Student Guide Corner

One of the great benefits of teaching is that the summer is available.    We can do research and writing.   Or, we can work to improve our teaching.    �How can my next class be better than my last class?� is a great question to ponder during the summer break.    You have had a couple of months of break � how often have you addressed that question?    I am a strong proponent that everyone needs to learn to think differently about the challenges they face.    If you think like everyone else, you will wind up being average by definition.    In my book Don�t Just Dream about Success:    Stack the Odds in Your Favor , I devote an entire chapter to the challenge of learning to �Think Differently.�    Here is just one of the suggestions that I put forward in that book: ��How could this have been improved?� is a great question to consider throughout your daily wanderings.    It stimulates critical ...

As my friends will tell you (or my wife, for that matter), I�m not a terribly modest person. It is a fault of which I am aware. So, I am a bit embarrassed by my third favorite quotation about teaching because it comes from, well, me. Yes, I am quoting myself. But, in truth, it is a quote that I like. And, it is a quote that I genuinely believe can help make any person a better classroom teacher. I was reminded of this yesterday in two emails that I received from former students. This past semester, I worked with 65 students and 11 of them earned the grade of A. As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, I wrote each of those 11 to pass along my congratulations and to ask them to write a short essay on how they earned that A, an essay that I will pass along as guidance to my class in the spring. Yesterday, two of those students separately mentioned my tendency in class to throw out random questions and then direct them to �figure it out.� (They both said something like �when ...

In 1980, I started writing my Advanced Accounting textbook. I was so young and innocent that I really didn�t understand that writing a textbook by myself of that size and complexity was almost impossible. However, after 3-4 years of intense writing (I remember one Christmas day when I sat typing on my little blue portable typewriter trying desperately to finish the project before it was out of date), I managed to complete the book. Several editions later, I added two wonderful co-authors and the book is now going into its 11th edition as the market leader. When I finished the first edition of this textbook, I wanted to add a quote at the beginning to put forth my feeling about textbooks and education in general. I looked everywhere and couldn�t find a quote that I liked. I was about ready to give up on the quest. One day I went to get my hair cut and was talking to the young woman who was cutting my hair. I told her about my search for the perfect quote and she casually r...