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Now that the spring semester has gotten underway and our days are spent working together with students and colleagues, my thoughts are bound up in the atmosphere of providing guidance, support, and encouragement for the students in my Public Speaking courses. But this wasn’t always the framework I had for my life’s work. From the fall of 1979 until today the discipline has changed, yet the students have changed substantially. A small portion of them want to perform well, but many seem satisfied with passing so they could get on with their lives. The concept of Self-Growth had no impact on their behaviors because the system largely ignores this concept.
I had also changed as I have learned more and more about being a Facilitator vs. a Professor of Truth. Like many of you, I had been trained at a world class university where I was expected read texts and sit silently with 120 others while someone droned on about the intricacies of some historical event or microscopic rock formations. I became proficient in taking pounds of notes that I would never read. While I did enjoy some of those classes, especially those led by superior lecturers who made the material come to life, but this was a rare experience in my undergraduate years.
After graduation and short stint acting in a theatre company in up-state New York, I accepted a secondary education position back in the Midwest. I taught in the style that I had been taught, mostly lecturing and having the students work individually on assignments. The results were mediocre for many students and rarely life changing. This discouraged me to the point where I considered going back to the theatre I knew and loved. In my fourth season as a teacher I threw up my hands and said “I don’t want to be one of those professors anymore”. I wanted to be able to help students unlock learning for themselves. I wanted to change my methods and challenge the students to change their expectations. But I was unsure of where to begin.
After attending a session at a nearby college on Assessment Based Learning I began to change my assessment system to something more meaningful to the students. Instead of just judging if a speech earned an passing grade, I created criteria sheets where the students could see how their speeches would be assessed. There was still always a guided set of proficiencies or criteria, but it was my first step away from assigning a grade to assessing what students could demonstrate what they had learned. I began to teach my courses as if they were student actors in a play. I was the director helping them learn their lines, shaping the mental and physical choices necessary in acting. My class became a rehearsal for the performance. I was back in my preferred environment. The students responded to this energetic stimulation.
More than 15 years later, after grad school, I became a college faculty member, I met Dr. Skip Downing and experienced his faculty development workshop called “On Course”. I learned more from Skip in four days than I learned throughout my “so called” higher education. I learned that there was a whole body of scientific evidence that learning was much more dependent on the psychology of the human being who was being taught than on the structure of lesson plans. Almost none of this information had been shared in my formal preparation to become a teacher. I was so bound up in what I had been taught about being an effective teacher that I was missing the critical relational aspects of this work. Don’t get me wrong, I still create learning objectives about the subject matter. But now I start with the students’ perspective and aspirations. I encourage them to seek Self-Growth that can enrich their whole lives.
Later, I had the amazing opportunity to meet Dr. Dan Apple and learn of this incredibly rich concept he called Process Education. Dan helped me bridge the gap between my performance focused teaching methodology and the idea that there were some learning processes that could enhance the so called soft side of learning. I worked at a learning-to-learn camp where we focused on many of the hard skills like attendance, turning in homework, reading the textbook, and taking notes. But we also worked on creating relationships between students, building a life plan, using a journal to reflect on what was learned, understanding what faculty members expected and what other students felt about their learning experiences. This new idea called Process Education started a new direction that changed my teaching life once again.
Now, in the twilight of my career, I’m enthusiastic about bringing the concepts and opportunities offered by On Course and Process Education to faculty around the world. I tell you this story not to glorify my personal journey but to inspire you to do some self-reflection and consider where you are headed in your own life/career journey. Do you yearn for the satisfaction of transforming your students’ progress toward enlightenment, creativity, and freedom? Do you want to be the teacher who inspires students? Is Self-Growth a concept you want to foster in yourself? If so, I invite you to actively join Academy members on this journey. Register for a professional development experience with Academy colleagues, Attend our annual Conference in Indianapolis this June. Make a Proposal for a session you will present. Establish relationships and join in the atmosphere of providing guidance, support, and encouragement for your students. Embark on your own Journey to Self-Growth. |
