Document Type
Lecture
Publication Date
10-22-2025
Abstract
Look, up the lectern! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s Super Professor! Super Professor is the charismatic guy in a tweed jacket who appears onscreen whenever a film or TV show depicts a college educator at work. Super Professor usually fulfills gendered, racialized, and other stereotypes about academic expertise, and his lectures are so entertaining that students effortlessly learn just by sitting there in the lecture hall. Super Professor never fumbles, fails, or fouls up because he’s perfected the art and science of teaching. But in real life real-world classrooms, teaching is never a perfectible undertaking. Every educator, from their first class to their last, is always learning how to help facilitate learning, and learning by definition always includes making some errors and missteps, getting feedback, correcting mistakes, and trying again. Moreover, educators and their students are human beings and it’s just a fact that people will sometimes mess up, no matter how well we plan a class or how expertly we facilitate the learning environment. In this talk, I examine the myths and misconceptions that contribute to the popular and the scholarly discourse depicting teaching as a perfectible activity. I show why we urgently need to normalize the ongoing challenges of effective teaching, including the ways that things can routinely go wrong in the college classroom. While evidence-based course design and teaching practices can reduce the odds of snafus, in the context of inequities, disconnection, distrust, failure, and fear in higher education, struggles and setbacks are “situation normal” for teaching and learning. I argue that one specific, proven way we can normalize mistakes as both individuals as well as institutions is by talking more about teaching. Building and strengthening our pedagogical communities of practice, including improving and diversifying our methods for evaluating teaching efficacy, is a sure-fire way to begin normalizing educators’ setbacks, struggles, and snafus.
Relational Format
presentation
Recommended Citation
Neuhaus, Jessamyn, "Real Talk about Teaching: Normalizing Educators’ Setbacks, Struggles, and Snafus, with guest speaker Dr. Jessamyn Neuhaus" (2025). Events. 168.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cetl_events/168
Accessibility Status
Searchable text
Comments
This event was held in the Johnson Commons East Ballroom. Jessamyn Neuhaus is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and a Professor of Education at Syracuse University.