TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION

I recently had the great honor of being one of eight speakers at the annual TEDxYouth@RVA program at the Collegiate School here in Richmond, Virginia.  I was asked to discuss a topic I was passionate about so, naturally, I chose Transformative Education.  Many thanks go to Rhiannon Boyd and her team (including about 18 senior students at the Collegiate School) for all their help and for creating such a wonderful event.  I can hardly wait until next year so I can go back and sit in the audience and just listen.

(Since I originally published this blog essay, the actual video for the program has been published.  If you have 12 minutes and go to this URL, you can actually watch the entire presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G20tup61ZxI&t=1s    )

Here is my speech.

**

I have a quick announcement.  Tomorrow is my birthday.  I will turn 77.  I suspect some of you might think turning 77 sounds old.   But, I’m here to tell you that, if you take care of yourself and if you are lucky, the late 70s can be a fabulous time to be alive.  For one thing, all those years give you a wonderfully unique perspective of life.

As a result of that longevity, I am currently in my 54^th year as a college professor.  54 years!   How could anyone have the same job, day in and day out, for more than half a century?  That’s an easy question for me to answer.

I am a true believer in the importance of education.  More precisely, I’m a strong advocate for education that is transformative.  Every semester, students come into my class over at the University of Richmond and we work together for14 weeks.  If I do my half of the work and the students do their half, the transformation is amazing.  The difference between those students on the first day of the semester and those students on the last day of the semester can be breathtaking.  I very much want them to obtain extensive knowledge about a wide array of topics, but it is more than that.  Just as importantly, I want every student to learn to think more deeply and more critically.  Guiding that transformation is a splendid way to spend a life.  If you have not yet chosen a career, I would urge you to consider becoming a teacher.  The world needs more excellent teachers.

For transformative education to work, it must start as soon as possible.  On the first day of every semester, I explain to my students that I want to work with them as a team to create the greatest educational experience of their lives.  However, I need to help them envision the type of teamwork I want.  So, I talk about dancing.  My wife and I love to dance.  We go to parties and weddings just to dance.  Although I teach accounting, I talk with my students about how two dancers can work together to create something that is spectacular.  If you are older, you might recall Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers.  If you are younger, you might think about John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in the movie, Grease.  Look those couples up on YouTube and you will see dancing that will blow you away.  The couples work together as a team and create a dance that is full of energy, life, enthusiasm, and joy.  In the same way, I want to work with my students as a team to create a class each day that is full of energy, life, enthusiasm, and joy.  Fred and Ginger couldn’t produce that magic by themselves.  They had to work together.  If my students and I work together, we can create that same type of magic.

Therefore, on that first day of class, I pledge to my students that I will do my half of the work, not just now and then or when I’m in the mood but every single day, but I expect them to do their half of the work as well, not just now and then or when they are in the mood but every single day.  If we both hold up our end of that partnership, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. 

I never lecture.  I give my students all the questions in advance and when they walk into the room I start asking them questions.  I ask one and then another because I want to create a dialogue.  In this way, we can avoid “memorizing solutions” or “taking notes on solutions.”  I want them to learn to “figure out the solution.”  That’s where the magic is.

Why is this important?  What should you even care?

Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”  I very much want to be part of that change.  You should want to be part of that change.  Most importantly for me, I want my students to be part of that change, and I believe that is where transformative education becomes essential.

How do we create education that is transformative?  I have thought about that a long time, probably 54 years.  I believe it all starts with teamwork so you and the students need to establish a solid foundation on which you can build that transformative education.  However, it can’t float in midair.  It must have support.  To create that foundation, I believe you must have four building blocks.  Transformative education requires teamwork and teamwork requires a foundation and four building blocks.

The foundation for transformative education is one word:  “trust.”   I must trust that my students will do their half of the work by doing what I ask them to do.  At the same time, my students must trust me to do my half of the work—to guide them, to treat them fairly, and to inspire them.  With mutual trust, we can produce miracles.

You can’t create trust by telling students “trust me.”  You must work to earn it.   That leads to the four building blocks. 

The first building block is communication.  Students cannot read my mind.  I certainly cannot read the students’ minds.  If you have no good way to communicate, then you have no way to lead and inspire.  Before the semester begins and then virtually every day during the semester, I email my students to tell them what I want them to do, why it is important, why it is interesting, and how I will help them achieve success.  I want no uncertainty.  I want no confusion.  But communication goes both ways.  I urge my students to email me or come to my office to let me know their problems, their ideas, their future, their suggestions. 

The second building block is ambition.  I don’t think Fred and Ginger would ever have become great if they had not had a burning desire to be great.  It doesn’t work that way.  The best thing about ambition is that I want my students to be so ambitious that they will push me to be a great teacher.  And, that I will be so ambitious that I will push my students to be great learners.  If you are not willing to push your partner to be great, you’re not ambitious enough.

The third building block is the investment of time.  We live in a society that seems to believe that people can accomplish great things by using shortcuts, so they don’t have to spend too much time.  That is utter nonsense.  John and Olivia would never have created those fabulous dances in Grease if they hadn’t been willing to practice for hours and hours.  If the team is not willing to invest sufficient time, then nothing special is ever accomplished. 

The fourth building block is preparation.  When I walk into class every day, I must be totally prepared, or I cannot do my half of the work.  When the students walk into class every day, they must be totally prepared, or they cannot do their half of the work.  Wishing and hoping do not create transformative education.  The Boy Scouts have it right, “Be Prepared.” 

Changing the world is a complicated process.  Learning an exciting dance is a complicated process.  Creating transformative education is a complicated process.  They all require teamwork, and that teamwork requires a foundation built on trust.  To create that trust you need four building blocks:  communications, ambition, the investment of time, and preparation. 

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I turn 77.  I very much hope you will celebrate with me.  At some point tomorrow, grab a partner, turn on a rock and roll radio station and dance as if you are ready to change the world.    

What Does the Word “Teacher” Mean to You?

Yesterday was the 10-Month Anniversary of releasing my new teaching book (Transformative Education) as a free download.  I did not want to hoard my ideas.  Instead, I wanted to encourage every college teacher (including myself) to become better.  I had already provided copies to my friends (both near and far).  I was not sure anyone else would be interested, but I hoped to get a few hundred additional downloads if I was lucky. 

Much to my amazement, Transformative Education has been downloaded 2,865 times over the past 10 months (without the benefit of an advertising campaign).  Mathematically, that works out to a new download every 2 hours and 33 minutes around the clock for the past 10 months.  I can only assume I have benefited from an awful lot of word-of-mouth messaging.  If that was you, thanks a million for the help.  I am truly grateful. 

I am convinced that most college teachers want to get better.  You can do that.  It is not an impossible dream.  It starts with thinking and experimenting.  That is my central message.  Here is the URL for the free download.

https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/375/

Below I have cut and pasted in the first 779 words of Transformative Education.  Those few paragraphs will take you about 4 minutes to read.  At the end, you will either say, “I’d like to read more and see what ideas this guy has,” or you will say “This is just not my style.”  If you want to read more, the link is waiting for you.  If these 779 words don’t intrigue you, go find something else to read (I recently finished East of Eden by John Steinbeck and would recommend that novel highly). 

**

Teaching Is Personal.  Fair warning:  This book will be personal because teaching is such a personal experience.  Some books about teaching have a clinical structure like the description of a controlled laboratory experiment involving rats and mazes.  Those works can be quite beneficial, but my writings will sound different.  For me, improving the educational experience for every student is a personal goal, probably bordering on an obsession.  I want to encourage, guide, and assist college teachers in their quest to become better.  I never camouflage my mission. 

I do not want to overanalyze myself, but I suspect that my desire to improve as a teacher comes, in part, from my regret that I did not have better teachers in college.  A few were good.  Several were awful.  Most were average.  None were great.  I was frustrated that the bad ones did not try harder.  My parents paid a significant amount of their hard-earned money to a major university, but many of my teachers did not seem to care whether I learned one iota.  How could they settle for being mediocre at such a vitally important responsibility?  At 18, I did not understand their lackadaisical attitude.  I do not understand it any better now that I am well past 70.

I simply want every student to have a legitimate opportunity to earn an excellent education.  I have a great appreciation for teachers who work hard to help students think, learn, and understand.  Our schools can achieve better, more in-depth results if teachers are both willing and able to assist students in maximizing their potential.  I am always distressed when I read of educational inefficiencies.  “At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.”  (“Many Colleges Fail in Teaching How to Think,” Douglas Belkin, Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2017).  Such failure should be unacceptable to every person involved with college education but also to our society as a whole.  Such indictments should lead citizens to mass at the college gates with torches and pitchforks demanding better from us.

An Opening Reading.  I grew up in a tiny mountain town in North Carolina and attended the local Southern Baptist church.  Before every service, the pastor or a member of the congregation would stand before the assembled group and read a few verses, usually from the Bible.  These words often served as the basis for the comments that were to follow.  At other times, the selected reading provided inspiration or helped listeners get into the proper frame of mind to receive the speaker’s message.

In this book, I plan to examine the day-to-day activities of teaching.  How can you improve the learning process in your classes, not in a year or two, but right now?  How can you better educate your students, not a few of them, but 100 percent?  Just as importantly, why does it even matter? 

Given my background, I want to open this book with a reading.  I have selected a few lines from Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides.  It tells the story of Savannah and Tom Wingo, twins who grew up in a dysfunctional family in the low country near Charleston, South Carolina.  The epilogue to this book provides the following interaction.  Savannah speaks first and Tom replies. 

She took my hand and squeezed it.  “You sold yourself short.  You could’ve been more than a teacher and a coach.”

I returned the squeeze and said, “Listen to me, Savannah.  There’s no word in the language I revere more than teacher.  None.  My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher and it always has.  I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming one.”

Conroy died in 2016 after a prolific career.  I doubt he ever wrote other words that were better than these.  I am not here to judge, but if Tom’s response does not pull your heart into your throat, then reading my book is probably not a good use of your time.

Why are you reading this book?  What do you hope to gain?  When you read the above conversation in Pat Conroy’s novel, is it more than just mere words to you?  Is the message personal?  I will provide you with scores of ideas and suggestions that I believe can lead to improved education.  The goal is simple.  I want teachers everywhere to get excited about their careers, about the effect they have on so many college students.  I believe that you can become a better teacher and with work eventually a great teacher.  My advice is simple:  Go for it!

**

Thanks for reading this far.  Now, it is up to you as to whether you read more.  That seems fair.

One additional message.  I have a podcast titled Transformative Teaching – Stories That Inspire.   It is available wherever podcasts are available.  I have two episodes already up with three more in process to be released soon.  I hope to do 5 or 10 more over the summer.  They are each about 10-15 minutes in length.  I hope you will tune in.  

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTORY VIDEO

The "Low-Stress Book Club" at Olympic College in the state of Washington is reading and discussing my new book "Transformative Education--How Can You Become a Better Teacher?" over the next seven weeks. 

I'll be joining them by Zoom for Week Six which should be fascinating. I can hardly wait. I made a short Zoom video to introduce these new readers to my book and what I was trying to accomplish. It was a fun project for me and I thought I would share it on my blog for anyone who might be thinking about better teaching. 

Here is the URL for that video just so you can see how I have been staying busy.

https://youtu.be/PSeosJZFw98

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION by Professor Joe Hoyle (a free gift from me to you)

 I released a new teaching book this morning.   It is free.  If you will send your email address to me at Jhoyle@richmond.edu, I will send it to you.  No catch.  Or at the very bottom of this essay, there is a URL that you can use to get a downloadable version.  The book is 153 pages long and, in this posting, I am going to post the first 1 ½ pages.  I think that will give you a pretty good idea of whether you are interested in reading the book. 

--First, here is what I have told everyone about the new book. 

I spent the past weeks, months, and years of my life working on a book about great teaching.  It is finished.   The title is Transformative Education, because I believe that should be the goal of every course we offer.   

I give this book to you for free.  I made no attempt to have it formally published.  I strongly believe that colleges and universities should freely share as much educational material as possible.  The world desperately needs substantially more high-quality education.  Our planet’s problems are never going to be resolved unless we double or triple the number of well-educated people.  Educators should avoid hoarding our ideas.  I wanted to do my part.   

Suggestion 1:     Read the first 20 pages and decide whether to continue or not.  By that point, I am feel certain you will know whether this book is worth your time.  

Suggestion 2:      I do hope you will read the Dedication.  If nothing else, read that one page.

Favor:      Without the support of a publisher, I must rely on the help of friends/colleagues/strangers/enemies to circulate the book.  If you know anyone, anyone at all, who might be interested in better teaching, please forward it along.  “Free” really means, “Without the kindness of others, this book will never be read.”   

Advice 1:      This work is not a novel.  Read it slowly.  Read a couple of pages each day and think about those ideas and suggestions.  You might not agree with every idea.  Hopefully, you will find some that can be helpful and have a significant, positive effect on your teaching.  Take your time.  Read three pages each day and you will finish the entire book in less than two months.  Speed is not the goal here.  Thinking and improving are the goals.  Take your time and shoot to be a better teacher by the time you finish.

Advice 2:     Set up a Word file on your computer.  When you read a suggestion or tactic that seems helpful, cut and paste it into the file.  Everyone needs a system to keep up with ideas that you want to remember.  Saying, “I like that,” probably means, "this will be forgotten," unless you create a system to store ideas.

Assuaging Reader Worries:      This book has absolutely nothing to do with teaching accounting.  This book is about becoming a better college teacher no matter what subject you teach. 

--I do not write here about any accountants, but I do write about Paul Simon, Nelson Mandela, Raphael, Martin Luther King Jr., and Doonesbury. 

--I have no quotes here from any accountants, but I do have quotes from Ricky Nelson, Miss Piggy, Lao Tzu, and Scarlett O’Hara.   

--I have no comparison here of any accounting rules, but I do have a comparison of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.   

--Off the top of my head, my five favorite statements discussed herein came from Bruce Springsteen, Mark Rothko, Tom Hanks, the author Cheryl Strayed, and a man who played catcher in Major League Baseball for 18 years.   

If you have questions, let me know at Jhoyle@richmond.edu

**

--Now, here is the beginning 1 ½ pages of the new book.

An Opening Reading

Teaching Is Personal.  Fair warning:  This book will be personal because teaching is such a personal experience.  Some books about teaching have a clinical structure like the description of a controlled laboratory experiment involving rats and mazes.  Those works can be quite beneficial, but my writings will sound different.  For me, improving the educational experience for every student is a personal goal, probably bordering on an obsession.  I want to encourage, guide, and assist college teachers in their quest to become better.  I never camouflage my mission. 

I do not want to overanalyze myself, but I suspect that my desire to improve as a teacher comes, in part, from my regret that I did not have better teachers in college.  A few were good.  Several were awful.  Most were average.  None were great.  I was frustrated that the bad ones did not try harder.  My parents paid a significant amount of their hard-earned money to a major university, but many of my teachers did not seem to care whether I learned one iota.  How could they settle for being mediocre at such a vitally important responsibility?  At 18, I did not understand their lackadaisical attitude.  I do not understand it any better now that I am well past 70.

I simply want every student to have a legitimate opportunity to earn an excellent education.  I have a great appreciation for teachers who work hard to help students think, learn, and understand.  Our schools can achieve better, more in-depth results if teachers are both willing and able to assist students in maximizing their potential.  I am always distressed when I read of educational inefficiencies.  “At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.”  (“Many Colleges Fail in Teaching How to Think,” Douglas Belkin, Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2017).  Such failure should be unacceptable to every person involved with college education but also to our society as a whole.  Such indictments should lead citizens to mass at the college gates with torches and pitchforks demanding better from us.

An Opening Reading.  I grew up in a tiny mountain town in North Carolina and attended the local Southern Baptist church.  Before every service, the pastor or a member of the congregation would stand before the assembled group and read a few verses, usually from the Bible.  These words often served as the basis for the comments that were to follow.  At other times, the selected reading provided inspiration or helped listeners get into the proper frame of mind to receive the speaker’s message.

In this book, I plan to examine the day-to-day activities of teaching.  How can you improve the learning process in your classes, not in a year or two, but right now?  How can you better educate your students, not a few of them, but 100 percent?  Just as importantly, why does it even matter? 

Given my background, I want to open this book with a reading.  I have selected a few lines from Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides.  It tells the story of Savannah and Tom Wingo, twins who grew up in a dysfunctional family in the low country near Charleston, South Carolina.  The epilogue to this book provides the following interaction.  Savannah speaks first and Tom replies. 

She took my hand and squeezed it.  “You sold yourself short.  You could’ve been more than a teacher and a coach.”

I returned the squeeze and said, “Listen to me, Savannah.  There’s no word in the language I revere more than teacher.  None.  My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher and it always has.  I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming one.”

Conroy died in 2016 after a prolific career.  I doubt he ever wrote other words that were better than these.  I am not here to judge, but if Tom’s response does not pull your heart into your throat, then reading my book is probably not a good use of your time.

Why are you reading this book?  What do you hope to gain?  When you read the above conversation in Pat Conroy’s novel, is it more than just mere words to you?  Is the message personal?  I will provide you with scores of ideas and suggestions that I believe can lead to improved education.  The goal is simple.  I want teacher everywhere to get excited about their careers, about the effect they have on so many college students.  I believe that you can become a better teacher and with work eventually a great teacher.  My advice is simple:  Go for it!

The book can also be downloaded from the University of Richmond Scholarship Repository.   

https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/375/