I’m naturally an over-sharer, and I’ve always been very comfortable with sharing personal (and medical) stories with my students, often to illustrate teaching points. But lately, I’ve found myself reflecting on how my personal experiences, not just my medical ones, shape my teaching.
As someone who is very much “what you see is what you get” and has the same personality, demeanour, and attitudes in every setting, I wonder whether there is any real separation between me as a person and me as an educator. Do we need to have this separation? Are there drawbacks to separating yourself from your professional identity? Are you actually benefitting your students by bringing your whole self into the classroom?
Join me in today’s blog while I try to find out if there is actually an answer to these questions. As with all my posts, this is long. So, buckle up!
Can you separate yourself as a person from yourself as an educator?
When did you start becoming an educator? Was it when you started the job, or when you started preparing for the interview? Maybe you had some experience and started delivering sessions here and there before going full-time (or, more often, if you moved from a “Research” to a “Teaching and Research” contract), and you started seeing yourself as an educator then. Perhaps you always saw yourself as an educator, or maybe you always were, but didn’t see yourself as such.
For me, it’s the latter. I only really “saw” myself as an educator when I moved from a “Research” post to a “Teaching and Scholarship” one. But was I an educator before? Looking back, most definitely. And when did it start? Funnily enough, I don’t know, but somewhere in childhood. I’ve always loved learning (still do). Learning new things is a great dopamine hit. One summer at 18 or 19, I was bored (kids, we didn’t have smartphones and were stuck with slow, expensive dial-up internet), and I got a newspaper CD with a few Russian phrases and pronunciations. I started writing down how each letter and combination sounded, and within a week I could read Russian aloud. Did I understand any of it? Absolutely not, but it was a fun, completely useless skill.
Yes, I got a kick out of learning (call me a nerd), but I also got a kick out of people learning from me, seeing them figure things out, and getting things right. The first experience I remember was when, in high school, I started tutoring my brother (0/10; don’t recommend tutoring family members unless you want to hear a constant “but my teacher didn’t do it this way”) and the daughter of one of my mom’s employees. Dearest reader, I LOVED creating workbooks and worksheets and walking them through problems, especially maths. At uni, I signed up for a tutor programme that mixed academic and personal tutoring, with peers in the year above. During my PhD, I taught Portuguese to a Dutch for 6 months just for fun. There was no language exchange or payment involved. I also taught dance classes in the evenings for almost two years. During my PhD and postdoc years, one of my favourite things was having students, teaching them lab techniques, and seeing them develop and learn. Reading all of this, can you believe that, while I was debating applying for my current job, I asked my line manager at the time: “What if I don’t like teaching?”. Can you believe it?? Neither can I, but it means I really didn’t see myself as an educator until I got this role, and I think that it still took me a while after that.
This long story is to tell you that being an educator, more specifically a medical/science educator, is my job and my professional identity. However, looking back at my life before this became my job, I was always an educator. Sometimes this was part of my actual job as a researcher, but more often it was outside of work and mostly done for fun. So, if I am an educator at work and in my personal life, can I really separate the two? And, maybe more importantly, do I have to?
van Lankveld et al. looked into how beginning medical teachers/educators see themselves and perceive the teaching role as part of their professional identity, which may include being clinicians and researchers. Interestingly, the researchers found that accepting that identity wasn’t straightforward for everyone, much due to the perception that teaching has a lower status. I believe that this was true for me, even if not purposefully. In academic settings, especially in research-intensive institutions, it can feel as though teaching is a less prestigious path, or a fallback for people who can’t “do” research. There’s that old saying: “Those who can’t do, teach.”
Perhaps this was part of the reason I never saw myself as an educator and, in fact, wasn’t even sure if I’d like it, even though I had been enjoying doing it since my first word was “learn”. Just joking; it was “mamã” (mommy) at 5 months old, because I clearly have a lot to say and needed to get started early.
You don’t become an educator in a vacuum
Have you noticed any changes in the way you teach over the years? Sure, some changes come with experience, especially in presentation techniques, slide creation, etc. But have you noticed differences in what you focus on? Maybe you now emphasise details you didn’t in the past, or you look out for specific things when teaching. Maybe you now pay more attention to subtle behaviours in students or signs of something. This might be because of your past experiences in your personal life.
As clinicians and scientists, we are experts in our field and can deliver lectures with exquisite detail. Nonetheless, no matter how much experience we have in our field, we will never truly understand some things until we experience them. You might be a very experienced surgeon and know how to treat patients with complex issues very successfully. But do you think you truly understand the patient in front of you and what they’re experiencing? Sometimes, even with decades of experience, you may not be aware of, or prioritise, things until you experience them yourself, either because you are in that situation or you’re supporting a loved one.
I have definitely found that my personal experiences, especially the medical ones, have shaped my teaching in various ways. Firstly, they’ve changed who I am. I can’t really tell you how many ways, because it’s hard to see from the inside. Perhaps those around me would be better placed to answer that. I’d like to think I’ve become kinder and more understanding, and maybe a little more pragmatic. And this changed me as an educator. Whether or not you separate your personal and professional identities, there will inevitably be some level of influence from one side to the other. This is because we don’t exist in a vacuum, and our lived experiences in various contexts of our lives will shape us as the central individual, even if you’re great at separating your identities.
For me, this has been true in a few ways. Although I don’t have a formal ADHD diagnosis (but I’ve been peer-reviewed), learning that I am neurodivergent came almost at the same time I started my current role. I’ve since learned so much about myself and neurodiversity, and finally understood the challenges I faced while going through the education system. As an educator, I’ve become passionate about supporting neurodivergent students and helping colleagues understand their classroom needs. I design my teaching sessions to be as inclusive as possible and give students opportunities to engage with the content in ways that best support their learning styles/needs. It also changed how I manage my work and productivity.
My other medical experiences have definitely also shaped me as an educator. I discussed some of these experiences in my previous blog post. I decided to share my experiences with my students because I wanted to focus on their development of language and communication and how important these are. I don’t think I would have such a strong focus on language, communication and kindness if I hadn’t experienced infertility, pregnancy loss and cancer (and all that came with those).
William Dace and colleagues wrote about professional identities and wearing many hats, drawing on William’s experience in clinical and educational roles. The authors discuss a model of continuously developing professional identity by blending the boundaries between identities. In these scenarios, we’re talking about switching between wearing a clinical hat and/or an educational hat during clinical simulations: this is often needed, as you may need to draw skills from one of your identities in such sessions, switching or merging them. This may also apply to blending the boundaries between our personal and professional hats.
Have you ever found yourself blending the boundaries between you as a person or patient and you as an educator? Do you think you can teach something in the same way after you have experienced it yourself?
When does being an educator stop being a role and become part of your identity?
What if we flip this story? Do you think your experiences as an educator are also shaping your personal identity? This is not the same as having professional boundaries or not letting work life leak into your personal life.
What you experience at work also shapes your personality. While we talk a lot about being an educator, we mustn’t forget that we interact not only with students in a classroom but also with colleagues. All of those experiences are part of being an educator, not just the actual educating part. Working in a toxic environment will inevitably affect you as an educator in a very different way than working in a supportive one. Whether or not this shows up in your teaching depends on many factors we can save for another (very long) blog post.
Do you find yourself paying a lot of attention to how people communicate, even outside the classroom? Do you notice details you don’t think you would otherwise? Maybe you now pay closer attention to different personalities in a group when you are out with friends, because you know how important they are when learning and working in a team. Maybe you once said something completely innocent that upset a student, and now you’re more careful with your language, even when you’re out with family and friends. You may have a student with a specific disability and needs you never considered, which now makes you more aware of accessibility when you’re out and about. I’m sure every educator out there has either experienced or will experience all of these scenarios (and probably many more). These work experiences also shape us as people and, hopefully, make us all better people. If you feel you’re not becoming a better person when you experience some of these in work settings, take a serious look at yourself and get a therapist! Every single one of us in the world can be better in our own ways. Thanks for coming to my TED talk!
As an educator, especially in clinical settings, one also faces expectations and professional standards. Do you hold yourself to different standards because you teach future doctors? Do you sometimes feel that you should know better, behave better or cope better because of your professional role? For those with children, have you blamed yourself for being harsher on your child than you would a student for a similar type of behaviour? Or do you use similar approaches at home with your children as you do as an educator?
Here, we return to the idea of “blending” boundaries and how, inevitably, no matter how well you keep your identities separate, there will always be some “leak”. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Is it possible to be too personal?
This is a hard one for me because I tend to blend all my identities and bring my whole self to every setting, making everything personal. I share a lot of my stories, and I’ve mostly found that it helps students in different ways. Sometimes they see a patient side; other times they see me as someone safe to talk to and ask for support. These are positive things, but is there a negative side to it? I think this is one of the reasons I started reflecting on this topic.
While I’ve found this to be a mostly positive experience (from student feedback), maybe some students have absolutely hated me sharing so much, but never told me so. Maybe not every student needs to know about my experiences. But when you know you’ve made a real difference to a few students by sharing your lived experiences, how do you know when not to share?
I guess the question I should be asking here is: when is sharing a personal experience useful to students, and when might it distract from what students need to learn? I must confess I’ve found this hard to navigate. Sometimes I share my experiences to illustrate teaching points, but I also share them as anecdotes in lighter situations to break the ice, etc. I’ve never noticed any student getting upset by something I shared, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. So, if you also overshare, how do you navigate it? Accepting tips.
Interestingly, I came across a review essay by Apondo and Berberat on how narrated experiences of illness shape professional identity in medical education. The article describes how exposing students to people with lived experience of various conditions and listening to their stories creates shared vulnerability. My favourite quote from this article: “It is in this expression of uniqueness that the true treasure is found: a knowledge that healthcare professionals gain only from those with lived experience of illness, unattainable in textbooks or artificial intelligence.”
I’ve experienced this firsthand, from a patient’s side, earlier this year. As part of the Year Two oncology case, my wonderful colleagues, Dr Karen Reed and Dr Hannah West, host a patient session where students hear patient stories and get to ask them questions. There were three of us, with different cancers and stages of disease (including someone who is in remission). It was an amazing session from our point of view, and my colleagues received such great student feedback. I also received some emails directly from student, explaining how hearing about our experiences as patients have shaped their views and will change how they treat their own patients.
Whatever our expertise, we are all patients in one way or another. Some of us educators have chronic illnesses, have experienced acute medical issues, or have cared for someone with an illness. All of us are and will be patients in some way, shape, or form. But should we leave the patient side at the classroom door? Is it ok to blend these boundaries, and when do we know we should switch to the patient hat?
What does this mean for the students we teach?
You’ll be relieved to know we’ve reached our final stage of reflection (I can hear your sighs of relief from here). In the end, whether or not you can/should keep your identities separate, it will affect your students. If educators cannot completely separate their personal and professional identities, then perhaps our responsibility isn’t to hide every personal influence. It’s to be thoughtful about what we model. Let me explain.
We teach through what we model, not just what we say
The curriculum includes sessions on professionalism, for example. How can you effectively teach a professionalism session if you arrive late and unprepared (without a reasonable excuse, obviously)? If you’re teaching a session on empathy, students will be looking at your behaviour and how you react when they struggle. If you’re wondering about the blending of identities, ask yourself: Can I teach students to be compassionate without allowing compassion to influence how I teach them?
We need to model being human, not just being professional
A lot of professionalism teaching focuses on decision-making, right versus wrong, and certain types of behaviour or language. But professionalism in medicine is so much more than that. It includes learning self-awareness, reflection, appropriate boundaries and the ability to recognise our own limitations. Doctors are human, not robots with tasks, and they need to learn that they don’t need (and can’t) be perfect all the time. They can reflect on their experiences and, hopefully, improve.
Perhaps the question isn’t whether we can separate the two
Perhaps the goal isn’t to keep your personal and professional selves separate, or to merge them completely. Perhaps it’s to understand the relationship between them, recognise how they influence each other, and make conscious decisions about when to allow them to overlap.
I don’t know that I can separate myself as a person from myself as an educator. I’m not sure I would want to. But I am learning to recognise how the person I am shapes the educator I become, and how being an educator shapes who I am.
Andreia