The Skillful Teacher

particulars of your practice—this should be recorded in a message
or memo that is sent to your superiors on an FYI basis.
All of this advice stems from Brookfield’s Law of Employment.
This law holds that for any job you take you should act as if one day
you will face some kind of situation that involves pressure to remove
you from this same job. Taking the kinds of steps described above
in anticipation of that day may well mean that day will never come.
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14
I
f, as this book has argued, the purpose of teaching is to help stu-
dents learn, then the focus of your efforts clearly needs to be on
understanding how students are experiencing their learning and on
responding appropriately to this information. From this perspective
it may seem that attending to your own survival is selfish, narcissis-
tic, and self-indulgent. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Unless you find a way to navigate the roiling sea of emotions that
the experience of college teaching generates, you run a real risk of
drowning in swells of frustration, disappointment, or self-loathing.
And if you do go under, of course, you are of no use to your students.
So, in your students’ best interest, you need to pay attention to your
own emotional health. In this final chapter I explore three ways to
help ensure your emotional survival as a teacher: (1) developing a
working philosophy for teaching, (2) forming a support network of
peers, and (3) remembering the maxims of skillful teaching.