URSABLOG: Back To School

It’s been a busy week, one way or another and I find myself sitting down to write this  myself later than usual. The week was busy not only because of work but also because of education. Exam time is approaching, and the second half of the week was full of past paper sessions, both online and face-to-face. As I woke up this morning I felt the heavy gravity of tiredness on my body and my mind, although that may also have been due to the fact I was dancing last night at a friend’s housewarming party. That may have been unwise, as I realised this morning when I reviewed the videos. At least there was no karaoke. But I had a great deal of fun, and was happy to have spent those happy hours surrounded by, and immersed in, love.

Although the lessons – especially the two yesterday – drained and exhausted me, they also energised me, intellectually if not physically, and I thought back over the lessons I had learnt from them. We were revising for two exams for the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers: Introduction to Shipping and Shipping Business. The first is for those who have little or no previous academic or professional experience in shipping, but is by no means easy. Shipping Business is examined from a wide and varied syllabus, and touches on many things that I have no practical experience of. It is taken by every student being examined for the Membership qualifications – there are no exemptions – and it is tough. Most students taking the exam, both here and globally, are studying at the same time as working full time.

My approach to these sessions – the same as all lessons I teach – is not to try and be the smartest and the most knowledgeable person in the classroom because, apart from evidently being not true, I find it boring. I prefer to consider myself as being the best sharer of knowledge there, and in the case of the revision sessions, pointing out what the examiners want from the students and how they want it presented.

Teaching is a wonderful gift that I was given relatively late in life, and it has become so much part of who I am that I wonder sometimes how I ever lived without it. It led, by a rather winding path, to me starting to write this blog, because it gave me the confidence to express myself more fully, and not to care too much about whether other people agree with me or not. I found that in the classroom, as long as I was open to dissent and discussion, as long as I knew that I was not the final authority and there were things I did not know, we could together reach a place where not only did we know more, we understood more. I took the ICS exams myself many years ago, in fact before most of my students were born, but it is only in teaching that I have come to learn far more about my industry, to understand it better, and it has given me the desire to learn more too. There is nothing – as regular readers of this blog will know – that I learn now outside of shipping that I cannot use to think about shipping itself.

This makes me sound a rather dull and obsessed individual, but I hope not. Sure, in moments of doubts and frustration – usually when business is slow, and deals are not in play – I dream about retiring and retreating to an island where I can read and write to be hearts content. Maybe there and then I can finally attack the many novels in my head that I think are worth writing. Some of them could be about, or feature characters from, my life in shipping.

But something keeps holding me back. Apart from the fact that my business comes first – practically, morally, commercially, financially as well as emotionally – I self-identify primarily as a ship sale and purchase broker, not a teacher. However I do believe that I cannot teach effectively, especially my specialism – ship sale and purchase – without still being in the game and doing deals. Also, the lessons that I learn, and the people that I meet in the classroom inspire me to keep going, and develop and grow further.

I am afraid that I have very patience for the idea that shipping professionals who teach are in some way ‘giving back’, mostly because in my experience at least, shipping doesn’t give much anyway in the first place. It is a matter of fighting wars, as well as battles, to take the rewards which may or may not be our due. In the world of perfect competition – where everyone is competing with everyone else – how could it be otherwise? And shipping – as George Economou has famously said – is not a team game.

I don’t like the idea that people should listen unconditionally to someone just because they have reached a certain position of success or power, as though we should be honoured and blessed to scrabble around on the floor and grab as many pearls of wisdom that they deign to let fall amongst us lesser mortals.

We were all born with critical minds and it is – I believe – one of the unique strengths of the human mind to not only remember and learn from the information given to us, but also to understand the sources, processes and systems behind that information so we can both challenge it and make it better. This should apply to both teacher and student. 

The best teachers I have known, and indeed the best speakers and writers too, have inspired me to think, not just bank the knowledge I need to carry out a particular task or process. Remembering, according to Bloom’s taxonomy at least, is at the bottom of the pyramid of learning, the most basic level of education, beneath understanding, let alone analysis, evaluation and creation. If education remains only a matter of regurgitating information that is given to us by people who have learnt it before us, then not only does it not take anyone forward, either individually or collectively, even as employees or businesses for example, it is a huge missed opportunity.

I see my role as a teacher as one that helps people understand, and then once they have understood something they can go on to use that knowledge for better things. A good memory is a wonderful thing, but it is not the only thing that makes successful people.

Being around curious people, with different interests and opinions, who want to make their lives better is an inspiring thing in itself. Walking into a classroom and sharing in that experience with my students, whether at the ICS, the University of Piraeus, the Athens University of Economics and Business, and with more seasoned professionals at BIMCO is not about giving back, a pompous self-congratulating acknowledgement of personal success. It is about taking something fresh, understanding it and then using it to grow further.

And this is not just about the classroom either. Businesses thrive not just because of their aggression and energy, not just because of their desire for profits and market share,  and certainly not because they have some nice, bland mission statements about inclusivity and diversity, but because they have an energy about them that wants to create. But you cannot create – the top of Bloom’s pyramid – without understanding, applying, analysing and evaluating. Just remembering how to do something that has always been done that way may be consistent, but won’t prove helpful in adapting to a rapidly changing and evolving business environment, i.e. what’s going on in the world.

I managed to get out of bed eventually, and pottered around my flat, tidying things away, repotting and watering plants on my balcony, cooking for the week, but I didn’t have the energy or concentration to sit down and read something, let alone start writing this. So whilst browsing through Spotify for an appropriate playlist to match my mood, I came across a podcast – I don’t listen to them normally – from Yale University which piqued my interest, and I started listening to it as I continued cooking. It inspired me to learn more, it inspired me to think about life in a different way – joining a few so far unconnected dots – and inspired me to start writing this blog.

If anyone ever offers you the chance to teach, or even just speak to people – whether younger or older, fresh or experienced – then I strongly recommend you to embrace the opportunity. You are being asked because you have something to share, but that is not the reason you should do it. You may find that what you learn from the experience and your life and about yourself, may well inspire you to live a fuller and better life, and encourage you in turn to learn more.

My experience of teaching has led me to learn more, so much more, about everything. It has inspired me to remain open to new ideas, new experiences and new ways of doing things. It has reduced the barriers that I had put up around myself and given me more self-confidence, not only to share what I know, but to embrace the fact that I don’t know everything and never will, but nevertheless to keep learning. But now you must excuse me: I have many students anxiously waiting for my comments on their essays they have submitted as part of their preparation for their exams, and they won’t mark themselves. But maybe, in the process of marking, I will learn something too.

Simon Ward