Life in the fast lane (will surely make you lose your mind)

Samuel K Teague

Background/context. Pre-2019 in the tertiary education sector was the era of ‘slow-learning’; long lectures, lengthy discussions, and ‘slow-burn’ consumption of knowledge. In 2020, COVID-19 ushered in a pace of change that asked educators to adapt and pivot in ways that came at a cost, and I argue in this paper that this pace of change has only accelerated. COVID-19 sent educators ‘into the wild’ (Teague 2023), scurrying to adapt to fully online delivery and, for some, an identity shift away from being exclusively face-to-face educators and leaders. In the context of returning to the face-to-face classroom in 2022, the need to embrace hybrid learning models, and the disruption of ChatGPT, I argue that the ongoing pace of change in the tertiary sector is coming at a cost to educator wellbeing, peer-to-peer connection, and our identities as teachers. In December 2021, I wrote that ‘there is a special kind of grief saved for leaving a place that changes irreversibly while you’re gone’. Today, I apply these words to our experience in the tertiary classroom. That experience of loss sits at the centre of the proposed showcase presentation. The initiative/practice. The research underpinning this paper is auto-ethnographic in nature. Between 2019 and 2023, I collated field notes concerning my lived experience as an educator, and in particular, how I’ve navigated an identity transition while the tertiary sector shifted to fully online delivery during COVID-19, and then into the hybrid classroom in 2022. These field notes are the ‘data’ that underpins the analysis presented. Methods of evaluative data collection and analysis. Thematic analysis has been used to identify the principal themes embedded in my field notes. Those that are explored extensively in the proposed presentation are ‘identity’, ‘grief’, and ‘pace of change’. Evidence of outcomes and effectiveness. The proposed paper advocates for the development of a symbolic and tangible space within which educators can validate each other’s lived experiences during an era of relentless change. The paper is a ‘call to pause’; an opportunity to actively listen to each other and reflect on what we’ve lost that could have been saved, and what we should go back to retrieve while simultaneously embracing the future.

Life in the fast lane (will surely make you lose your mind)

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