Don’t Choose a Program, Choose a Professor: Lifelong teacher and current Ph.D student, Anne Walker shares stories and advice regarding education

More than familiar with the setting of a classroom, lifelong teacher, and current Ph.D student /teaching instructor at University of Denver, Anne Walker, is learning what it’s like to be on the other end. The student.

Anne Walker is currently in her third and final year of her Ph.D. research program here at DU regarding the loss of loved ones due to COVID.

Walker graduated from the University of Iowa with both a bachelor’s degree in art and journalism and wasn’t interested in the teaching world until she lived through the lull that came with Public Relations. Getting her start at Chicago firm, Edelman, she realized quickly on, it wasn’t what she was meant to do.

“I am pretty organized but that is not where my heart is”, joked Walker when thinking of her quick lived career in event planning.

Feeling as though she was ‘creating a narrative that was false, and an attempt to appease the reader’. Not at all what she signed up for when going into the field of journalism and not at all like real storytelling.

Four years later Anne would identify herself as a student again, attending University of Illinois Chicago and obtaining her master’s degree in Secondary English Education.

And from 1991 to 2016, Anne did what came naturally, she taught. Starting with high school, to being a professor at Metro, and back down to middle school; Walker found growth within each age group.

Leaving the teaching world in 2016, unsure if she should stay or if there was more out there for her, she connected, and self-explored as much as she could.

And in 2019, she began her three-year long program here at DU within the Communications department. Bringing in all her knowledge, and identity as a teacher, she was ready for this world again.

But in no means was this an easy start for her. In those three years, her life had started as well as those of her three children. And soon after she began, COVID hit.

Yet she persevered, knowing that this was the right place for her and her skills.

One thing she learned early on in her teaching experience, and became a huge part of her time spent with middle schoolers and so on with the differing age ranges,

“I felt like my job as a middle school teacher, and really as a facilitator is to think about how people are ‘human-ing’. That people are humans first, and how do we then take care of the human part”, states Walker.

This comes naturally for Anne, thinking of the person behind the façade. By breaking the social barriers and getting to know one another, she teaches with vulnerability and strength.

One example of her methods in action is with two of her courses she teaches this year at DU, Speaking on Ideas that Matter and Topics in Communication: Intergenerational Communication. These classes and the meaning behind them go far beyond what a traditional classroom can offer.

Speaking on Ideas that Matter, a public speaking class geared towards preparing students to be confident in their words and ideas and being vulnerable to yourself and an audience. According to Pioneerweb’s description, the students will be, “becoming more competent and comfortable when speaking about their opinions.”

Anne went on to say that this is only possible if the classroom environment is established and connected.

“If people don’t feel they know each other or there is no sort of commonality, people are not able to learn as well”, notes Walker when reflecting on some of the challenges she faced with the new classroom environment.

Being on both sides of the classroom, she can work through these challenges by being herself in both worlds.

“You have to teach who you are,” shares Walker. “I teach from my heart and who I am, and I hope that is reflected in my work and in the students mind.”

Anne’s vulnerable teaching skills is seen in her second course this year, Topics in Communication: Intergenerational Communication, because it is essentially the exchanging of stories.

Made up of herself, DU art professor Roddy MacInnes, and Denver Public Library worker, Amy DelPo in charge of the Creative Aging Forum, came together to create a space where individuals from all ages can come together and share photographs and memories.

Stating that photography ‘brings people together’ and ‘creates a catalyst of connection’, so it seemed natural that this was the class for her teach.

Anne learned early on what it means to be a professor, reflecting on advice she heard when she was as student in undergrad,

“Don’t choose a program, choose a professor.”

Finding that statement to applicable to her current situation as a student, Walker had to take some time to truly find not only a program suitable to her but a professor who is passionate and ‘doing the real research you want to do’.

Her current mentor and director of program, DU Professor Erin Willer, who also teaches the Communication Capstone course, Communicating Empathy through Compassion, has all the same passions and teaching methods as Anne.

Creating a space for Anne as not only a graduate student, but peer and teacher alongside her own professors. Just one example of the everchanging norms on a college campus regarding professors and students.

“The “traditional”, on-campus college student, newly out of high school, is no longer the norm”, shares Northeastern University. But neither are the professors.

It is no longer uncommon for classes to be led by graduate teaching assistants, according to the Bureau of Labor Statics, there were over 100,000 of them. And a generalized annual income of $41,150.

This is just one road one may follow if they hope to be a professor one day, and Anne is more than ready with experience and advice to help her and those around.

Her greatest pieces of advice she’s learned, and took years to get comfortable with, is being able to say, “I don’t know.”

Both as a student in the classroom, the ability to be transparent regardless of your status in the classroom. And the realizations and embracing of all the many Uturns in life.

And “difficult people are life’s greatest teachers”. Whether that be students or peers, or your superiors, it is one of the greatest gifts in life to work through a situation like that.