A passionate teacher and storyteller, Marlene Wurfel is one of the recipients of the 2024 Sessional Instructor Teaching Excellence Awards. We caught up with the communications prof to talk about storytelling, being vulnerable and the lessons she learned while teaching through a pandemic. 

Your career began in industry as a communications professional. What brought you to teaching? 

I can't think of a time when I didn't want to be part of a university community. I love school, books, learning and growth. If the job wasn't so challenging, I would not enjoy it as much. 

I also love knowing that I make a difference. Not everybody gets to feel that, and it's worth a lot. It's really a privilege to work with young people who are committed to growing and learning – there's just nothing better.

You say that stories are powerful and that professional communicators have to be good storytellers. How does that fit into your teaching?

Crafting stories, sharing stories, the process of storytelling – it’s transformative learning. I know that, but it always feels a little bit magical to me. When you're telling a story, people are transported and you can feel the difference in the room.

And stories are all around us. People are made out of stories – we're not the human race without them. 

How do you make your classroom a safe space for students to tell their stories?

Storytelling is really vulnerable. Telling stories always feels a little bit risky for most people, right? So I just keep in mind how terrifying it can be for people to open up, and make sure they know they aren't alone, that the process has some scaffolding built in, and that storytellers honour their instincts to back off from stories they might not be ready to tell. Storytelling should be about connection, not only to others but also to yourself. Probably most importantly, I share stories too.

Do you have a significant teaching memory? 

Teaching from home during the pandemic was hard. My family was crammed into every nook and cranny of our cozy yellow house – all three kids were learning from home and there were computers set up everywhere. My son found a little space at the top of the stairs for a laptop and his tuba, which he was learning to play for the first time in online band class. I was working from a nearby closet in the room next door. As my students entered my online lecture, almost everyone asked, “Do you hear someone learning to play the tuba – like for the first time?”

So many students told me it was one of their best memories from their online learning experience. It taught me that I need not be embarrassed for having a life outside MacEwan. I was trying so hard to keep up a professional persona and maintain a learning-as-normal classroom environment, but MacEwan students appreciate that they get to know their professors as human beings with human lives. It's one of the benefits of our small class sizes. 

One of the best writing teachers you ever had wasn’t a writing teacher? 

To be honest, my best teachers were the ones who called me out and were tough on me. 

I remember writing a paper in environmental sciences about the philosophy of science. The teacher handed back my paper with a comment that said, “Dear Marlene, this is so well written that I'm almost tempted to give it an A, but you haven't said anything at all, actually, so I can't. If you want to revise this and make an argument, I will re-mark it for you.” 

It was just such a wake-up call and it made me a much better writer.

How would you describe the teacher you want to be? 

I know that I’m not going to make a difference with everyone – and it's often a surprise to find out who I've impacted and in what way. 

Ultimately, I really want my students to succeed. It's important for young people to know that there's somebody on their side. Sometimes that means being tough. Sometimes it means standing up for them or just being kind.