My classes begin tomorrow morning for the spring semester. I just sent my students one final email to make sure they understood what I wanted from them. I figure I might as well let them know upfront. Here is what I told them:
Tomorrow
morning at either 9 or 10:30 a.m., we will meet and Intermediate Accounting II
will begin. Over the past few weeks, you
have received quite a number of emails from me talking about this class – why
it is important and what it takes to do well.
By now, one question should be rattling around in your brain: What does this guy really want from me as a
student? Clearly, this class is not
exactly like other classes and the teacher is not exactly like too many other
teachers. What am I looking for
from you over the course of the next 3 1/2 months?
Last
year, in downtown Richmond, my wife and I went to a play (Equivocation) about
William Shakespeare. At one point
during the first act, a young actor comes up to Shakespeare and asks (or almost
pleads): “You said I was
brilliant. Did you really mean
that?” Shakespeare looks at him for a
long time and finally responds: “You are
brilliant, at your best.” I leaned over
to my wife at that moment and whispered “that’s what I want to tell each of my
students. That is the essence of my
teaching.”
I
am convinced that you can be brilliant over the course of this semester. But I am equally convinced that you are only
going to be brilliant on those days when you are at your absolute best. That is my one and only goal – to bring out
the best in you. You don’t know what
your best really is. I don’t know what
your best really is. So, we both have
to push and challenge and work and debate and argue in order to get you to a
point where you are at your best. No
matter what I do in class, whether it seems funny or mean or insightful, I have
only one goal: To bring out the very
best from you (not the person beside of you or the person behind you or the
person on the other side of the room from you but just YOU). And that’s because I am convinced that you
can be truly brilliant, not average or mediocre or even good but truly
brilliant, but only when we are able to work together to get the best from
you. My guess is that you’ve had enough
average in your life. Surely, you are
sick of mediocre. The world has a lot
of troubles. It needs more people
willing to step up to the challenge and be brilliant. Isn’t it time for you to see what you can
actually accomplish when you are at your very best?
I
look forward to starting to work with you tomorrow morning.
PS
– Here’s a movie clip that you might enjoy.
It has one of my all-time favorite quotes: “It’s the hard that makes it great.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndL7y0MIRE4
i agree with you. from my standpoint, that's why i have always spent time dwelling on the "Potential". when you speak of someone's potential, there is the assumption, in my opinion, that they have not yet reached the ceiling of their "great". so when someone talks about my potential, or i speak of somoene's potential, i always think that i am not operating at my best or that they are not operating at their best. the ability to bring that best out of someone, to me, is an essential trait of teaching or leadership.
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