What helps educators stay rooted in their values when the academic landscapes around them begin to change? This interactive workshop explores how the pressures of university life can shape the ways we measure success and understand our place in higher education. Together, participants will reflect on the values that guide their work and consider what it takes to remain connected to those values over time.
Last year at MYFest, I invited participants to explore how “the stories we teach by” [https://myfest.equityunbound.org/events/the-stories-we-teach-by-shifting-the-pedagogy-of-the-distressed/] shape our pedagogy and educator identity. Together, we named some of the landscapes behind our work as educators and examined how the performance-driven culture of academia can influence the way we see ourselves and our place in higher education. My doctoral dissertation picked up where our conversation left off and led me to a different question: What helps educators stay rooted in their values when the academic landscape around them begins to change?
This workshop shares some of what emerged from that research. My findings suggest that recognizing the external demands of visibility, productivity, and performance is only the start. What is harder to see is how those expectations slowly shape the stories we tell ourselves about success, worth, and belonging. Over time, we can begin measuring ourselves by the same standards that surround us, making it harder to stay connected to the values that first drew us into our work.
Participants will engage in guided reflection, small-group conversation, and collective meaning-making around their own experiences of academic life. Together, we will consider how we stay connected to our values when institutional expectations pull us in other directions and, in doing so, explore what it takes to sustain an educator identity over time.
Rather than asking how we resist the pressures that characterize academic life, we will consider how we remain connected to who we are while navigating them. In the process, we will explore how becoming more aware of our inner and outer landscapes creates more room to choose our path forward. The goal is not simply survival, but finding a more intentional and sustainable way to live our academic lives.
