The Present Professor: Authenticity and Transformational Teaching (Volume 3)

by Elizabeth A. Norell

Genres: Teaching

242 pages, Hardcover

Published December 3, 2024

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful contribution to books on teaching, particularly in the myriad works that it references. It's a good introduction to quite a few practices and habits that can help you stay in the moment in the classroom.

[Bonni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long been fascinated by the idea of presence, in our teaching and in our lives, more broadly. Liz helps us find ways to be more practiced at self-actualization and to then support our students in doing the same. This book is packed with resources to support our ongoing efforts at transformational teaching, while also recognizing that these endeavors are ongoing and we will never be "done" with the vital work of teaching.

[Beth Windle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book for a faculty reading group. Everything was fine about it most of the way through. Nothing particularly new or earth-shattering, but nothing too offensive, either. Reads like an extended Cliffs Notes for a bunch of other self-help books by people like Parker Palmer and Brene Brown.

But I was horrified when I got to Chapter 7, in which Norell recounts how she encouraged a conservative Christian student to file a Title IX report on another professor simply because the professor's discussion questions about sex and sexuality made the student uncomfortable (and seemed, to the student, to be different based on the gender of the students).

Instead of encouraging our students to give into their worst surveilling, punishing, and nuance-free instincts, which is exactly what bureaucratic university administrators most want, we should be guiding them toward full and functional adulthood in a complex world. If Dr. Norell were my colleague and she did this, I'd be gripped with fear and I'd stay as far away from her as possible. To my mind, a better piece of advice would have been exactly what Dr. Norell's promotion committee suggested (and which Dr. Norell seems to find laughable): the student should have gone directly to the professor, even via email, and explained her discomfort. If--and only if--the professor didn't respond in a productive way at that point should the student have gone to the professor's superiors. (Oh, and by the way--the school's HR eventually determined that the other faculty member hadn't done anything wrong.)

Having zero tolerance for true sexual harassment on campus does not mean assuming the worst of our colleagues at every turn.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Present Professor is a different sort of book about teaching, most of which talk about strategies to help students engage with the material and learn it more effectively. This book focuses on relationships (with oneself, one's colleagues, one's students) and discusses how inauthentic relationships can interfere with learning, while authentic ones can transform that learning

Liz Norell took a broad and idiosyncratic approach to her question: considering academic minefields, mindfulness, yoga, enneagrams, playing big, and confronting our biases. These were generally useful approaches, but it meant The Present Professor often felt like a self-help book that didn't sufficiently develop its ideas and was unrelated to the central thesis.

The Present Professor is very readable, with many stories and much self-deprecating humor. I imagined being at a workshop with Norell, which I'd think would be engaging and energizing. As a book, it wasn't what I needed.

[Ell · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you teach in higher ed, I recommend the Present Professor. It’s highly readable and well-researched. To give you a sense, I opened it on a flight thinking I’d skim for a bit before returning to my pleasure reading (Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, I recommend!). However, I was drawn in and read it the whole flight. I was pleased to see many of the texts I have read referenced. It has a bit of “touchy-feely-ness” to it in that it emphasizes self reflection and centering as essential to being a good teacher, but it is not over the top. I especially appreciate the high praise it gives to CTLs as being “shelters” and not “land mines” in academia.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the argument that Norell makes in this monograph; chiefly that presence matters to teaching and that being able to cultivate such presence is within the capacities of most mid-career academics. What felt a bit thinner was the second part of the book, when she fairly thoroughly explore methods for cultivating presence. While I don't disagree with any of the methods she presented, it was hard for me to see what the consequences of developing them would look like in the classroom context beyond just being a more open and empathetic and patient teacher.

[David Carr · Rating 1 out of 5]

For CTL reading group. I struggled to connect with this book.