Teaching Matters: Why We Teach

Originally published August 21, 2026

A welcome from TEI Academic Director Jonathan Finn

What’s the Point?

Does this sound familiar? You’re in your office preparing for your next class, looking over student work and responding to e-mails and you get the sense – first subtly and then strongly – that a great deal of what you are seeing and reading has been produced by AI. Despite all your efforts at communicating the importance of the slow, careful work of teaching and learning, it is abundantly clear that many of your students have opted for the shortcut. They bypassed learning and went straight to the end product. Like they did last term. And the term before that. And so you quite reasonably think, “what’s the point?”

“What’s the point?” isn’t just a response to AI, it’s bigger than that. It’s also a response to a culture in which higher education is increasingly under attack, government funding is at an all time low, and the very basis of what we do – truth, expertise, knowledge – is increasingly being dismissed as ‘fake.’

“What’s the point?” is one of the themes guiding our work in TEI this year. It’s a question meant to recognize the feelings of unease and concern many of us have as we grapple with our constantly changing teaching and learning landscape. The issue is such that, as the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports, there are now rising numbers of faculty retiring early because they no longer see the point. As one professor in the story remarked, “What is the point of teaching … if students no longer seem invested in learning”?

“What’s the point?” is also a call to action (but not to retire!). In this sense it’s meant as a call for us to find and demonstrate the point in our teaching, to our students, each other and ourselves. This relates to a second theme at TEI: teaching matters. Teaching has always mattered but it seems like it might matter, or that it might need to matter more now than ever. AI has forced us to rethink the tried-and-true methods of our disciplines, and while this has been tremendously frustrating, it also shines a light on just how important humanity is to teaching and to learning. Teaching is more than the distribution of content; it builds community and it is a way of developing an intellectual skill set that is fundamental to a functioning society and a life well-lived.

With this in mind, I invite you to attend our Teaching Matters event, September 2 which serves as a kickoff to the Fall term. We will discuss why teaching matters in the current moment and explore ways to make visible the inherent value of teaching and learning at Laurier. It will allow for moments of commiseration but hopefully many more moments of motivation as we get ready to open the Fall term. I very much hope to see you there!

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