Student Guide Corner

The 51 st Super Bowl is being played tonight.  For a few hours, everyone will stop and watch two excellent teams battle it out for the right to be known as the ultimate champions.   I sent the note below to my students this morning.   I was not trying to convince them I was crazy or that I was obsessed.   They probably already think that.   I don�t care if they watch the Super Bowl.  What I care about is that they realize that success (whether it is their success or Tom Brady�s success) comes from work and not from watching someone else be successful.   I felt they needed to know that I was going to be upset if they show up for my class tomorrow poorly prepared because they had stared for hours at a television set watching a bunch of strangers 1,000 miles away becoming champions.   I suspect that some people want to feel like champions without having to do any of the difficult work so they latch on to a team or to a ...

BE DARING Over the years, I have met a lot of good students.   I have met far fewer great students.   Over the years, I have met a lot of good teachers.   I have met far fewer great teachers. Occasionally, students swing by my office to ask how they can become great college students.   They feel that they are good, probably even very good.   But, they know they are not great.   At least, they are not yet great. Occasionally, emails arrive from teachers around the country who ask about becoming great teachers.   They feel that they are good, probably even very good.   But they know they are not great.   At least, they are not yet great.   Of course, many people are interested in how to move from good to great.   Jim Collins has managed to earn a fortune by writing fascinating books about companies that make the transition.   I am more interested in people who succeed in...

As I have mentioned, I was involved with two panel discussions recently at the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association.    At one point, I was asked about the best teaching advice that I ever received.    Over a 44 year period, everyone hears a lot of good teaching advice (and some bad advice also).    Deciding which advice is best can be a challenge.    But, my mind always goes back to something my boss told me during the first year I was teaching.    The advice came at a time when I was struggling to figure out who I wanted to be as a teacher.    Those first few years are so important because they form the structure on which a teacher builds an entire career. One day the head of the business program was talking with me about teaching.    He looked at me and said �If you truly care about these students, you will push them as hard as you can to be great.�    There was a lot that I liked about ...

As I have mentioned on my last two postings, I will be part of a panel discussion on April 17, 2015, in Asheville, NC, at the Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Accounting Association.   I am thrilled to be joined by three great teachers:   Lynn Clements of Florida Southern, Eric Bostwick of the University of West Florida, and Scott Showalter of North Carolina State.   We are planning to have a simple conversation about some of the most basic issues in teaching.   I am very much interested in knowing how other teachers deal with the challenges that I seem to face every day in my classroom.   I have long believed that we need a more open exchange of ideas if college education is going to improve as it must. I am not sure what questions we will end up discussing in Asheville but here are ten that we are considering.   How would you answer each of these questions?   There are no right or wrong answers here but th...

Prior to today, this blog has had 204 entries.   Over the years, the site has had over 134,500 page views (or roughly 650 views of each of those entries).   As always, thanks to everyone who passes along this link to other teachers who are interested in thinking more deeply about the day to day rewards and challenges of going into a classroom to help students develop and grow as human beings.   Thanks!!! ** A few weeks ago my dean sent me a note containing a simple question:   Can anyone learn to become a great teacher?   Unfortunately, I did not have a great answer and did little more than ramble around in response.   It is a question that I have thought about often during the intervening weeks.   Is it possible for anyone to develop into a great teacher or is that goal only available to a chosen few? What do you think?  If you have thoughts, I would love to hear them. Let me start the conversation by asking a d...

If you have followed this blog for long, you know that one of my primary recommendations is that every teacher should work to get 5 percent better every year.   If all of us could manage to improve by just 5 percent during the next 12 months, imagine how much more effective our educational system would become.   I think 5 percent is a realistic goal.   It would not take radical change.   If every teacher truly pushed for a 5 percent improvement, our schools and students would benefit in unbelievable ways. As we start each new year, I like to step back and think about how I might achieve my 5 percent improvement.   This is my 44 th year as a college professor and I am no longer a young person.   However, if I am not willing to push myself to improve, then it is probably time for me to retire.   Because I really do not want to retire, I am actively working on my 5 percent. Are you? As I mentioned in an earlier blog entr...

    Recently, I have had several people ask me if I would send them an email when I post a new entry here on my teaching blog.  I am more than happy to do that.   If you send your email address to Jhoyle@richmond.edu , I�ll drop you a note whenever a new entry goes up.   I will not sell your email addresses or send out spam.   You will only get an occasional note that I have added more of my thoughts to this teaching blog. ** Many years ago I was called to serve on jury duty.   For an entire week, I hung out around the courthouse trying to stay awake.  I was bored to death and felt like the experience was the ultimate waste of time.   At the end of that long miserable week, the judge called us in to dismiss the group.   He took a few minutes to describe all of the many things that the court had managed to accomplish during the week and it was amazing.   As I remember it, hundreds of cases had been ...

Greetings!!    I trust you are ready for a wonderful new school year.    At this time of the year, I always feel like I can leave my mistakes from the previous semester behind and start anew with refreshed hope and enthusiasm.    To celebrate the new year, I wanted to discuss two words that I believe can make anyone a better classroom teacher.     Not immediately, but over the course of a semester or two.    I am not sure that anything works immediately.    Progress has to be slow and steady. ** Word One Back in August of 2014, I wrote a blog entry that mentioned the following article from The Chronicle of Higher Education.    http://chronicle.com/article/Confuse-Students-to-Help-Them/148385/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en I just think the importance of confusing students cannot be over-emphasized and is worth a second look. I define �lecturer� as someone who does 80 percent or more of the tal...