In the fall of 2021, I arrived in Columbia, South Carolina, with my family to embark on a new chapter at the University of South Carolina.
I had been teaching law for four years in Washington, D.C., including one year of virtual instruction during the pandemic while co-parenting two toddlers from home. I was still untenured, but I felt confident. I thought I knew what I was doing in the classroom.
Then I was assigned to teach Secured Transactions—one of the most challenging classes in law school—for the very first time.
At the end of that fall semester, my teaching evaluations came back lower than expected. I sat in my new office, still surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and empty shelves, reading comment after comment that felt like small cuts. But one stood out, sharp and unforgiving:
“Professor Toussaint should stick to small seminars.”
I felt defeated.
Was I in over my head? Would I be able to earn tenure in this new environment with evaluations like these? My old approach—the one that had worked in Washington D.C.—no longer seemed to translate. How would I turn this around?
Some colleagues told me to ignore the evaluations altogether, claiming there was no way to overcome the biases associated with my race and age. I understood their perspective, but I took a different approach. I swallowed my pride and listed all of the negative comments on one sheet of paper, trying to sift out the constructive feedback from the noise.
The patterns were clear. I needed more visuals, more diagrams, more examples. I needed to slow down, reiterate key points, and make sure everyone was on board. Sure, the content was complex, but I was moving too fast, assuming too much, and connecting too little.
So, I buckled down and identified three strategies that helped me turn the ship around, earn an affirmative vote for tenure from my faculty, and pave a clear pathway toward full professorship.
Strategy #1: Turn Feedback Into Data, Not Despair
I reached out to several senior colleagues over lunch and picked their brains about what works, from teaching techniques, to classroom approaches, and strategies they had refined over the years.
Side note: Peer observation is a game-changer. At my prior institution, I observed a senior colleague’s class and took notes on his teaching methods and techniques alongside his students.
During lunch, I asked:
How do you respond to challenging questions?
How do you structure lectures and assessments?
What methods of engagement have worked best with your students?
I diligently took notes and brainstormed ways to incorporate their insights into my own lesson plans.
Key insight: Bad evaluations aren’t character judgments. They’re diagnostic tools. Instead of dismissing them or taking them personally, treat them like research data. Look for patterns. What are multiple students saying? What constructive elements can you extract?
Strategy #2: Address Confidence Before Technique
It wasn’t until my second year at South Carolina that I started to see a shift.
More students were attending office hours. I was engaging more students in class. I was receiving more smiles at the end of lectures. The classroom experience started to feel lighter and more fun.
I realized that part of the challenge was my confidence. Or rather, my lack of it in this new environment, which felt very different from my prior institution. I had created limiting beliefs about my ability to succeed in an unfamiliar place, and that translated into nervous energy in the classroom and a lack of confidence in my explanations.
Once I decided that I belonged here, I let my shoulders fall and my voice relax. I slowed down my pace and took my time with student discussions. I learned how to fall in love with learning again, as I let go of the pressure to perform.
I even allowed myself to crack silly jokes and laugh at my myself during lectures. In various ways, I helped my students warm up to my unique classroom dynamic.
Key insight: Your mindset in the classroom affects everything else. If you don’t believe you belong, students will sense it. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about being genuinely present and invested in the learning process.
Strategy #3: Shift From Performance to Connection
Four years into teaching at South Carolina—now tenured and on my way to full professor status—I feel like I’ve finally hit my stride.
I smile more in class. I engage students through Socratic-style questions, open-ended dialogue, and small-group exercises. I offer additional learning sessions outside of class to enable more one-on-one opportunities.
Each week, I email the class with reminders about what we’ve covered and what’s coming up. I provide practice questions and exams throughout the semester, along with model essay answers. I stay in the classroom after every session until the last student has left, answering questions and checking in.
I do much more than I did during my first couple of years of teaching, but it doesn’t feel like more work. It feels like the right work.
It feels like teaching from a place of abundance rather than scarcity, connection rather than performance.
Key insight: Doing more strategic work can feel like less burden when it’s aligned with genuine connection. Focus on what actually helps students learn, not what makes you look impressive to your colleagues.
The Takeaway
This past year, my teaching evaluations came back above the average of my peers at my institution. Some students commented that my course has been their favorite class experience in law school so far.
That still blows my mind, as someone who had more than my share of unmemorable professors in law school. I know how critical law students can be.
I’ve learned that bad evaluations in your first couple of years don’t necessarily predict your teaching trajectory. In fact, they can accelerate your growth, but only if you approach them as strategic pedagogical tools.
The key is distinguishing between feedback rooted in bias (which absolutely exists) and feedback that points to genuine areas for improvement and refinement.
What This Means for Your Teaching Portfolio
What strikes me most about this journey is how the initial feedback—however painful and perhaps unfair—contained the seeds of transformation. That comment about sticking to seminars wasn’t wrong, exactly.
Perhaps I was better suited to small-group discussions than large lecture halls at that point in my development. But instead of shrinking to fit that limitation, I leaned into it—by incorporating small-group study sessions into my large classes—and then grew to transcend it.
I learned that Secured Transactions (for all its complexity), like other law classes, becomes accessible when students feel safe to struggle with it alongside their teacher. The hardest concepts become clearer when you slow down enough to meet students where they are.
In other words, teaching is as much about modeling intellectual humility as it is about demonstrating domain expertise.
For tenure files and beyond: Document your teaching growth story. Dossiers that show evolution and responsiveness to feedback are stronger than those that claim perfection from day one. Your teaching philosophy should reflect real experience, not abstract ideals.
For Those Currently in the Valley
If you’re reading this and feeling stuck, if you’re in a season where the classroom feels heavy and the evaluations are hard to read, I want to tell you something:
It can change. You can grow. Transformation is coming.
The work you’re doing matters, even if it doesn’t show up in the feedback right away.
My shift didn’t happen overnight.
It took time, reflection, and the willingness to be vulnerable—with my students, with my colleagues, and with myself. It required letting go of who I thought I should be as a teacher and embracing who I actually am.
Your students don’t need you to be perfect.
They don’t need you to have all the answers from day one. They need you to be present, to be genuinely invested in their learning, and to create a space where struggle is part of the process, not a sign of failure.
Sometimes the feedback that hurts the most contains the truth that can set you free. Sometimes admitting you don’t know everything is the beginning of learning how to teach.
Keep going. Keep listening.
Keep teaching from the part of you that believes in something bigger than the metrics.
The seeds you’re planting may not bloom in your classroom, but they will bloom somewhere, sometime, in ways you may never know.
And that’s enough. That’s more than enough.
Becoming Full,
P.S. As always, thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Tenure Track. If you found this article helpful, share it with a friend. If it moved you, consider supporting with a paid subscription or buying me a coffee. Together, let’s continue to build a supportive and creative academic community.
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I'm four years in on my new career as a teacher. I've cried over evaluations. I've felt uncomfortable making mistakes and learning out in the open. I tried to earn good evaluations. This year, I'm feeling more confident after doing a sentiment analysis (thanks Charlotte ala ChatGPT). Like you, I've learned to slow down. It's early in the semester and I'll incorporate your other manageable techniques. Thank you!
Thank you Prof. Toussaint this was very insightful!