When You Need to Reach Out and Touch Someone

Rather than type a text, send an email, or post a Facebook message, I picked up the telephone when I needed to contact some of my students this week about a new class that I was teaching. My goal was to reach as many continuing students as I could as quickly as I could so they had first choice of available seats. Telephone? you might ask thinking of all the other options I could have used. Sure, you remember that clunky, dusty thing that sits behind the computer monitor acting as a paperweight for the 2010 staff directory and last winter's pepperoni pizza coupons. The telephone.

I'll admit a land-line is probably not the first choice of the techno-savvy who have Schwarzenegger-sized thumbs from constant, frenetic texting, but I still find it an effective tool to make contact with students -- even my 20-somethings. I did not consider this choice unusual or dated until I read a Wall Street Journal article by Anita Hofschneider a few days later titled, "That Thing With the Buttons and Receiver? Pick It Up" (Wednesday, Aug. 28, D1). Hofschneider quotes young entrepreneurs who roll their eyes at the phone as an old-fashioned nuisance, "burdensome" one said, and another complained that phone interruptions "hinder creativity and delay projects."

Some of these enlightened ban the phone from their office space. I suppose a non-phone environment makes sense in a sleep lab, a yoga center, or religious retreat house -- or if you were very, very annoyed during political campaign season -- but removing it entirely seems as productive as taking away the letter "R" from the keyboard. The _esult is _eadable but ve_y dist_acting. And, after reading the WSJ article, I wondered if the quoted anti-phone people were also as annoyed by the ping of instant messaging or the lure of the latest Tweet by a 15-minute-of-fame celebrity. Perhaps anti-phone sentiment is just revenge for this summer's sold-out rock concert tours by septuagenarians.

As a w_ite_, sorry, I meant "writer," I understand the power of the printed word through texts, emails and social media, but I don't think the human voice should be a casual second or third-hand communication choice.  Relationships in sales, in business, and in education are built through voice and gestures, interpersonal human contact, not emoticons. The sound of the human voice communicates nuances and meaning that goes much deeper than the flat, convoluted prose of written language, especially the pseudo-proper business grammar in most offices. The draw of human contact is why, for example, students prefer face-to-face classrooms as opposed to online or video courses, especially when they struggle with a topic. Working beside a real person, not a white screen with words, makes all the difference.

I agree with the sales manager interviewed in the article who said in professions "where personal rapport matters ... email (exclusivity) won't cut it." Having done a little sales work myself, I appreciate the effectiveness and place of the phone in the business world, and I do feel for the office manager at the end of the WSJ article who had to teach a new employee "what a dial tone was and explain that desktop phones don't require you to press 'Send'." I wonder what that new employee's thumbs looked like?

What's Missing from Teacher Training

Let's say you've just hired a shiny new group of instructors for your technical college. The newbies are excellent: top certification in their field, years of doing the work that they're just about to teach, and maybe, if you are lucky, actual teaching experience as an adjunct for you or another college. Congratulations. You've done a good job. Now, what do they need to know in the next couple of weeks?

Well, they need to know how to write a syllabus; they need to know the competencies and objectives of their classes and how to find them; they need to know their way around the school; they need to know internal software and processes; they need to know their colleagues. And, in addition to other "need to knows", they will need to know brain-based education theory (Bloom's Taxonomy is always helpful) just as soon as the HR paperwork is filed.

All that is well and good and important. But one bit of new teacher training (a crucial one in my humble opinion) is often overlooked on most need-to-know lists: the new instructors need to know the theater of teaching. What do I mean by that? I mean the new teachers need to know how to be effective communicators on the stage we call the classroom.

What, you might ask, does theater have to do with the technical college classroom? Sounds a little too liberal arty. And, the androgogg might say, doesn't this go against popular education training? Aren't we trying to move away from the "sage on the stage" and move toward a student-centered classroom? Certainly, but that doesn't dismiss the effectiveness and communicating power of gesture, voice, posture, pace, listening and response: the basics of stagecraft. Preparation, rehearsal, direction, performance, evaluation: all this and more are needed for effective teaching.

I'll admit my theater bias comes from training and performance on the stage in high school, college, and in a little over 20-years of community theater work. But, I also have no doubt that stage training prepared me for my current role in the classroom. Don't take my word for it. Think back to your own experience as a student: what kind of teacher was able to really hold your attention? What kind of teacher excited you, inspired you, made you want to jump up and begin your lab work? It was probably not the teacher (and we've all had these) who read in a sleepy monotone from yellowing 4x6 cards. I would bet your best teachers had a presence that you were not quite able to define: they had either a natural stage presence or one that was backed by training.

Teaching is a performance art whether that "performance" is a lecture, demonstration or discussion. Those who deny that statement are probably not teachers (or at least not very effective ones). An effective teacher is first of all an effective communicator and the basics of effective communications were first developed and refined on the stage. Any instructor, I believe, with even a rudimentary sense and practice of stagecraft, will outshine others who dismiss theatrics as being somehow beneath them.

A master teacher, one who has practiced the theatrics of teaching, possesses an honest, clear, dynamic, individual style that communicates both content and credibility. A master teacher makes each moment in the classroom look easy, effortless, even though that moment has taken hundreds of hours of practice and preparation. Somehow, someway, we need to include a heavy dose of the theater of teaching when we are training our new instructors (a refresher course for old hands wouldn't hurt either).

Putting Your Billions Where Your Priorities Are

A recent weekend Wall Street Journal featured an essay from Amanda Ripley's new book, "The Smartest Kids in the World -- and How They Got That Way" (2013). Some of the world's smartest kids are trained in South Korea's hagwans-- think of them as tutoring labs on steroids. The WSJ story featured a rather satisfied looking Kim Ki-Hoon, "a rock-star" teaching entrepreneur, called the "Four-Million Dollar Teacher" because of his hagwan business revenue. I really don't have salary-envy. I give him credit for successfully and profitably creating an education business model that works. What worried me in the Ripley essay was the resulting comparison between South Korea and the US.

"In 2012, (Korean) parents spent more than $17-billion on (online hagwan) services. This is more than the $15-billion spent by Americans on video games that year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm."

Gulp. OK, let's try to put this in perspective. Granted American parents may be putting in a lot of time and dollars in their child's education which is not included in this statistic, granted putting money into an effort does not always guarantee success, granted out children have more interests than just school, granted South Korean students many also be buying video games (though I'm not sure when they are going to play them since they have long, long school days in addition to night and weekend hagwan duties), granted Kim Ki-Hoon's hagwans may be a little pricey and each unit of hagwan is more expensive than a single Call to Duty purchase. Granted, granted, granted.

Still. It's a basic concept of economics that when given a free choice, consumers spend their (usually) limited budget on those things that are most important to them. In South Korea, parent's choose their child's education: a $17-billion investment by those parents is hard to ignore. Those parents obviously feel that putting that kind of investment into a generation's education is worth it. So far, according to Ripley, the effort seems to be working:

"Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S. Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the work in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S."

I could make some smart comment about spending our billions on high-tech athletic fields rather than in the classroom, but I don't have the heart. This link takes you to the rest of the essay (it's a short read) or buy the book, so, if you are interested, you can read up on where some of the smartest kids is in the world are -- and the parents who helped them along the way.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578639780253571520.html?mod=e2tw

Snort, Snork, Shtick Shtuff

"What's a vegan smoothie?" asked my brother-in-law, reading the countertop menu at a favorite Sunday morning coffee shop. "I mean, what could you put into a smoothie that wouldn't be vegan?" The silliness started as we waited in line for coffee. Sometimes you need a break from weighty discussions of life, the universe and everything. Life can't always be serious.

"A tenderloin?" I suggested, "Blood sausage? Pig feet?" I pictured traumatized vegan kitchen workers splattered by a bloody manic food processor. My brother-in-law and I are not reincarnations of comedic word guru, George Carlin, but Sunday morning walks sometimes turn into word play sessions between us. Both of us find the disparity between denotation and connotation interesting. My wife usually stays out of our discussions when we are on a roll. Just as well at times.

Once seated with the vegan smoothies ("Tastes a little like chicken"), we talked about the many odd nonsense words that are made up of "S" plus a consonant, a single vowel, and one or two letter consonant combinations. What is the attraction between "S" and silly words? I don't know, but there seems to be a link. We agreed words with real meanings (swap, swim, smit, snuff) don't count. Alright, "snuff" might count because it leads to the logical past tense "snuft" as an irregular form or just "snuffed" as a regular verb. We might be silly, but we try to be grammatical.

"Snert" "What's that?" "I think it was the name of a comedy sketch character on the Milton Berle Show." "Before my time." Yeah, mine too."

"Smurf." Too easy we agreed. Not as old as the Milton Berle Show, but just as silly. Especially in blue. "How can they do a movie about them?" "Don't know and don't care. They're as creepy as garden gnomes."

"Snork." A sort of word, depicting a healthy appetite, emblematic of college days. Other college slang included "scuzz," "smat," and "schwip." Definitions? Don't ask. Frat house slang is not PG-13.

"Swup?" No reply. A word that has yet to find a popular meaning. Sad when you think about an orphan word peering up from an empty grammatical bowl. "Pleashh shur, may I have shome more?"

"S'up?" "Words with apostrophes are not acceptable." " Yeah, especially those from ad campaigns." "S'right you are." "Ha. Humor."

I pulled a napkin from beneath my smoothie and began making notes. "What are you doing?" "I could use these ideas for my blog if I run out of material during the summer break."

"Schmuck." Good idea. I'll add that too.

360,000 Owners are Better Than One

The Packer Shareholder meeting on Wednesday was a good way to work on your tan on a gorgeous summer Wednesday afternoon. The program was as dry as you'd expect from any other business's shareholder meeting. We heard from Packer President Mark Murphy a few times, General Manager Ted Thompson, the treasurer, the foundation, marketing, investing, the auditor, and other departments and waited to see the real attraction of the day: self-guided tours of the new South End Zone seats.

While members of the team Executive Board were called up to speak, I and many others studied cloud formations and tested the new wireless capabilities of the stadium. My wife, who works with a lot of area CEOs, watched the presenters with more interest and pointed out that almost all of them were local. I knew that, but as a Green Bay native didn't really find it remarkable. It's what I grew-up expecting. The Packer organization has some Milwaukee, Madison, and Fox Valley names on the board to pretend this is a state team, but the drive behind the organization has always been Green Bay born and raised; Parins, Meng, Long, Chernick, Weyers, Bie, French, Olejniczak and dozens of board members are local names. They are organization leaders, but they are also neighbors.

I bring up this point because of a series of new signs that I saw later posted on walls in the south concourse hallways just under the new, plush South End Zone. The theme of the sepia-tinted wall-sized posters of old players and fans is "We Believe" followed by inspirational sayings. One poster in particular caught my attention: "We believe 360,000 owners are better than one." That refers to the 360,000 shareholders, like me, who have bought basically meaningless stock certificates in order to keep the professional team in Green Bay.

Other small markets, no bigger than Green Bay, had professional teams but gave up on their dreams. We haven't and, Lombardi-willing, we never will. The strength of the team draws on our cultural make-up: stubborn, loyal, faithful, dogged, and capable of amazing things when we are competing against out-of-towners. If the team lost the Green Bay connection, it would be just another sports team run by suits. We take care of our own, and the Packers are our own. As another poster in the concourse declares, "One city, one team."

The 360,000 number celebrates legends in sports history who have built a remarkable franchise. To Green Bay natives, however, these legends are just local folks who we see in the grocery store, the coffee shop and at high school football games. Yet, consider the results: the number one stadium experience according to ESPN magazine, the third largest professional football stadium (the new expansion tops 80,000 seats -- take that, Texas Stadium), and a 30-year season ticket waiting list. And, oh yes, 13 World Championships, 22+ members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (congratulations to this year's inductee, linebacker Dave Robinson), and a playoff contender for 15 of the last 20 years.

Mark Murphy also pointed out during his presentation that the Green Bay Packers are the 18th most valuable sports franchise in the world. Notice I said world, not just in the NFL or in American professional sports, but the world. I'm not surprised though. If you introduce yourself as being from Green Bay in any major airport and you have instant recognition and credibility.

As a shareholder of the best team in football, it's what I expect.

The Joy of Beach Books

I just finished Dan Brown's latest, Inferno, and enjoyed the read. No, it's not great literature, it has no subtle layers of existential meaning (unless you count Dante's nine spirals of hell, though I would credit that metaphor to Dante more than Brown). The mystery is a series of international chase scenes, an evil plot of a mad scientist, and the heroics of the ever lovable, Harvard super-nerd, Robert Langdon. Chuck Leddy, of the Boston Globe, began his May 2013 review of Inferno by writing, "Assessing Dan Brown from a literary perspective seems almost beside the point." I agree. Inferno is pleasant summer diversion, nothing more. It's a beach book.

What's a beach book? Something you read just for the joy of escapism: think of the Bourne series, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, John Patterson. Summer is the time to read books not attached to curriculum and classrooms and assessments. It's the time for science fiction, for romance, for gothic tragedy, for mysteries. There are no multiple co-authors here, no Ph.D.-laden bibliographies. Footnotes are banned until September. A beach book is just a fun story with a little meat on the bones to keep your interest.

The meat is important to me. Ultra light-weight books, the kind that float away on the cross-winds of improbability and you've-got-to-be-kidding, bore me and are quickly set aside. These are donated to the library or deleted from my queue. Dan Brown usually does a nice job of seasoning his plot with exotic and archaic settings and detail. Because of my background, I like the quasi-religious sub-tones. The Boston Globe's Leddy wrote in appreciation, "(Brown) obviously researched the architecture of Florence (and Venice and Istanbul), the symbolism of Dante's great work, and the 'mad science' behind the villain's plot." All of these are interesting to Brown's fans, otherwise we would have stopped reading him after chapter one of The Da Vinci Code.

I may add Inferno to next fall's list of reading in the classroom. I try to develop student interest in reading by providing them a variety of new reading material. Popular books and magazines often work. We read them together and talk about the ideas of the authors. I don't really care what the book or article is about when I am working with my reading students so long as they find it interesting. What's important is conveying a shared excitement about the words, ideas, and discovery. The page-turning experience, especially from a beach book, is bonus.

OK, enough academic talk about adding reading to curriculum. That's the material for long, dark February conferences. This is summer. The beach awaits. Where's that Neil Gaiman book I've heard so much about?

The Future of Education goes MOOOOC!

MOOCs seem to be grabbing all the post-secondary headlines lately. Universities trumpet their introduction of Massive Online Open Courses and then, at the end of the course, excuse the poor attendance and completion statistics as being technological growing pains. I can hear the interview: "Well sure, only 5-percent of the students who signed up for the course completed the course, and only a fraction of those actually earned a passing grade, but this, my fellow citizens, is the future of education."

Please.

Don't get me wrong. I am not a academic troglodyte raging against online courses. I have been using BlackBoard, our school's online platform, to supplement face-to-face classes for the last five years. So, yes, I do believe that online platforms are as important as week-three class assessments, diffuse grade segments, and chunking lessons into little digestible bits (and students love the online GradeBook feature). At some point MOOCs might make sense. I'm not sure they do now.

I just don't see how an instructor can effectively engage, instruct, and assess a class of 40,000, which was the number of students who signed up in January for Georgia Tech's MOOC, Fundamentals of Online Education. Imagine trying to memorize that class list. If any traditional class had the same poor attendance and success ratios, it would be yanked from the schedule, no questions asked. Today's MOOC fad is what happens when populists try to direct education: stick an iPad (another shiny, promising tool) in every student's backpack, and call it a degree.

Not surprisingly, and ironically given the subject of the Georgia Tech MOOC, that course was suspended when the college's IT infra-structure could not support a really, really massive, Massive Online Open Course. The hardware, assessment strategy, and competencies for student success need to be firmly in place otherwise we are wasting everyone's time. We need to plan, not chase 60-point headlines.

Bigger is not necessarily better. Newer is not necessarily better. Tech is not necessarily better. We need to evaluate our tools, including MOOCs, against the measure of the stuff we teach and against our own resources. If our goal is not student success, then why are we spending all this time in meetings? As I said, the massive platform is a tool, a very powerful tool, but still just a tool. If the tool works, use it. If it doesn't, modify it or pick up another tool. Whether we are teaching in a tent, or teaching online, our goal is still to provide effective education to all our students.