Lazy? Or What?

Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking to 70 teachers or so at the Kentucky Accounting Educators’ Forum. At one point in that presentation, I made a comment that working with students who can often be incredibly lazy is a real challenge for every teacher. My guess is that every teacher has mumbled similar words over the years.

Later that day, Randy Hahm who is on the faculty at Kentucky State drove me to the airport. On the way, Randy told me about one of his favorite quotes from Zig Ziglar, the world famous motivational speaker: “There’s no such thing as a lazy person; he’s either sick or uninspired.” I don’t remember much else about that day but those few words have stuck with me since that car trip. My students rarely appear sick. So, whenever I’m dissatisfied with their efforts, is it laziness or is lack of inspiration?

Lazy or uninspired? On the surface, you might ask what difference does that distinction make? I think it makes an important difference as you think about your role as an educator.

--Laziness would mean that a lack of understanding and a resulting poor grade are basically the student’s own fault; the teacher is not the one to blame. I can wash my hands of any guilt. The student got what the student deserved.

--On the other hand, lack of inspiration can be attributed (at least in part) to me as the teacher. If students are not working up to their potential, I have not yet figured out how to get them interested or involved enough. I have not convinced them that the understanding is worth the effort. Instead of blaming the student, perhaps I should try some new type of inspiration. If Zig Ziglar is correct, then I need to look differently at students that I have previously classified as “lazy.” Perhaps, I have washed my hands of guilt a bit too quickly.

Question 1 – how can a teacher inspire students?

For most, inspiration is typically limited to carrots and sticks.

---“Learn this material and you will get a good grade.”
---“Learn this material and you will get a good job.”
---“Learn this material and your mom will be proud.”

Those are all common carrots used to inspire students to do high quality work. Do the work and there is a vague payoff down the line somewhere.

---“Learn this material because it will be on the test.”
---“Learn this material or you are going to fail.”
---“Learn this material because no one is going to hire you with a D on your transcript.”
---“Learn this material or you are wasting your tuition money.”

Those are all sticks used to prod students into working. If you don’t do this work, something bad is going to happen to you.

In the past, I’ve used both carrots and sticks. However, I’m not sure we shouldn’t get away from over-reliance on both carrots and sticks. Actually, I’m not sure they are really inspirations. They seem more like bribes and punishments.

Maybe we should think more about true inspiration.

---“You are capable of doing this. Let me show you how this material might be useful to you as you make decisions in your chosen career.”
---“You are capable of doing this. Let me show you why this material is actually interesting.”
---“You are capable of doing this. Let me show you how working out this answer is like solving a challenging puzzle.”
---“You are capable of doing this. Let me show you how understanding this material will help you as we move to our next topic.”

These are neither bribes nor punishments. A benefit is promised that is more immediate and goes beyond a simple letter grade. The teacher is trying to build confidence while giving the student a legitimate reason for doing the work. The teacher is working to promote inspiration over laziness.

Question 2 – is it your responsibility to inspire students?

But is the teacher really responsible for inspiration? I know plenty of college professors who will say “I teach my classes. The students are adults; it is their responsibility to motivate themselves. Whether they are lazy or uninspired makes no difference to me; it is their problem. It is up to them to prove they want to do well.” That’s a very good point. “Cheerleader” is not part of the job description.

In fact, I have this argument with myself rather frequently. In the end, I always come back to the same point: I want results. By hook or crook, I want results. I want my students to learn and understand. I’m willing to accept some responsibility for student inspiration if it leads to student success.

Recently, a colleague of mine, Randolph New, emailed me a copy of an article from the online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 15, 2012) titled “Can Colleges Manufacture Motivation?” by Dan Berrett. (I do realize that “motivation” and “inspiration” are two different things but I’m not sure students realize that. In fact, perhaps we all try to motivate our students when we really should be trying to inspire them.)

The article discussed the importance of motivation in the success of college students. In this article, according to the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, 2/3 of four-year college students said their motivation levels had stayed the same or actually dropped during their college experience. That’s a fairly high percentage of students who felt absolutely no increase in motivation as a result of college. Okay, here’s the obvious question: How would the educational experience (for students and teachers alike) have changed if all those students had seen an increase in their motivation? My guess is that their classes would have been significantly better in almost every conceivably way. Perhaps some motivation/inspiration really can improve education.

There are two additional thoughts in this article that I want to mention. One was just a wonderful description of the teachder's impact on a student: “There was an identifiable moment in which a faculty member created a spark in them; students became energized or excited by a topic, an idea, or a discipline. In those moments, he said, a faculty member conveyed to the student that he or she could perform on the collegiate level.”

It is hard to read those sentences without becoming excited about teaching. That’s what I got into this business to do. I especially liked the way teachers can create that spark in their students.

The second thought was a more personalized observation within this article: “The researchers in the Wabash study attributed the differences in motivation more narrowly. Their findings suggest that motivation is a product of professors more than it is of colleges.”

When it comes to motivation (or inspiration), it is not the college that counts but rather it is the teacher. Whether you teach at the best known college in the country or the least known, it is not the school that makes the difference; it is the teacher that does. If there is going to be that spark, it has to come from the teacher. If we are going to move away from lazy students to inspired students, it has to come from the teacher.

Question 3 – how do you inspire students?

My final question is just a general one: How do YOU try to inspire your students? Forget about carrots and sticks for a moment. Get away from bribes and punishment. What do you do that might inspire your students? If you have not thought of that question before, today might be a good day to start. If you have even one student that you would classify as lazy, how can you turn that person into an inspired student? In the end, that might make all the difference in the world.

Implications of Greece'e exit

In the month of March, there was a lifeline for economy of the Greece when countries like Germany, Finland and others agreed to make a €130 billion bailout for the country. But now when the results of the election have come up on 6^th May and both the coalition parties unable to garner a majority and having a hung parliament, there are talks going on for bailout re-negotiation. Greece's euro-zone partners agreed to release only €4.2 billion ($5.5 billion) in previously agreed financing, to be paid out Thursday, holding back €1 billion at least until June. That would be paid only if Greece keeps to pledges it made to secure a bailout.

With talks reaching no resolution Wednesday, the Pasok party, which came in third in Sunday's vote, will make a last stab at building a coalition. But few expect a breakthrough and many observers say parties are positioning themselves for another election in June. "It doesn't look like there is any other solution apart from elections," one Syriza official said.

The next round is shaping up to be a showdown between Mr. Tsipras and New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, who is expected to make the election a last stand for Greece staying in the euro bloc.

With Athens in political turmoil after a fractured result in weekend elections, and a new vote likely by June, German politicians cautioned that further aid could be withdrawn if Greece abandons austerity targets—even if that pushes the country from the bloc.

The election results have clearly showed that the public there is against austerity drives which are one of the necessary conditions for the bailout package to be given out by the EU. Thus it would be very difficult for any government to approve further cuts of €11.5 billion by June end. Thus the country is imminent to head for an economic emergency again. Technically such comments lead to only one thing- the imminent fall out of the Greece from the European Union. Such fears continue to keep European financial markets on the edge.

Implications of Greece’s exit:

Even before an exit Greece’s banks could collapse if the steady withdrawal of deposits—they are 30% below their peak, according to Credit Suisse—were to develop into an outright run. After an exit debts to foreign creditors would soar as the new drachma fell, leading to further defaults. On strict legal grounds, Greece could find itself cast out of the European Union as well as the euro area, at risk of losing access to the single market.

But the panic would not be confined to Greece (which made up just 2.3% of the euro zone by GDP in 2011). Depositors in other vulnerable economies could take fright and try to withdraw their funds from their banking systems. Even if the European Central Bank (ECB) fought this with massive liquidity support, the crisis would shake already frail banks, especially in Spain. Bond yields will jump in any country that might conceivably leave the euro once such an exit has actually happened, with the rise proportional to the risk. Bad, then, for Spain and Italy. Worse for Ireland and Portugal, which have already needed bail-outs. Last year elections in both countries produced reform-minded governments, but the economic pain they are already undergoing is intense. A referendum on the German-inspired “fiscal compact”, which will insert public-debt brakes into national laws, is due in Ireland on May 31st and many Irish may be tempted to use the occasion to vent their discontent and add to the anti-austerity movement in Europe. An Irish rejection would not prevent the treaty coming into effect, but it would relieve the Irish of any obligations under it, and mean that they would not be bailed out in future. Thus a Greek exit from the euro zone would not just be chaotic for Greece itself but would also invite questions about the status of Portugal, Ireland and others.

The Greek Government bond yields were relatively unchanged with the 10-year quoted at the price of 20-22 cents on the euro, to give a yield in the region of 22%-23% . While the Spanish and Italian bond yields continued to grow higher with Spanish bonds up nearly 0.12 percentage point at 5.915% and Italian higher 0.07 points at 5.68% according to data from Trade web.

Thus the need now is for the policymakers to look for other strategies like a credible commitment to mutualize the debts of remaining euro-zone countries, because as stated by the new French president-elect Mr. Francois Hollande that austerity is not a panacea for the problems. But it is hard to see how such a pledge could be made credible enough in the near future. There is no consensus among Europe’s elites that this is the way to go; and the political journey to that destination would rightly require parliamentary votes and referendums.

Article By:
Prathmesh Limaye
SIMSREE

Mentor - Redux

I am always a bit amazed by how many readers we have on this blog. I never expected to get to 1,000 and we have now had (as of 8 minutes ago) 54,309 page views. Many readers are accounting profs but a lot teach all kinds of other things.

I am busy so I rarely pay attention to which blog entries get a lot of readership and which get less. However, because of an unrelated project, I had to go back a few days ago and look at all the entries to date and noted the number of hits for each. Most got hundreds, some got thousands. However, the following entry (from May 30, 2010) only had 14 hits. 14??? Heck, some of these entries get 14 hits in the first two minutes.

I’m not sure why no one read this entry because (even rereading it today) I think it raises a valid question as to what you actually want to be as a college prof. I especially liked the comment about the baseball team needing different types of players. Are you in an environment where different talents and roles are recognized?

So, I am going to rerun this one from 2010 and see if we get more than 14 readers this time.

**

When I first started working in a college classroom in 1971, it struck me that some members of the faculty were teachers and others were mentors. A teacher is a person who walks into a classroom and helps students learn to understand material. Some of the people I encountered were good teachers and others were not so good. The only criterion for excellence, though, was how much the students learned by the end of the semester.

A mentor was certainly a teacher but, in addition, the mentor was a little bit more. I checked on the Internet just now and found the term “mentor” defined as a trusted guide or advisor. Yeah, I have known a few of those also over the past 39 years. In fact, some of the best mentors that I have seen were not particularly good teachers. It is a different talent. However, it is a way that a faculty member can have a genuine and long lasting effect on the life of a student.

Teacher or mentor?

It seems to me that you can divide college faculty members into three categories. The first is the pure teacher who works to help students learn but has no real interest in giving advice or guidance. I have worked with some wonderful teachers who did not know the name of a single student and didn't want to know their names. As an undergraduate, I went to a large research-oriented school. I would say that virtually every college professor I had in four years at that school was a teacher. If I had walked into one of their offices and said “I’ve got an issue that I wonder if I could talk with you about,” the response would have been something like that of W. C. Fields: “Go away kid, you bother me.”

The second category is what I call “mentors for the best and brightest.” Many faculty members really like to work with the top 10 percent of their students because they can push them to excel. This is often where we get our next generation of doctors, engineers, scientist, and college professors. There are always students capable of great achievements and having a mentor to push and guide them forward is so important.

The third category is what I call “mentors with an open-door policy.” Every student feels free to walk in and talk with these faculty members about everything from majors to roommates to personal tragedies. My first four years as a college professor were at a very small, religiously-oriented college. All faculty members were expected to be mentors. Students with real problems would call me at home for personal advice.

I am not here to tell you what you ought to be. I think that is a very personal decision. What I do think, though, is that every program needs some of each. I would even say that having 33 percent of your faculty in each category is not a bad allocation. When I first started teaching, I think many of the schools that I came in contact with came pretty close to that pattern. A faculty is like a baseball team; it needs people to play different positions.

What concerns me now a bit is that I think fewer and fewer faculty members are in category three and I worry that this category may eventually become extinct. At a lot of schools, this level of mentoring has been virtually reassigned away from the faculty. Universities now have career development centers and advising services and all kinds of surrogate mentors. Those are great and awfully helpful but it is almost as if some administrator said “make a list of every question a student could possibly ask and then we’ll hire someone other than a faculty member to answer it. Keep the students away from the faculty.”

I think there should always be a few professors in every department who have an open door policy for every student and who are willing to go beyond being a teacher. Into which of these three classifications do you fall and are you satisfied with that placement? When your career is eventually over and done with, do you want to be remembered as a teacher or as a mentor?

Cat Abuse and Technology - Be Still, My Heart

A Dutch artist named Bart Hansen recently decided to memorialize his dead cat (Orville) in an unusual way - by turning it into a remote-controlled helicopter. Jansen said that Oville always loved birds, and now he can fly with them.


Unfortunately, he forgot the laser beams.  Amateur!

On the Other Side of the Desk

Occasionally, someone will ask me to give them my number one piece of advice for becoming a better teacher. Teaching is such a complex art that I really think that is close to impossible. However, I do think there is one thing that every teacher (and I do mean every teacher) should do that will help them immediately to become a better teacher. Can you believe it? I’m almost guaranteeing you success with just one piece of advice.

Every teacher should get a reality check by enrolling as a student each year in a class in something about which they have no real knowledge. In other words, they should walk around to the other side of the desk and put themselves into the student role just as a reminder of how it feels to be the struggling one. I don’t mean for a history teacher to take another history class. There’s no benefit. I don’t mean for an English teacher to take a class in poetry. I mean for a history teacher or an English teacher to take a class in quantum mechanics.

Two weeks ago, I started a class in tai chi. For those of you who do not know, tai chi is a moving meditation.

I cannot tell you how happy I am that my teacher is patient.
I cannot tell you how happy I am that my teacher is willing to answer even the dumbest question.
I cannot tell you how happy I am that my teacher always repeats the movements slowly until we all catch on.
I cannot tell you how happy I am that my teacher is a kind person and a very good teacher.

I am not athletic. I have never had a good sense of body awareness. For me, this class is a real challenge.

The teacher will make a small movement that looks ever so easy when he does it. He does it without any strain or thought. Then, I’ll try to make that same slight movement and just cannot get it right. Suddenly, his simple has become my complex.

He doesn’t make fun of me. He doesn’t roll his eyes at me. He doesn’t imply that I’m a loser. He doesn’t call on a better student to show me up. He doesn’t become frustrated or impatient. He gently takes my hands in his and he moves them for me to show me what I am supposed to be doing. And, sure enough, when he leads me through it enough times, I can do it. And, I have this wonderful sense that I have managed to accomplish something. I’m excited and ready to learn more. I always leave the room feeling better than when I walked in. But, really it was the teacher who had the success more than me.

I believe that there should be a law that every teacher has to take one class each year that is out of that person’s comfort zone. I think the quality of teaching in our world would automatically get better if we all did that.

We all get so settled into the teacher role that we really lose track of what it is like to be the student. It is awfully hard to be a great teacher if you don’t understand what it feels like to be a student.

Okay, there it is -- there's your one piece of advice.   You can take it or leave it.   However, don't ignore the advice and then tell me that you want to become a better teacher.  

This is not new advice from me.   A few years back I wrote a teaching tips book and in one of those essays I talked about my habit of taking classes just to remind myself of what students experience in my classes. Here’s what I said at that time.

“Recently, I took a class on large-format cameras. Five of us were enrolled. This group took photographs for one entire day. I worked to replicate every step demonstrated by the teacher. The film was developed overnight so that we could discuss the results. On the following day, the teacher started class by saying, ‘Four of the film packs came out great but, for one, every picture was blank.’ It was my pictures that had been ruined; I felt so dumb.

“The following week, I taught my own classes with more patience and care. Many students face such heavy frustrations almost every day; their confidence is shaken constantly. Understanding the student perspective can help as you organize a class. How long has it been since you took a course, especially one where your knowledge and ability were strictly limited? Occasionally, feeling lost is a good position for a teacher.”

Department of "What Were They Thinking?"

I'm back.

Unknown University has a new initiative.  They want to encourage more "interdisciplinary" research.  So, they're trying to hire in groups centered around "big" topics.   So what do they call this approach?

"Cluster Hires"

It's too easy.   I'm not going there.  

We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us

My department chair (Darrell Walden) sent out the following link to an article from The Washington Post. You may have to register to read it but it is well worth your time. (If the link doesn’t work, just go to www.washingtonpost.com and search for “Is college too easy” as of May 21, 2012.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/is-college-too-easy-as-study-time-falls-debate-rises/2012/05/21/gIQAp7uUgU_story.html

Darrell summarizes the story quite well in just a few words. “Over the past half-century, the amount of time college students actually study — read, write and otherwise prepare for class — has dwindled from 24 hours a week to about 15, survey data show. And that invites a question: Has college become too easy?”

As I travel around the country talking about teaching, I very frequently hear faculty members complain that “college students are not like they used to be.” My feeling (after 41 years in this job) has always been that college students really do not change much over time. However, as this article pretty well documents, what we ask our students to do to get a good grade has become less and less demanding. For many students, college is barely a part-time job. The students have not changed but a college education has.

Two words say it all: grade inflation.

If you don't demand much, don't be surprised when students give you exactly that much.  

I have even heard the speculation that the heavy student drinking that is prevalent on so many college campuses today is partially a result of the boredom that comes from being under challenged.

Okay, I have lived long enough to already know the response to my rant here.
---Polls will tell you that most people believe public education is falling apart nationally but that their own local school does a pretty good job.
---Polls will also tell you (at least I’ve been told this) that most people will argue that Congress is completely incompetent but their own member of Congress does a pretty decent job.

So, my guess is that a lot of college faculty members are going to read The Washington Post and respond “Yes, most students don’t work very hard these days but my class is the exception. If every class was as difficult as mine, college education would be much better.”

Hmm, that always reminds me of Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.

Is the problem that our students are lazy or is the problem that we do not push our students enough?

Either way, are we willing to allow our students to "earn" a college degree with so much less work?

I’ll leave that up to you to decide.