A pair of veteran educators who share a passion for outside-the-box and, when required, outside-the-classroom approaches to teaching are the dual recipients of Royal Roads University's Kelly Outstanding Teaching Award.
Geoffrey Bird and Hilary Leighton received their honours at a ceremony on campus this fall.
Geoffrey Bird
"When you're a teacher, you have this unique responsibility to enable people to thrive personally and professionally, and to invite them to see the world in new ways. What we teach matters, and the well-being of students matters. I am privileged to serve them in this journey."
Bird has been teaching for 30 years, more than half of those at Royal Roads, where he's a professor in the School of Communication and Culture. The Kelly Awards selection committee lauded his passion for teaching and his commitment to collaboration to make space for students to find their voice and pursue their learning goals.
"There are a few things I need to do to build a good learning environment," Bird says of teaching. "For example, I try to convey to students why a particular subject is relevant to their lives. I want to achieve some kind of connection and inspiration. I also need to listen and learn from my students."
Connection is also crucial to helping students become curious and adaptive, and Bird notes that he spends time early in the semester "to find a way to connect with each student so they feel comfortable to open up. It is a culture one tries to create in a classroom."
Another intentional component of Bird's classroom is building opportunities for discussion among the students, "I've learned that if I leave the room exhausted, I haven't necessarily done my job well. I'm not the one who should be speaking all the time I should be setting up the learning in a manner where the students are engaging with the materials in discussion, and that's where they'll be learning."
Teaching Communication and Culture means exposing students to different ways of thinking, Bird says, giving as an example a trip to CFB Esquimalt to demonstrate how an organization with a unique culture the military operates and evolves in an era of diversity and inclusivity. "Those kinds of experiences, be they a simple thing in a classroom to a field trip down the road, collectively build up in students a willingness and confidence to take a risk in their learning," he explains.
Hilary Leighton
"For my students, I'm really very keen to help them move beyond nature as a backdrop and, instead, view nature as co-teacher, as companion, as kin."
Leighton has been teaching for more than 25 years, 19 of those at Royal Roads, where she's a professor and program head in the Master of Arts in Environmental Education and Communication as well as program head, Graduate Certificate in Regenerative Sustainable Community Development.
A registered clinical counsellor and ecopsychotherapist in private practice, her holistic - body, mind, soul approach to teaching, invites her students to integrate their beliefs, identity, ancestry and values into their learning.
"Beyond theory, this work is primarily about relationships: with places, with other humans, with human communities, with our fellow creatures," Leighton says. "I'm interested in cultivating spaces where students not only hear themselves and their peers speaking, but also their adversaries, whose motivations might run counter to their own, and learn to listen for wisdom from the ancestors, as well as the living Earth."
She views students as co-implicated in teaching and learning and makes their contributions integral to an emerging curriculum.
For instance, during on-campus residencies, every day starts with a student teaching the rest of the cohort something from their own knowledge and experience. Students also team-teach what they're studying and, every day, the class ventures out to learn from the abundance of natural teachers on RRU's lush, green campus.
To learn-with is critical to her teaching practice, Leighton says, noting, "Good teaching is being a good guide, to walk alongside each student and get to know each one individually, and where they are going. And, yes, this means sharing what I know freely, yet it is my responsibility to be an illuminator of their own genius and reflect that back to them as we travel this path together for a time.
"To me, teaching is a sacred responsibility to help students make ecologically conscious, relational and regenerative choices, and come back to life. It is a great blessing to be witness to that kind of transformation and maturation."
The Kelly Outstanding Teaching Awards, created in recognition of Dr. Gerald O. Kelly, the first installed president of Royal Roads University, recognize teachers who promote Royal Roads' learner-centred philosophy and make positive contributions to teaching excellence.
Learn more about the awards and see past recipients.
