Teaching – By's Musings

Some might say that my teaching career got off to an auspicious, if not unusual start. My first experience in a real classroom was as a senior in high school. I taught three sections of 9th grade algebra for six weeks, as a substitute teacher. This came about when one of our high school math teachers became seriously ill and the district couldn’t find a long-term math sub. I was available because I had completed all the necessary requirements for graduation except three credits. Therefore, I only had three classes and three study halls my senior year. The two remaining math teachers at my high school didn’t like teaching 9th grade algebra. I was an excellent math student who was successfully tutoring a number of students, so they talked the principal into putting me in front of the algebra classes. They provided lesson plans and I taught their lessons. To have the “necessary adult in the classroom,” the district hired an English sub to sit in the back of the room “to keep order.” I enjoyed teaching. I think I did a good job at it. The students in my sections all passed the district’s 10th grade math readiness exam.

Although it’s been many years, I still recall my first class as a college professor. I remember observing students walking into that class as if it were yesterday. Unfortunately, I have lost track of many of those students. Although I tried to be the teacher that they needed, sometimes I wish I could go back and respond to them differently.

There were two in particular who were as different as night and day. One was from a well-to-do family. This student had everything he or she could have wanted. All this student had to do was ask. The student had a fancy car that daddy bought. The student had the latest in trendy fashions. The student had a job waiting in the family business immediately upon graduation from college. The student was intelligent, good looking, and athletic, a celebrated, all-conference player. In everything to do with classwork, this student’s attitude and expressions shouted the questions: “Why do I have to study? Why do I have to work in class? I have everything I need.” Every day this student would walk into class with that attitude that said, “Teach me! I dare you!”

The second student was the child of a successful athletic coach at another small college. However, this student was anything but athletic. The student was unattractive, lacked many social graces. and had a complete lack of coordination. Be an athlete? This student could trip over the sideline chalk. The rumor was that this student was enrolled at our school because the father was embarrassed to have this student around his school. This student threw him/herself into studies and barely got C’s. No matter what he/she did, it wasn’t good enough. So the student developed this enormous chip on his/her shoulders. When the student would walk into class, you could see in his/her eyes the lack of hope. You could almost hear the stutter, “I-I-I can’t do-do-do anything. Go ahead and te-te-teach me! I d-d-dare you!”

Through more than 40 years of working with students, these two students were just two of the many examples I have seen. Student after student would enroll in the colleges where I worked and walk into classes or my office, and by the attitudes they expressed, say, “Teach me! I dare you!” They had many different stories.

“No one loves me so why should I bother?” “My parents were supposed to be this perfect Christian couple. They were the pillars of our home church. I go away to college and they get a divorce. What’s the point? God let my family down. He is not going to care about me.”

“I want to be an artist, but my parents insist that I go into business. I’ll show them. If I flunk out or just barely graduate, nobody will hire me when they see my grades. I will be a failure in my parents’ eyes. However, I will be free to be the artist that I am meant to be.”

“I don’t see why I need this class to be a [fill in the blank]. Why do I have to take it? It’s not important for my major. I’ll never use this stuff as a [fill in the blank].”

“God has called me into ministry. I’m leaving school at the end of the semester to follow His calling, and do His work full-time.”

“I have done something terrible. I can’t forgive myself. God won’t forgive me. I am worthless. What’s the sense in trying to make something out of myself?”

Some were whispering; some were crying; some were shouting. “Teach me! I dare you!”

I was a teacher. What should have been my response to these students? Could I, or should I ignore them? After all, I had 10, or 30, or 90 other students in the class who really wanted to learn. As a teacher, I had a responsibility to help students learn. There were students in the class that really wanted to learn. They did the assigned work. They went far beyond the minimum. Those students expected me to help them. They were grateful when they realized that they had learned something.

Helping students learn is the ministry that God assigned to me. Teaching is what God called me to do. Teaching is what I studied and trained to do. It was exciting. It was exhilarating. (And it still is.) Isn’t it enough to work with those students that really do want to learn? At the end of the day, I could cash my paycheck with no regrets and no second thoughts. Or could I?

I can’t get the faces of the myriad of students with problems out of my mind. Students that one way or another sat in front of me and said, or screamed, or cried, “Teach me! I dare you!” I had a responsibility to those students to get to know them; to understand their problems; to be engaged with them and determine what they needed and how best they could learn; to value them and help them value themselves; to love them because they were people. If I did that, I would have the right and the responsibility to stand in front of them and say, “Okay, I accept your challenge…if you accept mine. I double-dare you to learn.” With some, I was successful in that classroom scene. With others, I have often wondered if something I said or did planted a seed that would later grow fruit. If it didn’t, was there something else I should have done? I know that teaching and learning are mutual responsibilities, and that students share in the process. However, I was the teacher and that is supposed to mean something.

A Modest Proposal for the Re-engineering of American Higher Education

By Baylis ?²

For many years, I have been intrigued with any title that begins with a phrase “A Modest Proposal.” Jonathan Swift’s classic satirical essay from 1729 has conditioned everyone to know that what follows is anything but modest, and possibly bordering on sensationalism. I have deliberately used the phrase “A modest proposal” to get people’s attention. However, the heart of the essay is not a satire. I truly believe that American higher education would benefit from adopting some, if not all twenty, of the suggestions that I make in the body of the essay.

I will also admit that I used another sensational term in the title of the essay. “Re-engineering” grabs people’s attention because it has come to mean radical changes that could affect the entire institution. That’s exactly the idea that I wanted to convey.

Education is helping students develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to move them from where they are to where they need or want to be. There are two actors in this process. Each actor has different responsibilities and roles. Students must come to education with goals. They should know what they want to be. The role of faculty is to identify where the students are and the best route to take the students to where they want to or need to be. Faculty need to realize that the students’ goals are important and they should not unnecessarily impose their own goals on students. Faculty should serve as guides in assisting students along the route to reaching their goals. Students need to realize that education is hard work. It is not an entitlement; it is a privilege.
American higher education should adopt a Social Change Model of Education as the foundational philosophy for building its superstructure. The basic tenet of a Social Change Model of Education is that education should be about helping students learn so that they can improve themselves, society, and the community.
Within the framework of a Social Change Model of Education, institutions need to focus the educational process on helping students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to live useful lives in order to better themselves and society. An institution must pay attention to all three areas of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. In a 1978 hit song, Michael Lee Aday, commonly known as Meatloaf, suggested that in the area of personal relationships, “Two out of three, ain’t bad” However, in education, “Two out of three, ain’t enough.”
Each institution must have a clearly delineated mission. All individuals involved with the given institution must have a solid understanding of the mission of the institution and a firm commitment to that mission.
The mission of an institution must be clearly communicated to all prospective students and the community at large. The leaders of an institution, especially the president, administrators and faculty, must understand the history of the institution and how that affects the current development of the institution and possible future development.
Institutions need to hire, evaluate and reward faculty in terms of helping students learn. Good teaching should be measured in terms of student learning. Teaching itself is only a means to the end of learning, not an end in itself.
Institutions should consider revamping graduation requirements more in line with competencies instead of credit hours earned in course blocks. What’s more important, the number of credits earned by sitting through the required number of class hours, or what a student knows, can do, and values?
Schools need to consider scrapping the current semester, trimester. or quarter systems that are agriculturally based, in favor of a more flexible schedule that allows or even encourages learning anytime and anywhere, possibly in a 24/7/365 format.
Institutions should be aware and open to the possibility that curricula will evolve. Some new disciplines will emerge while some old disciplines will become obsolete.
Institutions should consider revamping their fiscal model away from the charge for credit hours to one more closely aligned with charging students a credentialing fee based upon completion of competencies.
Faculty must be encouraged to study learning theory with an eye to understanding and using different teaching modalities other than just lecturing. Faculty must be encouraged to experiment with educational pedagogies and technologies appropriate to discipline.
Faculty must know their students. They must be aware of and account for the varying goals of the students they are teaching. It is not the job of faculty to produce clones of the faculty. The job of faculty is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to improve themselves and society.
Institutions should be prepared to provide appropriate learning spaces and resources for faculty and students, including classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and technology.
Institutions should consider paying faculty according to their track record of helping students learn or complete competencies, instead of their degrees and years of service.
Institutions must be prepared to offer developmental resources to faculty to help them use the most appropriate pedagogies and technologies in their teaching.
Faculty should be open to the possibility of unbundling their work. Faculty may have to be open to the idea that faculty governance is too expensive and inefficient.
Faculty need to understand that tenure and academic freedom are not entitlements, but are privileges.
Faculty and institutions need to be abused of their unattainable illusions of grandeur. Not all institutions can be prestigious, research universities. Institutions must get off the academic treadmill of trying to keep up with the institutions that are their neighbors or competitors.
Institutions must realize that not all institutions will look the same. Some institutions will be geared toward a residential clientele. Some institutions will focus on commuter students and some institutions will serve a mixed clientele. Serving these differing collections of student types will mean institutions will have to tailor facilities, curricula, schedules, and teaching modalities to the students they are serving.
Everyone associated with an institution–Board of Trustees, President, administration, faculty, and students–must be held accountable for their part in the well-functioning of the institution and promoting student learning.

I believe the quality academic institutions of the future may look and feel very different from the quality academic institutions of the past. That’s the basis for my modest proposal. We should be ready to embrace the new look of academic institutions and not be afraid of it.