One Last Thing

I finished my last class of the semester about 18 hours ago.   It was my 45th year in the classroom.   I believe that I taught most of my students a lot of accounting.   I would hope, though, that I helped them see more about life than just my subject matter.   Maybe I am wrong but I think 50 years ago college teachers were interested in more than the pure conveyance of subject matter.   As I look at the weirdness of the current presidential race, I wonder whether we have come to focus too exclusively on subject matter.

So, I got up this Saturday morning and sent a final message to my students.   Not sure if it will make them any different but, maybe, in a few cases, they will think about their future lives a bit differently.



To:   My Accounting Students

From:   JH

It's been a great semester (despite all the snow).   I have pushed you hard and you have responded wonderfully well.   No one threw a chair at me and I always consider that a victory.   I believe you are all better, more knowledgeable, more thinking people than when we first began this voyage way back in January.  

I think that kind of education is vitally important.   I think that kind of education is worth working hard to attain.  You simply don't gain an education without both work and guidance.   As you go through life, select your mentors wisely.

But, I think an education has to be more than just the accumulation of knowledge.   Smarter people are not necessarily better people.   You need both -- to become smarter and better.   Not just here in college but every day throughout life.   I think we often focus on one and not the other.   The world often seems off kilter to me and I think that is one of the main reasons.

I read a column recently written by David Brooks.   He is a political columnist who is a whole lot more conservative than I am.   In our political world, his having different political beliefs than mine would probably be a reason for scorn, a reason for me to make fun of him.   But, I love to read what he writes because he is a truly thoughtful person.   You don't meet enough of such people in the world.  You can learn much from them.

I wanted to share this column with you.   He doesn't mention accounting but he provides some thoughts that are very much worth hearing.   So, while you are studying for your final exams, when you want to take a break, here is something you might read.   It won't add any points to your grade but his thoughts might well lead you to become a better person and surely that is a goal almost (almost) as important as a couple of extra points on my final exam.   

 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?_r=0

**

HELP YOUR STUDENTS FOCUS ON THE QUESTIONS

On Friday morning, April 8, 2016, I will be speaking at the Ohio region meeting of the American Accounting Association on the topic of “Perspectives of High-Quality Teaching.”   If you are in the Cleveland area, I hope you will show up.  I would love to meet you and chat about teaching.   Here’s the URL.

http://aaahq.org/meetings/2016/ohio-midyear-meeting

**

I am teaching three classes this semester—two Intermediate Accounting II classes and one Financial Accounting class.  I have 78 students.   I realize that some of you teach hundreds but, for me, 78 is a fairly large number.  That provides some challenges when trying to get each student to do outstanding work.

I always give three tests every semester and a final exam.   I believe that gives the students a chance to show me what they have really learned.   After the first two tests, I usually have a good group (50-60 percent) who are doing well and have an excellent chance of getting an A or a B (hopefully).   They are strong and talented students who put in the work consistently for every class.

But I have another group (40-50 percent) who do not seem able to break through.  In some cases, the students are simply not working.   In other cases, accounting does not come easily to them.   We all have different talents.   In truth, though, a vast majority of my students are working relatively hard and seem more than capable of making an A or B.   Well, then, what assistance can I offer this second group of students to help them move from C’s and D’s to A’s and B’s?  

In many ways, isn’t that one of our most important jobs—helping students who are struggling to figure out how to become outstanding?   And, isn’t that where the victories are the most satisfying?   Getting a bright, hard-working student to make an A feels good but I always realize that they could have probably done it without me.  I don’t deserve too much credit.   Getting a student who has a C or a D with only 3-4 weeks left in the semester to make an A or a B seems like teaching at its best.

So, I take it as a personal challenge to get my “under B” group to do better.  First, you have to get them out of a “C” mentality.   After two low test grades, it is easy to become discouraged and start to think of yourself as no better than an average student.   That’s nonsense.   That’s absolute baloney.    Everyone can do better.   I am convinced of that.   I like to remind them that they still have well over half of their grade to be determined.   In my classes, the last regular test and the final exam make up approximately 57 percent of their overall grade.   Although the semester seems to be drawing to a close, they are not even at half time yet as far as their grade is concerned.   They still have plenty of time left to make an A or B but they do need to make some adjustments and they need to make them immediately.  I need to impress on them that they can do better but there is some urgency.  Without urgency, change is tough.

As probably everyone who reads this blog knows, I use the Socratic Method.   My class is filled with questions that the students work to answer.   I am training them (I hope) to learn how to “figure out” answers for themselves.  My giving them answers and information is not nearly as beneficial as them getting the information and figuring out the answers for themselves.

When a student comes by to ask for help here in this last month, I like to ask that person to start writing one test problem after each class.  I want to see one problem that they think I might ask on a test based on the material we covered.   I want them to start focusing on how the material can be turned into questions.   In the book Make It Stick, the authors assert that students often over-estimate what they have learned.   I think that is probably true.   I also think it is true that students focus on answering the questions they have already seen and not on the questions they are going to see. 

What I find fascinating is that, even after having two of my tests, students often write poor questions.   For the most part, they simply take the questions that I ask in class and change a few words or numbers.   I think that is how many of them have been trained in high school.   The teacher says something.   The student writes it down.   The student hands it back on the test.   The student gets an A.   That does not work in my class.   I ask them to take material and do something different with it.   I sometimes think that the reason they are not making an A or B is that they don’t truly understand how they are going to be tested.

When they send me their questions, I often point out “that sounds like what I asked in class.  I’m probably not going to ask that same question again.   What would that prove?   How could I twist the question to make it different and see what you really understand?”   Usually, on a second (or maybe third) attempt, the questions start looking like one of my test questions.   The student starts making a break through—not on the answer side but on the question side.

At that point, when they start to understand the nature of the questions they are going to see, then coming up with legitimate answers becomes a more realistic goal. 

If you are having students who do not seem to be able to “break through” into the A and B range, you might try that.   After every class, ask them to write a question that you might ask on a test.   Then, if they do not do a very good job of that, help them see what more you might be expecting from them.   Get them to focus on the questions before they worry too much about the answers.  

I sent my Financial Accounting students a practice problem this morning.   Sure enough, I took what we had done in class and added something a bit different.   I challenged them to “figure it out.”   And then I tried to make the point more clearly:   “And, as you are getting ready for the third test start asking yourself two questions:  (1) Can I do the standard problem?  (2) How can the problem be extended to make it more challenging?   That's when education gets exciting.”

Maybe focusing on the questions will help your C and D students move up to A’s and B’s here in the last few weeks of the semester.  That’s a victory for everyone.

MY CURRENT EXPERIMENT

If you have read this blog for long, you know that I have two interconnected goals.  

--The first is that every teacher should strive to become 5 percent better each and every year.   Never stand still.  Always push yourself to find some area of improvement.  

--The second goal is to Experiment-Evaluate-Evolve.   It is that active level of experimentation that leads to improvement.   No improvement is possible without making some change.   You should always be able to look at your current situation and point to specific changes that you are trying and evaluating.

If I stopped right now and asked you “what experiments are you trying this semester that might make you 5 percent better,” could you identify one or more? 

Experiments work better if they are directed at identified problems.  

After nearly 45 years in the classroom, one thing continues to irritate me.   I have many bright young people in my classes who have never learned how to become great students.  They are good at note-taking and they are good at memorization but they struggle when the learning goes beyond that level.   They don’t know how to respond.   How can a 20 year old who has been in school for 15 of those 20 years not know more about efficient learning?   That is an issue that seems to hold back many, if not most, students in college.   I don’t understand why we don’t exert more energy to help students learn how to become better learners.

There are a number of excellent books on the market that tell teachers what their students need to do to be better students.   Go to Amazon right now and you’ll probably find dozens.   But they all seem to be targeted at the wrong audience.   It should be the students who read and study such books rather than the teachers.  

So, last semester, around December 10, I emailed the 55 students who were going to be taking my Intermediate Accounting II class this spring.   This class is known for being particularly challenging.   Most students enter wanting a good grade but with a great amount of trepidation.  

In my email, I explained to the 55 students that I wanted them to become better students so they could be more successful in my class.  That seemed reasonable.   I also pointed out that they would probably have some spare time over the winter break.   I then offered to give them up to three bonus points on the first test of the spring semester if they would read the book Make It Stick by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel.  Read the book -- get three points.

On the inside cover of "Make It Stick" is the following description:   “Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners.”   Wow, that’s exactly what I want for my students.   The description goes on to say “many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive.  Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly.   More complex and durable learning comes from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another.”  

I think that is an understanding of learning that every college student should consider.   I was willing to offer bonus points just to see how many students would read the book and what the impact might be.   It was an experiment.

Fast forward three months.    Our first test was last week.   Of my 55 students, 20 said they had read less than 20 percent, one said he had read 20 to 50 percent, 7 said they had read 50 to 80 percent, and 27 said they had read 80 percent or more.   Roughly half the class claimed to have read roughly the entire book.   Interestingly, 63 percent of the top 16 students on the test (before the bonus points were added) said they had read at least 80 percent of the book.   Only 22 percent of the bottom 9 students claimed to have read that much.  

Of course, it helped that I gave them the assignment over a long holiday and offered points for a course that already begun to scare them.  It is hard to motivate students by being too easy.

Did the students tell the truth in their self-assessment?   It was only a couple of points; I accepted their word.  They are adults.   They know the rules.   I suspect that 80 percent or more told the truth.  To me, the potential benefit of the experiment far outweighed the risk that some student would falsely get 3 extra points on a single test.

More importantly, did the reading help them?   Has the book changed their behavior?   Do they now understand more about the science of learning?   I’ll wait until the end of the semester to ask them about those questions.   Unfortunately, we have lost several days to snow so it is hard to compare the test results so far this semester with that of previous semesters.

Here’s what I want to happen:

--I hope that the very assignment of this book helps to open the students' eyes to possible improvements in how they study.   Most students never seem to question how they go about learning.   It is like breathing—they just seem to do it without thought.   I wanted to raise the question:   What works in learning complex material?   I do wish that effective and efficient learning was a topic more stressed in middle school and high school.

--I hope the students threw out some of the study habits they have relied on in the past.   Cramming over the 48 hours just before a test is one “study” habit that I would love to outlaw.  Why spend time doing something that does not help?

--I hope the students considered some new study techniques that they might never have considered previously.   In that way, this voluntary assignment might well have a long lasting benefit.

I don’t want my students to learn just accounting.  That has never been my goal.   College education should be more than that.  I want them to become more successful students.   In the world after graduation, when a teacher is no longer around to provide guidance, that efficiency in learning might well be more important to them than anything else I can teach them.

Will I do this same experiment again next fall?   I am still evaluating.  I like the idea.   I would like to figure out how I could make better use of it.   I guess it is still in the planning process.  

I will leave you with a line from page 226 of Make It Stick:   “Students generally are not taught how to study, and when they are, often get the wrong advice.  As a result, they gravitate to activities that are far from optimal, like rereading, massed practice, and cramming.”  

Yeah, I agree.  Let’s start introducing the students to better practices so that they can become the capable students who will make our jobs much more interesting and easier.   Sometimes all it takes is three bonus points.

ASK QUESTIONS - CREATE PUZZLES

Recently, I was invited by Dr. Shannon Orr (Bowling Green State) and Dr. Staci Zavattaro (Central Florida) to participate in an upcoming book project (to be published in 2017 by Palgrave).  They are asking 100 college professors to respond to the question:   What do you wish you had learned back in graduate school?

Isn’t that a fascinating idea for a book?   I must admit that I can hardly wait to read it myself and see what the other 99 have to say.  I am always in need of advice.   The question really breaks down to the ultimate life question:   If we had it all to do over with again, how would we do it differently?   That’s a question we should ponder now and then as we consider making changes in our present day life.  You can’t change the past but you do have some control over the present.  Thinking about the past might help us improve the future.

I spent several days considering what my honest answer might be.   Here is what I wrote.   Dr. Orr was kind enough to allow me to post this to my blog.   (So be sure and buy a copy of the book just as soon as it comes out.)

**

For the first 20 years I taught in college, I believed my role was the conveyance of information.  Essential subject matter resided in my head and needed to be moved into the heads of my students almost like boxes transported along a conveyor belt.   Successful learning depended on my ability to explain complex material.  I poured hours into creating beautiful lectures.   Students transcribed every word.  Content was memorized and then regurgitated back on tests.   Occasionally in class, I threw out a question that one of the more attentive students would immediately volunteer to answer.  The rest stuck to their note taking with dogged tenacity. That strategy had proven successful during their long slog through the educational system and was not going to be abandoned without a fight.

Class evaluations were good.   I won teaching awards.   Colleagues congratulated me on my success.   And, I was so dissatisfied that resigning was an ever present temptation.   Student learning seemed stuck in low gear.   My efforts appeared to accomplish nothing more than helping bright young people become stenographers.  

In 1991, I took a desperate leap of faith and switched to the Socratic Method.   I no longer conveyed information.   Instead, I asked questions every day for the entire period.   I followed James Thurber’s mandate: “I’d rather know some of the questions than all of the answers.” This change might have seemed rather spontaneous.   In truth, the need for radical change had been building inside of me for years.  I wanted to teach differently.

The transition was not easy.   The Socratic Method takes practice. Nothing is predictable.  No two classes are alike.  Absolute control is lost.   Years are required to appreciate its intricacies.  My class evaluations went down but, eventually rebounded.  

Every student receives a list of basic preparatory questions before each class.  But, it is the follow-up questioning that pushes them to a deeper level of understanding.  “Think about what we have discussed.  Now apply that knowledge to a more complex situation.”  Developing this type of logical reasoning creates an education worth having.  

I never ask for volunteers.  I award no points for participation.  I call on everyone every day and expect students to be prepared.   “I don’t know” is not acceptable.   “Figure it out” is my reply to a weak response.   The questions are the key.   They form puzzles that must be analyzed and solved.   “Why is it done this way?”  “What would have happened if the facts had been reversed?”  “If a different country had developed rules, what might they be?”   I constantly search for questions that force students to think more deeply.  That sentence is worth repeating:  I constantly search for questions that force students to think more deeply.

Virtually every college boasts of developing the critical thinking skills of its students.   Is this a serious objective or merely a standard line added to a website?   If serious, how do we fulfill that mission? After 45 years in the classroom, I worry that not enough faculty have considered the implications of this last question.   Lectures and the conveyance of information are not the answer. 

When I describe my conversion to the Socratic Method, I often encounter resistance.  Radical change is frightening.  As a visiting history professor once told me, “I see how it works for accounting but I don’t see how it could work in history.”   Socrates would surely have been mystified by that assertion.

Our planet faces a litany of problems that threaten its very existence:  pollution, racism, religious intolerance, disease, terrorism, poverty, dwindling energy resources, climate change, and many more.  I am convinced that only one possible solution is available:  improved education.   Colleges must produce substantially more high-quality graduates, people ready to tackle these challenges.  Conveyance of information will not save us.  Students must learn to think more critically.  They must be encouraged to delve into problems more deeply. 

What holds us back?  Teachers should be leading the charge for better education.

Last summer I listened to a fascinating audiobook on my car’s CD player:  Wild by Cheryl Strayed.   With no practical experience, the author walked 1,100 miles alone through the mountains of California and Oregon along the Pacific Crest Trail.  One day, as I drove to campus, Strayed described her anxiety as she readied to begin the journey.  Not surprisingly, she lost her nerve and almost quit before regaining her composure.  In describing these emotions, she wrote a line that is so insightful that I pulled over to the side of the road so I could write it down.  

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.”

Shakespeare could not have said it better.  Those words have passed through my mind now for months.  We tell ourselves stories that can hold us back from changing our lives and the lives of our students.  Never expect failure.  Never fear change.  Never view students as incapable of serious thinking.  Never view them as lazy. Never feel that your teaching is unimportant. Never enter the classroom with low expectations.   Both fear and failure, to a great extent, are born of the stories we tell ourselves.

What do I wish I had learned in graduate school?   A complete list might stretch out like Rapunzel’s hair.  

I wish I had thought more deeply about the difference between conveying information and the development of critical thinking skills.  I wish I had appreciated fully the vital role every teacher plays in the future of our civilization. I wish I had developed more positive stories about myself and my work so that I would have been brave enough to experiment sooner.  Most of all, I wish I had come to understand that good questions create puzzles that lead students to think deeply, more deeply than anything I could possibly tell them in a lecture.  If I had understood all that, I could have made better use of those first 20 years in the classroom. 

FOUR STORIES ABOUT THE JOY AND WONDER OF BEING A TEACHER

Last week, the School of Professional and Continuing Studies here at the University of Richmond held its opening meeting for the new semester.   I was asked to give what I would describe as a keynote speech to kick off the semester.  Often, when I am asked to speak in this way, I will present some type of Power Point slide show where I discuss a topic like “My Top Ten Favorite Teaching Tips.”   In truth, I can do those programs fairly quickly and often with good results.

However, I decided that I wanted to do something different this time.   Our world has become so cynical and sour.   Every politician with a microphone will stand in front of a crowd and spew anger and hatred.   The news channels do not help as they debate the pros and cons of every single political decision often deriving people who are trying to do their best.   I fully realize that people in every community can be frustrated but I am tired of the sole political statement being:  “I am mad and I am going to tell you about it.” 

Plus, I often believe that teachers are just under appreciated, especially by themselves.  Without teachers, we would have no doctors or lawyers or engineers or accountants.

I decided to use my microphone time to talk about the excitement and thrill of being a teacher.   Sure, I could have stressed the bad days that happen in the classroom (and we all have those) but I wanted to talk about the wonderful influence we can have over so many people, especially young people.   I am glad they pay me for this job but I might well do it even if I wasn’t paid.  I love the thrill of making a difference.  Don’t you?   I can’t see how anybody would not love being a teacher.

In case you would like to watch that speech and judge whether I was really positive and optimistic enough, you can check out the URL blow.   The first nine minutes are announcements.  I start speaking after that.   Eventually, I ask the group to answer a question.   I’d love to know how you would have answered that question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT428yjJ0Ls&feature=em-subs_digest

If nothing else, fast forward to the very end where I read a couple of sentences from a famous book.   Those words are worth hearing.

USING THE SOCRATIC METHOD TO TEACH MORE THAN JUST STUFF

If you have read this blog for long, you know I began using the Socratic Method in my accounting classes way back in 1991.   I often get questions about why I started and how I use the Socratic Method.   I always tell people that it is hard to explain unless you are there to watch the process.    People simply don’t believe that you can teach complex accounting theory by firing hard ball questions at the students.  

I was asked last fall to discuss the Socratic Method at a faculty forum here on campus and give a demonstration.   I wasn’t sure how well that would work.   But I talked for a while and then I, along with nine of my students, did a bit of a typical class using this approach.   It normally runs more smoothly in a real class environment but it worked fairly well in this artificial setting.

In the presentation, I do put a focus on the book and the movie that forever changed how I taught my classes.

If you are interested in the possibility of using the Socratic Method (for accounting or any other topic), the URL for a video of this presentation can be found below.   You might decide that it is something you want to try.   On this blog, I am always stressing the three E’s:   experiment, evaluate, evolve.   Perhaps this could be the basis for an experiment.

I am told that this video will not run on Internet Explorer but will work on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

http://urctlt.com/streamthis.php?ID=652422

WHAT DO I REALLY WANT FROM YOU?

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​