Know Your Profs is an ongoing series of profiles on the instructors at Camosun College. Every issue we ask a different instructor at Camosun the same 10 questions in an attempt to get to know them a little better.
Do you have an instructor that you want to see interviewed in the paper? Maybe you want to know more about one of your teachers, but you’re too busy, or shy, to ask? Email editor@nexusnewspaper.com and we’ll add your instructor to our list of teachers to talk to.
This issue we talked to Camosun Accounting and Information Systems instructor Stuart Berry about being a storyteller, educating himself, and enjoying the sun.
1. What do you teach and how long have you been at Camosun?
Introduction to financial accounting and strategic management; 24 years.
2. What do you personally get out of teaching?
I love the conversation because I am a storyteller. Michael Oakeshott, in his book The Voice of Liberal Learning, writes that the value of conversation “lies in the relics it leaves behind in the minds of those who participate.” I believe that every moment in the classroom is a conversation, a story to be told, and my joy is sharing rich conversations with my students knowing that the process of learning is the true relic and value we all seek. By personalizing our shared stories, we become more vested in the time spent together. I gave up teaching content some years ago and instead focus on the process of learning. It is so much more fun working with my students as they become excited about their process of discovering what they need to know about their subject, and I get to be their learning guide.
3. What’s one thing you wish your students knew about you?
I really have one goal, which I believe is the goal of everyone in this business: the success of my students. My approaches may, at times, appear unorthodox but I ask my students to trust my years of experience and to know that if they are willing to actively participate and join in our 14-week journey together, they will find success. I would also like my students to know that I have all the time in the world for them and I am saddened when students get to the end of their term and tell me that they did not understand something, yet they never made the time to come and visit me and talk through their issues or concerns.
4. What’s one thing you wish they didn’t know about you?
Like any good storyteller, I can get off track.
5. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you as a teacher here?
Having the freedom to grow and educate myself in the art of teaching and learning, and in the process I have come to better understand my relationship with my students, my craft, and what keeps me here.
6. What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you as a teacher here?
Losing sight of the richness we have to offer every day; however, maybe I needed those moments of negativity to help me better appreciate our craft and the lives we impact and change.
7. What do you see in the future of postsecondary education?
We are in the middle of a period of “what we learn” for the sake of an external, economic imperative rather than a time of “that we learn” for the sake of understanding each other and our inter-relationships that allow us to connect with the world we inhabit. There needs to be balance and the current swing of the pendulum has created an imbalance towards Pascal’s spirit of geometry, a clearly defined, reasoned, and rule-bound vision of education rather than one that seeks to understand from a deep and personal level that Pascal referred to as the spirit of finesse. I cannot foretell the future of post-secondary education; however, I wish for a more balanced view of the educated person.
8. What do you do to relax on the weekends?
Spend time with my family, read, and enjoy the sun wherever I can find it.
9. What is your favourite meal?
Cantonese cuisine, or Mexican.
10. What’s your biggest pet peeve?
Years of unused office hours and closed, inflexible minds: what a waste.