Teaching with Enthusiasm, Humor, and a Detailed Plan
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My name is Paul Malone, Associate Professor Emeritus, and Doctor of Business Administration, from GW. 1978 I joined the faculty, 1997, 19 years later I retired but I remained teaching for 3 years after that on a contract with the business school. My previous career was 30 years in the US Army, and now I am combining US Army and interest in aviation with my GW career. I am a docent at the Air and Space Museums both downtown and at Dulles Airport so I get an opportunity to speak to people on a subject near and dear to me, aviation. So I am getting a chance to continue my teaching. How long, probably till the day I die.
The Profession of teaching is one that involves great responsibility and a wonderful opportunity to contribute to the future of this nation and the world. It is a profession that involves considerable nobility, you are touching people very profoundly. Hopefully you don't leave a scar. Hopefully they'll come out better. I think one of the keys to teaching, I found for myself is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is something that can't be faked. If you're not enthusiastic people will notice. If you are enthusiastic, in many cases they will forgive many of the warts or blemishes, and join in this fun operation called learning.
I found that teaching was kind of like a love affair, in order to be a real good teacher you have to have three loves. First love is for people or your students. Not a lot of students out there that can cause you trouble. I found that if you feel totally positive toward all those young people entering your classroom it went a long way. Next thing it helps to love your subject. I found that a couple of subjects that I am just totally bananas about, one is leadership, teaching leadership was just fun for me. And finally I think you have to have a love for teaching itself. You have to kind of get a tremendous warm feeling when you look at the faces of you students and see that they are absorbing something that will contribute to their lives in the future.
The way that I looked at teaching, going into the university classroom, I think that each class that you go into is like a one act play. This one act play costs a lot, to waste any time, to be late or anything of that nature or to miss a class for bad reasons, is a terrible waste of resources. This one act play has a writer, that’s the teacher, a producer, that’s the teacher, a director, that’s the teacher, and a primary actor, that’s also the teacher, what a combination of roles you play. Hopefully the students, depending upon the nature of what you are teaching, become other actors in this learning process, having interactions within the class. Those other actors don't have scripts, so you have to be prepared for anything regarding the rest of what they say. But that’s kind of fun. To me that’s a great challenge; a challenge that can include considerable reward.
I found that after teaching for a number of years, particularly if you are teaching in the same subject, there is a tendency to get stale. And I fought very hard to make sure that I didn't approach the students and deal with my subject as stale information. I found it very useful to use 5x8 cards and I would write my notes on the cards using a black felt tip pen. Why? That’s because my vision isn't as good as it used to be, I could look down at the card from some distance and see what my notes were. The graphic aids I'd usually use transparencies, or a blackboard also helped me guide my class. I finally came up with the idea, and I found it was useful, each time I finish a class I destroyed all the materials other than the graphic aids. I threw away my cards; this forced me each time I'd get ready for a class to start right from scratch. Develop a new card, so that everything is fresh. Anything that’s changed is included in the cards. This I think is a lot better than stale, yellowing typewritten notes, that are said over and over again, in a very monotonous way.
I found it useful in the class to chop the class into what I call modules. I try to have a module of 8-10 minutes. And these are subject areas that I could commit to memory, and go for 8-10 minutes, and then the next module would be a slightly different subject, or a different style of teaching. I found it useful to try and alternate modules of passive teaching and active learning, some time when you are lecturing, then change the lecture into active learning style.
One thing I always tried to do is to over plan. I lived in absolute fear of running out of material before the end of that class, so all of my classes were over planned, usually I had a little left over, but I hate to have classes leave, wasted because I ran out of material.
I had a philosophy, I guess I got from the army, start strong. In a class, my first class of the semester is my very best, and then on it kind of went down, but I found first impressions are very important. You get that hook of enthusiasm into the student based on the first class, I think is very important. It bothered me a whole lot to find in some cases where professors for the first class of the semester would send in their teaching assistant who would distribute a course outline and send the students home after 5 minutes. I think that’s dead wrong, the instructor has to set standards, and maintain them there should be some challenge in teaching, otherwise people will exert no effort, and I think that I would agree with people who say that we have a society that doesn't tolerate any failure. Everybody is a success. I think that creates a very bad impression in the minds of the students. So I went to great effort in my course outline to make sure the teaching objectives and the teaching style was well described. Particularly in the case of grading, there would be a number of graded exercises in the course 6 or 8. Each of them would have a percentage of the grade, and each grade the student got was a number. A specific number rather than a grade, so that there would be no question when you multiply the number by the percentage the student knew precisely where he or she stood.
I think it’s very important to have, when the students come into a class, a form of a contract. That’s the course outline. I promise the student that I will fulfill the contract. I promise the student that I will expect him or her to fulfill his or her portion of the contract. I encourage feedback, and I had all sorts of course evaluations of my performance. I got a lot of information back from the feedback; some of it was very, very useful.
Finally I like to use humor. I love humor, I've read a lot of books about humor and the positive effects of humor on human beings. And I realize its a very touchy subject, you can make mistakes with humor, self-deprecating humor where you are your own victim, usually is the safest, but do that too often and you become the class fool. But I like to have people smiling, I think the smiling student, with eyes wide open is far more receptive to the information far more ready to learn than someone who is sleeping or terrified. If you really enjoy what you are doing, it just shows. Your eyes sparkle your mouth turns up people say I'm glad I'm in this classroom; it’s an honor working with a professor like this. Not all the students feel this way. I found just about all of them, undergraduates, graduates, executive, senior military groups, senior government groups, all appreciated enthusiasm. Most of them appreciated humor.
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