GREAT THINKING TO GET GREAT STUDENTS

As most people know, I am a full-time faculty member here at the University of Richmond.   Over the summer, Dr. Ronald Crutcher was named the 10^th president of our University.   I was at one of the opening ceremonies for the fall semester this morning.   President Crutcher spoke and was kind enough to mention this teaching blog.  He said that he had been reading it since he was appointed to the position of president.   So, I want to wish President Crutcher a true welcome to the University of Richmond.   No matter how good you think we are, your job is to make us better.   Make it happen.

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I was at a conference in Chicago last week and was part of two panel presentations on teaching.   In such wide ranging discussions, I inevitably talk about quite a number of ways to become a better teacher over the course of the next academic year.   Not surprisingly, I tend to give a variety of answers to questions depending on the direction of the conversation.  

But one of those questions has been on my mind since last week.   One person asked:   What is the most important piece of advice you can give to a college professor who wants to become a better teacher?  

That is a serious and very interesting question.   What is my most important piece of advice?  I feel like I should take a survey and analyze the answers that I receive.   In truth, I am not sure what answer I gave in Chicago.   On a panel, you tend to throw out answers without adequate thought.   Here’s the answer I would give now, after some consideration.

A person once emailed me “Great teaching does not come from years of doing it.   Great teaching comes from thinking about it.”   For example:   If you were the coach of a great college football team and had a chance to win a national championship, you would probably think about nothing else between July and January.   You would be obsessive.   You would eat, drink, and sleep football.   In your mind, you would break the team apart and consider each component and how to get improvement.   And, heck, the coach is just getting the team ready for a game.   Although football receives tons of attention, it really is just a game.  Unless you are related to a player or have a bet on the game, it really has no impact on anyone.   But the coach would think about little else for all those months.   Victory would be so important that the thinking would be natural.

In comparison, how much time have you spent thinking about your teaching over the summer?  How much have you talked with other teachers over these weeks and months?   How much will you think about your teaching over the coming weeks?   If the answer to these questions is “very little,” then you are probably aligned with a majority of teachers.   But that is never going to get you to greatness.   It is hard to improve without sacrificing time for a lot of thinking.   If you want to get better at anything, you need to invest a serious level of thought.

Thus, here is my answer.   My “most important piece of advice for great teaching” would be the following.   Very much like a championship football coach analyzing the team, break apart your teaching process into its smallest component parts.   You can probably come up with 10-20 “parts” if you try:   testing philosophy, homework assignments, structure of class, how much you will lecture, office hours, methods of communications, writing assignments, grading policies, attendance, getting students to be engaged in the class, and the like.   There are a lot of bits and pieces that make up “teaching.”  

Then, pick 2-3 of these pieces that you want to focus on during the upcoming semester and think about those 2-3 in every possible way that you can.   Don't spend minutes; spend hours.   How could you do each of them differently and how could that make your teaching more effective and efficient?   There are always alternatives.   What are they?

I believe it is difficult to improve “teaching.”   The topic is simply too broad.   On the other hand, I think everyone can select a couple of components of teaching and come up with serious improvements.   But only if you are willing to do some serious thinking about those parts.  You cannot fix the car.   You can only fix pieces of the car.   For the next semester, pick the pieces of teaching that you want to think about (possibly obsessively but not necessarily) and see what improvements you can uncover.   Then, the next semester, pick a couple of different components to think about and do it again.   I believe you will be amazed by how quickly your teaching begins to improve.

Once you pick what you what to think about find some colleagues who enjoy teaching and sit around and talk about these things.   We are all in this together.   We should be helping each other.   It is shocking how little some of us talk to each other about teaching.

So, what have I been thinking about this summer?

My students often do not seem to have a real understanding of what it means to be great students.  They tend to have their own way of approaching a class and, whether they seem to be getting an A or an F, they faithfully stick with that approach. 

This summer I have been thinking about the question:   How do I get my students to become better students?   If I can get improvement, they will be better for me but also better for all of their other teachers.

I want them to walk into my first class (next Monday) having spent time considering what it means to be a great student.   They are all smart enough to do well in my class if they will just make the smart decisions that seem to come so naturally to great students.   Over the summer, I have sent them several emails on this topic (I will talk more about this experiment at a later date).  Here, I want to talk about one particular experiment.

One of my beliefs is that poorer students tend to procrastinate and then have to rush around at the last minute to complete assignments and often have poor results.  Without sufficient time, nothing ever goes well.   I believe great students tend to procrastinate less so that they have adequate time for excellent work.   Think think think – how can I reduce procrastination.

I wanted to influence my students so I sent them the following email about two week ago.

Notice here that I am trying to make several points that will encourage immediate action and less procrastination:

--This material is important because it is relevant to the world around us and to what we are going to cover in class.

--Knowledge is not just something school students accumulate for a test.   It is a big help to successful business people who can make immediate use of it.

--There is a big difference between wanting to make an A and wanting to be successful in the business world.  I don’t think enough students ever make this distinction.   It is an important because this distinction impacts how a student approaches the learning process.

--Students often don’t realize what they really want.   I am trying to help them see through all their talk to determine their true goals.   “If you put the work off until the test gets close, you don’t want knowledge.   You want a grade.”   I think self-awareness is helpful.   After you have self-awareness, then you are in a better position to make improvements. 

**

Here’s the email I sent:

“It is amazing to me how often I will read something in the newspaper about a topic that we will be covering in Intermediate Accounting II (Accounting 302).   I am always reminded that if you are going to be successful in the world of business you have to know what is going on.

“Attached is an article from the Wall Street Journal a few days back about sales leaseback arrangements.   You will see this article again in class because we are going to be talking about these arrangements (probably around October 15).  

“If your response is:  ‘I want to make an A.  I'll read this article when it gets close to when I must know it for class’ then you are probably going to be a very good college student.   If your response is:   ‘I want to be a successful business person so I am dying to read it right now’ then you are probably going to be a successful business person.   Success is more than simply working for a grade.

”From my experience, it is important to know which one of those goals is YOU.   My experience is that half of the students in 302 want to be great students and half want to be successful business people.   Don't fool yourself.   You are adults now.   It is important, I think, for you to know what your real goals are.”

**

Will this help my students become more aware of how a great student approaches material in order to become a successful business person?   I think it can help some.   And, if I make similar points during the semester, by the end of the course, I am hoping that I have helped all of them not just to learn accounting but also to learn what it means to be a great student, one who will graduate and go out into the real world and achieve true success.  If I can help them get rid of procrastination, a big step has been taken toward making them great students.

Well, that is what I have been thinking about over the summer.   What have your thought about?   What epiphanies have you come up with about your teaching?

Here Is Your Assignment AND Words from a Legendary Teacher

My next set of classes starts on Monday, August 24.   However, I emailed my students their first assignment back on April 28.   I did not want them to waste their summer.   More importantly, I wanted to start having a positive influence on them as soon as possible.   The assignment had several parts culminating in their writing a short essay on the characteristics of a great student.   I just wanted them to think about what that meant.   I’ll write more about the results of that assignment during the fall when I see whether it had any impact on the students.

Today, though, I want to give you an assignment to complete before your fall semester begins.   When I put on teaching presentations, I often begin by instructing my audience to do the following exercise.  Standing in front of all those teachers, I ask every person to close their eyes.   (I always warn them that they cannot fall asleep.)  

“I want you to think through your years in school—start with kindergarten and go all the way through high school and college.   Think about all those dozens of teachers and pick the one teacher who had the most positive influence on your life.   It could be a fifth grade reading teacher or a high school biology teacher.   It could be a college math teacher or your kindergarten teacher.   Think about all those teachers and pick the one who stands out to you as having the most positive influence.   I find most people can settle on one great teacher fairly quickly.

“Now, I want you to identify the three characteristics that stand out in your mind about this person.   If you had to describe this teacher by his or her characteristics, what would you say?   Was the person kind, gentle, mean, depressed, etc.?   This teacher certainly stood out in your life—what enabled them to be such a force in your life?  What made this teacher great?

“Teachers often tell me they are not sure what characteristics lead to great teaching.  That is absolute baloney.   You have just identified the three characteristics that, for you, are basic to great teaching.   And you probably did it without too much problem.   This is a simple exercise to help you identify the characteristics you believe lead to great teaching.

“Our goal here today is to help you move closer to becoming a great teacher.   So, take the three characteristics that you just identified.  Think about your own teaching.   For each of these three, award yourself a grade:  A, B, C, D, F.   How well are you doing?   For example, if you felt that the great teacher in your life became great by being sweet, then how would you grade your own teaching when it comes to being sweet?

“To become great, you have to work on getting better.   That is just common sense.   Take the three grades you just gave yourself.   Unless you awarded yourself three A’s (which probably means you are an incredibly easy grader), what can you do over the next 12 months to move those grades higher?  That is the key.  How can you improve over the next 12 months.   For me, that is the secret to improving as a teacher.   Find the standard you want, measure yourself honestly, consider how to make improvements.    And, then, go do it.”

Next, in these teaching presentations, I have the members of the group open their eyes and we discuss their great teachers and the characteristics that made them great.   Listening to everyone talk about these teachers is a wonderful experience.   Try it in your next faculty meeting.   I am a big believer that the mere act of talking about great teachers will help you become a better teacher.

**

Therefore, I want to finish up this blog posting today by talking about a great teacher.   Interestingly enough, this is a teacher that I never had and probably never spoke with in my life.   But I am convinced that she was great.

I grew up in the 1950s in a small blue-collar furniture town of about 1,000 in the hills of North Carolina.   My high school graduating class was roughly 100 and, as I remember it, 25 percent of the graduates were married and about 10 percent already had children.   It was a fabulous place to grow up with wonderful people but it was not the most cosmopolitan place on the planet.  

However, our high school band was fabulous.   The band seemed to have a consistent excellence that really went beyond the place and size of the school.   I have no musically ability at all so I had no idea how that consistency was maintained.   The band director was Kathryn Siphers.   I did not know her at all but she seemed to be a quiet and serious person—one who appeared able to coax the best out of those high school musicians year after year.     In hindsight, I wish I could have set in the room and watched her lead and guide those young people to get such great results.   It must have been a fabulous example of great teaching.   I think I would have learned a lot.

She died at the age of 62 in 1986.   That is a long time ago.   My little home town now has a Facebook page and it is amazing to me, how many times former students bring her name up and talk about her in glowing terms.   Just today, one person wrote about her:   “I think I cried harder at her funeral than any other one I have ever been to” and another person responded “Her influence was unlimited.”   After nearly three decades, people talk about her as a very real presence in their lives.   Ms. Siphers truly meets my definition as a great teacher.   Even after 44 years in this job, that is still a goal I am working towards.  

When she died, a colleague wrote about her in the local newspaper.   I think this will tell you more about what it means to be a great teacher than anything I can think of to say.

“Ms. Siphers was more than a band director.   She was a teacher’s teacher.   In her philosophy on teaching, she wrote, ‘Teaching is my life.  I have been given one talent to use.  This talent has made it possible for me to teach many children music.  I believe in music as an exalter of the human spirit, as a life-giving force in education.   My challenge is to lead students into genuine and permanent love and understanding of beautiful music.   I believe if a teacher is to be successful, one must grow as one works.  One must be enthusiastic and untiring in efforts to get the work done.   Constant planning, working, evaluating, examining of materials and teaching procedures must be made.  For me, teaching is exciting.   It is an obsession, but a magnificent obsession.’”

There is nothing I could possibly add to those sentiments.

ANSWERING TEN QUESTIONS WILL HELP YOU BECOME A BETTER TEACHER

As I have mentioned on my last two postings, I will be part of a panel discussion on April 17, 2015, in Asheville, NC, at the Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Accounting Association.   I am thrilled to be joined by three great teachers:   Lynn Clements of Florida Southern, Eric Bostwick of the University of West Florida, and Scott Showalter of North Carolina State.  

We are planning to have a simple conversation about some of the most basic issues in teaching.   I am very much interested in knowing how other teachers deal with the challenges that I seem to face every day in my classroom.   I have long believed that we need a more open exchange of ideas if college education is going to improve as it must.

I am not sure what questions we will end up discussing in Asheville but here are ten that we are considering.  

How would you answer each of these questions?   There are no right or wrong answers here but these are wonderful questions for each of us to consider as we work to help more of our students become better educated and more deeply thinking individuals.

(1) – (This first question here is directed toward accounting education but it probably applies to almost any academic area from history to Shakespeare to philosophy.)   Any time there is a student comment about an accounting course, the initial response is that the topic is extremely dry.  Many students seem to walk into accounting classes on the first day with the firm belief that they are going to be painfully bored by the material (which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy).   ("Accounting is going to be sooooo dull.")   How do you make your classes interesting and enjoyable for your students?  

(2) – I write a blog about teaching and I recently reported that I had surveyed my students on the characteristics of great teaching.   The number one characteristic according to my students was:  “Great teachers motivate and inspire students.   They set high standards and challenge their students to reach those goals.”   One student wrote “Any teacher with a degree can teach, but it takes a great teacher to get into the hearts of his or her students and inspire them.   Great teachers inspire their students to do great things.”   Okay, how do you motivate and inspire your students?

(3) – Every book on teaching will tell you that the best learning comes about when students are actively engaged.   However, many students seem to prefer to sit very quietly and take notes (or daydream).   I sometimes refer to them as stenographer students.   How do you get students to be engaged and interactive in class?

(4) – I once wrote an essay titled “What do you want on your tombstone?”   In this essay, I asked teachers how they wanted to be remembered by their students.    How do you want to be remembered?  

(5) – What is your biggest challenge as a teacher?

(6) – I am a big believer that a teacher should always know what he or she wants to achieve in a class or the class will tend to drift around in a random fashion.   Think of your favorite course to teach.   How do you want your students to be different on the last day of the semester?  What impact do you want to have on your students?

(7) – I obsessively believe that one of the most important keys to a great class is student preparation.   If students walk in unprepared (as they often seem to want to do), there is only a limited amount that they can add to class discussion.   Almost by definition, they are limited to being quiet and taking notes because they don’t come in with the knowledge needed to make a legitimate contribution.   How do you get students to prepare before arriving at class?  

(8) – I have often said that "the way you test is the way students will learn."   For them, every day is preparation for the next test.   Schools often claim that their primary goal is to help students develop critical thinking skills.   But, testing is often based on memorization so students tend to focus on memorization.   Some of the students probably learned this strategy in middle school and high school.   In this age of Google, memorization has few benefits.  How do you test your students?   Is your testing geared toward critical thinking skills?

(9) – In every aspect of life, good communication is important so that everyone is on the same page.   Do you have any particular ways that you communicate with your students?

(10) – Students often leave class each day thinking they know the material.   I recently read a book that stated that students almost always over value what they know.   I tell my students that they actually leave class each day with “Swiss-cheese” knowledge.   It looks solid but it is really full of holes.   How do you help students realize their knowledge has holes and then how do you help them plug those holes?

Would love to see you in the audience in Asheville helping us come up with answers to these ten essential questions.   

A Story For My Students -- Learning to Deal with the Unexpected

There are many times in teaching that a teacher needs to explain things to students. In many college classes, they are young people with limited experience. Occasionally, they simply don’t understand, especially when things are not as they have experienced them in the past. Part of my job as a teacher is to explain things beyond my subject matter.

There are stories that can sometimes help them come to a better understanding. I often have students come to my office after I return a test. They are upset that they didn’t make the grade they had wanted or expected. It is common for me to hear something like “I cannot tell you how hard I studied. In fact, I studied with Mr. A and Ms. B and I knew just as much as they did. We worked every question from class 8 times apiece. Yet, they made a 95 and I made an 83. What am I supposed to do?”

I guess this is on my mind because one of my students told me this afternoon that the 83 he got on a recent test was the first grade he had received in college under 98.

To the student, the facts are clear. He or she did the same work as Mr. A and Ms. B and they made significantly higher scores on the test. At this point, the world doesn’t make sense.

Here’s one story that I sometimes use in cases like this. “Assume you have two tightrope walkers. They both can walk a tightrope. It is a mechanical skill and they both can do it. But, for whatever reason, the first person is just more comfortable. Maybe, the first one practices more carefully. Maybe, the first one thinks more about the mechanics of tightrope walking. Maybe, the first one sits in his room at night and thinks of what odd things can happen and then dreams up a proper response. Or, maybe, tightrope walking just comes more naturally to the first person. Everyone has different abilities in life.

“So, both people are high up on the tightrope one afternoon and they both look great. Suddenly, a very unexpected and very harsh wind blows up. What happens?”

The student realizes the expected answer. “The first person hangs on and the second person falls off.”

And, my response is: “Yeah, exactly. As long as things go as expected, they both do fine. It is the ability to react to the unexpected that usually makes a difference in life between great and adequate and the same is true on tests.

“My guess is that if I had asked exactly the questions on that test that you expected, then Mr. A, Ms. B, and you would have all done great. Doing great when you are faced with the expected is not a big challenge.

“However, I want you to learn how to react to the unexpected. To me, that’s what will make you different out there in the real world. I suspect that you were not as well prepared for the unexpected as I wanted you to be. That is where you probably need to get better in the future. First, of course, you have to be able to do the expected. That goes without saying. Everyone knows that. But, then, if you really want to be great, you need to move on to the unexpected. You need to sit in a dark room (or you need to converse with Mr. A and Ms. B) and think about what unexpected things could happen on the test. If you never grow to the point where you can start dealing with the unexpected, then you are never going to flourish the way I want you to. And, you are capable of doing this. I’m not asking for the impossible. You can’t just be satisfied with being able to do the expected. It takes growth; it takes time. But you are capable.”

Does the story help the student? Sometimes, it does. Not always but certainly for some it makes sense and it pushes them to break through to a more in-depth understanding. I think too much of our school system (from kindergarten on) is geared toward teaching students how to face the expected. That’s fine and certainly necessary. But I don’t think any of our students are going to cure the ills of our world by limiting themselves to figuring out how to face the expected.

If they don’t catch on by themselves, sometimes a story can help.

A Note To My Students

I started a new semester last week. Last night, at the end of that first week, I sent the following email to my students. Now that they see what we are doing, I want them to understand my goals. I want them to see what I am trying to accomplish. I want them to believe that the work that I am asking them to do is worth the effort. To achieve your ambitions, your students have to buy into the process. If they do the work just because they are scared of you or your tests, the amount they can achieve is truly limited.


To: Accounting Students

From: JH

Okay, you’ve had my class now for a week. It is obviously a different approach. Some people like it and some people hate it. I can live with that. But, I do want you to understand what I’m trying to do. I think you’ll do better if you see what my goals are. I realize that you are more used to lecture and memorization and may not even see what benefit comes from what we are doing.

If you have a free ten minutes this week-end, I’d like for you to watch the following video which comes from one of my all-time favorite movies (The Paper Chase). This is a movie that had a great influence on my thinking about education. (By the way, I have a picture of Professor Kingsfield on the back of my door so it is the last thing I see when I walk out of the room to go teach you accounting.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHV2n4o6J2I&feature=related

There are four things that I want you to notice in particular

---Professor Kingsfield tells the class “never assume anything in my class.” Good advice.

---Professor Kingsfield tells the class “you’ll never get to a right answer because there is always another question. Good advice.

---Professor Kingsfield tells the class “you walk in with a scull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer (well, for us, like an accountant).” That is a goal worth some effort. That is education at its best. That is an experience worth having. That is a priority that can change your life.

---Most importantly, I want you to see the difference in “Mister Hart” from the beginning until the end. When he walks through the door at the end of the video, he has matured in so many ways. And, that is what I want for each of you. You will be a better person if you can learn to think better and the world will also be better. Memorizing accounting will not make you a better person but learning how to think about accounting just might.

Common Sense

A student that I had in one of my classes last spring wrote me recently for a book suggestion. He said that he wanted to learn more about the nature of business success and wondered what books I might suggest for him to read over the summer. I gave him a few titles that I like and then finished off with one of my very favorite books from many decades ago: Up the Organization.

I made the point to the student that I liked this last book especially because it made so much of business just seem like common sense. The book didn’t try to overwhelm me with weird ideas and theories or complex calculations and assumptions. It just said, in very simple terms, “if you treat people this way, you should get good results.”

After I wrote the student, I started to wonder if I could use the same logic in my teaching. Is there a common sense approach to teaching? The education system in the U.S. gets criticized quite frequently and experts put forth a lot of new suggestions all the time. However, improvement seems elusive. So, for the past 2-3 weeks, I have been pondering what a “common sense approach” to teaching might look like.

Here are some of the ideas that I came up with. (If you have some additional common sense teaching ideas, let me know.)

--The teacher should know what he or she wants to accomplish. How do you decide what you need to do each day if you don’t know where you and your class are going? How do you evaluate whether you are making the progress you want if you are not sure what you want to see happen? Seems like common sense to me. So, as an exercise, write down in (let’s say) 20 words or less what you want to see your students gain from your classes in the fall. I think this is a great way to start every semester.

--Be careful that you are not simply teaching your students to memorize. There’s a big difference between understanding and memorization. As you look at your goal above, does it require anything more than memorization? In the past, occasionally, people would appear on television who were memory geniuses. They would have the entire New York City phone book memorized or the name of everyone in the audience. When I write a test, I always picture that person. If the memory genius can make too high of a grade on my test, I’m not happy with how I’ve written it. I’m not trying to teach memorization so why reward it. I need to be testing more understanding, asking questions that would leave the memory genius completely stumped.

--I never expect students to read my mind. Never. That’s a bad teaching strategy. I tell them exactly what I want from them every single day. There should be no guesswork. I give them very specific assignments and I make sure that they are each of a proper length. Not too long to discourage them but not so short that it doesn’t seem to have any substance.

--I never expect students to do work unless they will eventually (sooner rather than later) see the reason for that assignment. If I ask my students to read a 5 page article for Monday, then on Monday I will question them about that assignment. “In the article you read for today, what did WorldCom do wrong, why do you think they did it that way, and how should they have operated differently?” If an assignment is given but not mentioned later by the teacher, students have every reason to believe they wasted their time.

--If a student is given an assignment and it is not done properly, there should consequences. Students are gamblers. They are constantly weighing out what might happen if they don’t do a certain amount of work. If you ask students to read Chapter One and they don’t and you do nothing about it, then you can certainly expect them NOT to read Chapter Two. That will follow as night follows day. They have now been conditioned (by you) to ignore what you ask them to do.

--When you call on students in class, call on the poor ones the same number of times that you call on the good ones. If you consistently call on John twice in every class but call on Susan only once, everyone in class gets the signal (especially John and Susan). What that exact signal is will depend on you (and why you call on John more), but all of the students will quickly get the message. One of the greatest rewards of teaching is turning a poor student into a good one. That is so much harder to do if you are sending signals that you recognize that some students are better than others. For example, I have a tendency to ask harder questions to the better students and easier questions to the poorer students. That is one habit that I want to break. I’m subtly telling the poorer students that I don’t believe in them and their ability to become better students.

--Care enough about your students as human beings to actually listen to their answers. It is very easy to make a quick evaluation (“this person is totally lost”) and start thinking about the next question you are going to ask. The student talking is a human being and deserves your full attention as they try to piece together an answer to your question. If you listen carefully, you can actually hear the pattern of their thought process as they work through the answer. They are talking to you; you should care enough to listen.

Okay, I could probably list 25 more like these. They are all just plain common sense. There is nothing here that every teacher in America could not do starting this fall. However, I’ll bet if you follow these religiously, you would improve as a teacher. Maybe not much, but some. And I have always held that the secret to becoming a great teacher is a little improvement each and every semester. And, to make that improvement, you don’t need to follow some complicated new educational fad. I’m betting common sense will be enough.