might.
I teach in what is often referred to as a “rural” context: an area with fewer institutional resources, opportunities, and visibility. Without the financial means to relocate to a more central or well-resourced location, I remain at the geographic and economic margins of academia. These margins are not neutral; they shape what is possible for me professionally, artistically, and personally.
Despite holding multiple teaching appointments at different institutions, I remain one of the most vulnerable workers within these systems. My position is insecure, underpaid, and structurally invisible— yet I am expected to project authority and stability in the classroom. This contradiction is a defining feature of contingent academic labour. My position has many different names: sessional instructor, contingent faculty, non-tenure track faculty, or adjunct, to name a few. But these terms do little to clarify or validate my actual working conditions. Institutional language often serves to obscure rather than reveal the reality of labour, making advocacy difficult and collective identity fragmented. The reality is: I am a part-time gig worker.
I have found that this form of academic labour, despite its intellectual demands and high degree of specialization, mirrors the conditions I previously experienced in retail. It’s not uncommon for me to stretch myself mentally, physically, and emotionally beyond what is sustainable. I live with a constant awareness that I am teaching amongst the ruins; what feels like the end of a viable future in this profession. I worry not only for my own stability, but for the future of my discipline(s) more broadly. Despite these concerns, I continue to show up for my students, my peers, and the work itself— though always under conditions of scarcity, always having to prove myself with fewer supports than my more securely positioned colleagues (not that they have much more).
This is where I speak from.
Educational Leadership
After studying education informally through mentorships and formally through the process of obtaining my Master of Education in Educational Leadership, I have had time and space to think about the value of strong educational leadership. Earning my degree in a post-secondary environment embroiled in neoliberal decision-making and a leadership scandal has provided additional fodder for thought: What is the purpose of educational leadership? Who am I as an educational leader? And what can I do to live my values and improve the classes I facilitate?
"A host sets the table for dinner. This means devoting time and attention to creating a “container” for learning—from the tone you set to the physical arrangement of the learning environment to the sense of purpose you invoke when you open a convening. ... As a host, you have the power to change the structure and, by extension, to transform people’s experiences. Experiences are the fabric of culture." (p.4, Dare to Lead by Brené Brown).
Leaders-as-hosts, a term drawn from Brown's writing, is a new concept to me, but one I deeply value. I have noticed that people must be cared for and made to feel welcome in order for them to open up enough to learn and share within a group. This human element is often ignored for the sake of time and budget, but that’s a real colonial and neoliberal mindset. If we, as leaders and educators, truly value a culture of safety, then we must think of the human needs of the folks in the room. When I worked at Nanaimo Art Gallery, I was genuinely surprised when one co-worker picked up a bouquet of flowers and put out a pot of tea before a workshop. Another (Indigenous) co-worker made fresh bannock for a staff meeting about how to approach land acknowledgements, and it put everyone at ease. These were small gestures, but coming from a mindset that the workplace is corporate, not kind, I never felt so valued. This type of generosity from a facilitator is memorable and surprising for many, myself included. I still remember the things we discussed and did in those meetings years later. I try my best to do the same for others now. I think of my classrooms as a meeting place, not just a learning space, which has been transformational in my relationship building with students. Even in my online courses, taking the time to include content that's personally enriching and not just educational has made a difference.
"How do we get a group of diverse educators or leaders—with competing needs and priorities—to become collectively efficacious? We do it by listening to them, hosting them, lifting up their stories, and creating opportunities for relationship building and deep dialogue" (p.3, Dare to Lead by Brené Brown).
One front that I'm still wrestling with in terms of educational leadership is building relationships with colleagues. While I love chatting with others about their approaches to course design and facilitation, I am hampered by my status as a sessional and some individuals' lack of curiosity toward the future. As a sessional, I am never fully part of a department, and this lack of certainty bars me from participating in many meetings and events, which makes being a regular in the department difficult. And some more seasoned colleagues, while they have a wealth of experience, have become entrenched in ways of working over the years that they're unwilling to change or examine. I believe this alienation and stagnation prevents our departments from asking existential questions we need to ask about our discipline, such as: What role does art play in the time of Generative AI? How do video games teach us? And what recent art movements have occurred that are changing how we think about and interact with art?
In the book On Leadership by John W. Gardner, there is a chapter titled The Nature of Leadership in which leadership is defined as “the process of persuasion … by which an individual (or team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers.” A leader is but one role among many, and while it is important, it is part of a greater system that requires the support and uptake of many people. A leader must have the support of constituents, including colleagues and subordinates, in order to operate successfully. Gardner takes care, however, to outline that leadership shouldn’t be confused with status, power, or authority. The most successful people in this field gain and earn respect. He also highlights that leaders are forward thinking, aware of their organization’s context and setting, have vision (“intangible values”), can manage conflict, and are always thinking of ways to update and renew organizational structures. I think these are all important aspects to consider and meditate on, given my particular struggles.
Furthermore, In a chapter titled Learning to Lead by Dr. Bruce Beairsto (2004), it is written that ongoing and dedicated learning is the bedrock that supports and reinvigorates leadership. Much like Gardner’s text, Beairsto argues for the necessity of both leadership and management working in tandem. These are skills that are constantly being learned while they’re being practised. An effective leadership figure should model best learning practices and commitment to their organization in a way that makes others want to do the same. This combination of skills and commitments has to be developed—no one arrives into an organization with them fully formed. A school is a hybrid place that requires a hybrid role. A school is both a community and a bureaucracy, so its administration should strive to build relationships and ensure that operations run smoothly. It requires emotional intelligence in addition to book smarts, but the relationship building should always come out on top. Everyone in every role "can, and should, lead," which strengthens the organization and its relationships.
Both Gardner and Beairsto discuss the that there’s also an importance to good modelling and effectively playing the role you want to see in your organization and the world. They acknowledge the hierarchical nature of leadership while asserting that it, although modeled in a top-down fashion, has potentially positive outcomes for everyone in an organization. A teacher, while not a principal, can model the school’s values in their classroom. Most importantly, the texts note there’s no such thing as a perfect leader—only people committed to their role with all the tools and knowledge they can gain.
In particular, I really appreciate how Gardner couples leadership and management, and how he decouples leadership from greatness, power, status, and elitism. It means a lot to me, someone of a low-income working-class background, that he believes that leaders are not a fixed class, but one that anyone can join through expertise, education, experience, and dedication. It's vision, cited as a key attribute that sets leaders apart in Gardner’s text, that truly defines leaders. Since coming to this understanding, taking the time to dream has become a priority. So much gets lost in the day-to-day grind, but it takes a bit of daydreaming to think about what 'could be.' Beyond labels or already-named systems, how can we make a better future based on where we are now?
In its simplest terms, I think Garner's text is saying that a leader is a figurehead that becomes a symbol to be embraced or blamed by those they lead. A leader is someone to hold accountable and be accountable to. This is a healthier understanding of leadership than simply naming "great people" (MLK, Churchill, Gandhi, etc.) because the idea of leadership can become too aspirational or mythological. In fact, I didn't see myself as a leader for most of my life because of the types of leaders always cited. It's a known fact that women and poor people don’t often get to be on top. But Gardner’s insistence that leaders are regular people who choose to commit to a role is refreshing. It offers a practical way to view leadership— one I can even see myself in.
All of these writings, and the ones listed on my notes page, continue to make me reflect: how do I come across in the classroom I lead? How can I do better? I know how I want students to see me: as a fair, relationship-oriented leader who genuinely cares about the topics we’re studying. One of the biggest parts of my job is creating a framework for useful learning experiences, ones that are flexible and responsive to the people interacting with it. At the end of the day, it’s not just my classroom, it’s our classroom, and I have to embody that belief in how I design and deliver my courses. As an educational leader, I'm still a work in progress but I continue to do the work.
My Academic Activities
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Selected Notes on Educational Resources
- The Alienated Academic: The Struggle for Autonomy Inside the University by Richard Hall
- The Art School in Ruins by J. Beck & M. Cornford
- Coachable Moments: Identifying the factors that influence managers to take advantage of them in day-to-day management by Christina Turner and Grace Mccarthy
- Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
- Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
- How to Build a Life in the Humanities: Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance by G. Semenza, G. Sullivan Jr.
- How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation by Marc Bousquet
- How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation by Natalie Loveless
- Students cheating with generative AI reflects a revenue-driven post-secondary sector (Salmaan Khan, The Conversation, Feb. 2/25)