A key aspect to consider when you start teaching is your teaching identity. What kind of teacher do you want to be, and what kind of persona will you adopt? Will you be similar to those who have taught you, or other teachers in your department, or different? What’s the connection between your personality, and other identities you have (such as a PhD student, researcher, professional, friend, carer), and your teaching identity? This idea of who you are as a teacher, or your persona, is also closely linked to the kinds of relationships you have or want to have with the students you teach – for example, will you treat them as peers, or create a hierarchy?

There’s no one right answer to these questions, or one correct persona to adopt – I firmly believe that education benefits from diversity in teaching identities. Nevertheless, I also think this is an important aspect to consider, and is something that we examine in detail during the Establishing a Teaching Persona course at City.

These issues are discussed in the fourth video with advice from PhD students about teaching. Here, Abeer Elbahrawy, Alex Gilder, Lee Jones, Alex Powell, Marianna Rolbina and Deanna Taylor elaborate on the process of establishing their own teaching personas, and the kinds of relationships they construct with the students whom they teach. They talk about being:

• relatable – through having been in their students’ position very recently
• friendly (but professional) and supportive
• an advisor
• informal – but also maintaining boundaries
• authoritative through a professional presentation
• firm but fair – balancing praise and criticism

There’s also an exploration of the rewarding nature of teaching students, and the pride that is gained by seeing students learn.