😈 Esteemed Fakeout
[Pause. Smile. Look around. DO NOT start with hello.]
[Read from printed sheet]
Esteemed faculty, distinguished guests, and graduates. Today, we stand at the intersection of tradition and innovation. Education is not merely a destination; it is a journey. As we embark on this next chapter, let us embrace lifelong learning, foster meaningful connections, and leverage our unique strengths.
Would you like me to suggest some ways to add more academic flair to this speech?[Pause. Look at the sheet. Frown. Tear it up.]
👋🏽 Welcome
Let’s try that again, shall we?
Good evening, faculty, friends, families, and my fellow patrons of Friday-afternoon online breakout rooms.
🖼️ Paint the Picture
Picture this… It’s two-thousand-fifteen. I’m twenty-three and a Computer Science student at Concordia. Got a sweet gig as a web developer at a silicon valley wannabe in downtown Montreal.
Makin’ apps and takin’ naps.
📉 Failed Standing
Fresh from my mid-day massage. That’s right, in-house masseuse. New email, top of the inbox, subject: “Your Concordia Academic Status”.
“We regret to inform you that you have been assigned a Failed standing. You are required to discontinue studies for a period of one academic year, at which time you may apply for readmission.”
Well, I’m already a hotshot web developer. School can get bent. I’ve already made it! After all, software development is the most desirable skill in the world, and that will never change!
📞 The Call & Suitcase
Months later, Susan Ajersch, longtime champion of the MTP, calls to offer me a technical support job at the University of Sherbrooke.
My job for the MTP was to lug around a suitcase full of cables, microphones, cameras, and speakers, and set them up in classrooms from Dawson to Vanier; from Champlain to John Abbott. I swore an oath in blood to guard this suitcase with my life or doom the online students. MTP classes were hybrid, meaning they contained both face-to-face students and online students. It was my duty to be the online students’ proxy in the room. A student online raises their hand - I raise mine. If they type a comment in the chat - I give my voice to the virtual.
🔮 Psy-op
I listened to lessons on “ped-a-go-gy”, a word I did not even know existed. I was sitting in rooms during classes like College Teaching and Course Design and Instructional Strategies for Active Learning. I now believe this job was actually a psy-op, because I was surprisingly fascinated! I found myself envious of the people in the room. They were so clearly passionate about teaching and learning, that they sacrificed their precious time every week.
🔥 Realization & Motivation
I realized my Computer Science brain mapped directly onto the teaching process. Defining user requirements when building an app is strikingly similar to defining student learning objectives when teaching a course, which are the basic building blocks of good pedagogy.
“I think I can actually be a good teacher!”
That realization lit a fire under me. I re-enrolled at Concordia and finished my bachelor’s degree with a force and motivation I did not know I possessed.
🫴🏽 Job Offer
Then, luck intervened. The summer I graduated, a Computer Science teaching position opened at John Abbott College. Now, to be clear, this meant giving up the masseuse. And, let’s be honest, a good chunk of the paycheque. I said yes without thinking twice.
📈 MTP as a Student
Teaching at Abbott gave me the opportunity to finally take the MTP - as a student this time, alongside classmates I deeply respect.
Last year, I completed my master’s thesis on peer assessment in Computer Science education. Shortly after, I gratefully accepted a new position in the MTP… as a teacher.
From tech support. To student. To faculty member.
🪞 Reflection
Remember twenty-three-year-old me, absolutely certain that software development would never change? Well. It changed with the rise of generative AI. The skill I thought made school irrelevant is now something a chatbot can do for you. It can write passable code just as easily as it can write a passable essay.
But here’s what I learned the hard way: the easy path is seldom the learning path. In twenty-fifteen, my life was frictionless. I had a job, a paycheque, and free massages, but no deeper reason to show up. So I didn’t, and I failed. What brought me back wasn’t a shortcut. It was sitting in a room, week after week, watching people grapple with hard questions about teaching and learning, together.
😱 Friction
Every piece of software I ever built was designed to remove friction. Now my job is to put it back.
That speech I tore up at the beginning? It took about four seconds to make. It was smooth, polished, and said ab-so-lute-ly, nothing. This one took me weeks. It was hard, and I’m better for having written it. That’s the whole lesson: don’t let anyone, or anything, take the hard part away from your students.
➰ Human in the Loop
So who protects the hard part? For years in the MTP, I thought I was the tech guy. The proxy for the students on the other side of the screen. Remember, when they raised a hand, I raised mine. But it turns out I was learning the most important job in education: being the human in the loop.
This has always been our job as teachers, but now more than ever. To be the one in the room who notices the student who’s lost, who asks the questions that make them think, who protects the friction, because that’s where the growth, and the learning, happen.
💬 Quote
Political theorist Hannah Arendt, in her 1958 essay “The Crisis in Education,” wrote:
“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.”
As I see it, being the human in the loop is how we assume that responsibility.
🙏🏽 Thanks Part 1
Before I go: To everyone who makes the MTP run like a well-oiled machine; that includes UdeS administration, the MTP steering committee, the college deans, and RLs. To the MTP faculty, who taught me how to teach and then let me teach beside them. To my MTP tech support comrades who are the backbone of the classes. To Lorelie Bouchard, for your patience, your advice, and for always pulling me into your projects. To Dr. Paul Darvasi, my research supervisor, along with everyone who gave me invaluable peer feedback on my thesis.
🙏🏽 Thanks Part 2
To Susan Ajersch and Sean Hughes, who believed in me enough to help me go back to school. To John Abbott College and my colleagues in the Computer Science Department, for being such a vibrant place to grow as an educator. To all my wonderful students, without whom none of this means anything. I still can’t believe I get paid to lecture them about how Pokémon is made. To my friends and my Canadian, Indian, Irish, and American family for your love and support. And to my Lady love, Margaret, for being my biggest cheerleader, my editor-in-chief, my in-house baker, the list goes on - being on your team is the greatest privilege of my life. Thank you.
🎉 Conclusion
Finally, to the class of twenty-twenty-six: our disciplines could not be more different, but the work we do in the classroom is the same, and we’re better equipped for it now than ever.
Congratulations.
Now, let’s keep being the humans in the loop.
[DO NOT say thank you. Nod respectfully.]