Teaching to Learn
I’ve been formally teaching since 2007, which makes for thirteen years of experience. I’ve taught at two world class Universities as a Clinical Professor of finance and management at the graduate level. That means I have organized and delivered about 36 separate courses on multiple topics. My medium of choice is the PowerPoint presentation, but my modus operandi is to use storytelling to improve student engagement and to take the learning experience beyond the simple act of knowledge transfer. The PowerPoints are there to guide me and try to keep me on track for whatever the topic is for the day and to remind me of all the points I want to make along the way. I try to make the PowerPoints at least somewhat interesting without hamming it up too much. They should keep students tuned into what we are discussing, but they should not distract from what I am saying and what I want them to give me back through class participation. I do not pretend that PowerPoints are any state of the art teaching tools at this point. In fact, there are many newer and presumably better tools, but we use what we are most familiar with and I still think PowerPoints do most of what I want them to do. I’m sure that new tools like Chat GPT and other AI chap bots will radically change teaching on many levels, but I also suspect that will happen for the most part after I have given what I have to give to students and that others will need to sort that out for transmitting their wisdom to students.
I’ve learned many things about myself, my chosen profession, human nature and the learning process by teaching. I don’t really know how to rate myself as a teacher, but the evaluations I have received have certainly suggested that I am in the top decile of teachers and I have a collection of emails and comments from students to suggest that I might even rank higher than that in the perception of some students. Its always wonderful to hear a student say that your course was the best course they have taken, etc., etc. I try not to let that go to my head because I see other selective teachers who get even more praise and admiration from students, so I am happy to be good at it and don’t need to feel that I’m the best at it. That generally fits in my worldview that I want to be a jack of all trades and master of none.
Teaching is perhaps one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had. To begin with, I never want to find myself in front of a class and not show myself to be worthy of being someone the students should be paying to listen to. They needn’t adore me or even like me (though I hope they would), but I do want them to respect me for what I have to offer and for the notion that I am there to help them rather than to self-aggrandize or pontificate. No matter how hard I try, I regularly run into a student who simply isn’t having it and either chooses to dislike my style or my point of view. Sometimes they think they know more than me and they are either right (I have learned that there are lots of smart students out there) or they are flawed enough to think whatever they choose to think. I know that you cannot please all of the people all of the time, but it is my nature to try. That is what makes me better and how I benefit from teaching. I am forced to stay on top of topics, to learn new topics to be sure I am at least a few steps ahead of my students when I can be, and, yes, especially to stay open to the realization that I get the opportunity to learn a lot of things from my students as well.
This has particularly been the case in teaching ethics as I have for a few years now. I always thought I was so right for teaching ethics, mostly because I am arrogant enough to think that I was more ethically based than most of my peers in the businesses I pursued and in my life in general. That may or may not be true, but I have learned that its not a sound enough reason to think that I am a wonderful ethics teacher. There is so much more to doing that right since teaching ethics is not really about imparting specific knowledge as it is about helping students through a self-discovery process to open their eyes and their minds to an important dimension of life and business that should help them do a better job in their careers and lives. That is actually a very hard thing to do and it is even harder to understand how well prepared you are to do that well until you try doing it. I have come to believe that humility is one of the most important of human characteristics and that people who lack that trait or self awareness are lesser for it. I do not know if kindergarten teachers face the same degree of humility in having to acknowledge their ability to learn from their students, but at the graduate level that reality hits you in the face in almost every class. And on a “soft” topic like ethics, the boundaries between teacher and student are almost imperceptible. I simply do not have any better opinions than anyone in the class, all I have is a context through which to lead the students and some confidence that I have spent the time to organize my thoughts around the topics we need to explore.
I believe I am coming to the end of my graduate business teaching career. It might end with this current semester or it might continue for another semester or two, but I can tell that a combination of what I have to give, what the universe wants me to give and my willingness to continue the effort to give are all waning. That is neither a shame nor a statement of dissatisfaction. I have always been a believer that all things have their time and place and that acknowledging that life moves on and changes is an important part of self awareness and, indeed, happiness. I am happy that I have taught. I am happy that I have done it now twice. And I am happy to have it come to a logical end with little or no fanfare. The normal commentary with making an end to teaching is to say that I will miss the student interaction the most. There is no doubt that I value much of that and will miss it occasionally, but what I will miss more than anything about teaching is that it forces me to stay engaged and aware and active in the broader world that interest me. I can do that somewhat through my writing, but there is nothing like forcing yourself in front of an audience to galvanize your mind.
I was recently asked to prepare and teach a “Master Class” for my expert witness company for new experts just onboarding. I held my first one of these yesterday and used a prepared PowerPoint to guide the discussion (some dogs need to use their old tried and true tricks). The one hour class ran for 90 minutes, mostly because I started off being more avuncular and chatty with the class than I perhaps should have. My attending partner gave me feedback after the class that while the reception to the class was good (one participant called it “Great”), he thought I needed to tighten the lecture up. He has done two expert cases to my fifteen, but he is a very smart and perceptive guy. I took his advice 100% to heart and have now completely revised my PowerPoint to address his feedback. I will do my second class tomorrow, so I will see how well I have learned my own lessons. This is why I teach. I learn something every time I teach and the thing I learn the most is to stay humble. Even experts on experting need to stay humble.