Text extracted via OCR from the original document. May contain errors from the scanning process.
xi Preface
3. You taught me to teach by telling students stories that are
meaningful to you. I think to be a real teacher you have to let
yourself be vulnerable. So the students can see that you are a
human with feelings and fears and goals. And then being able
to say to the students: This is the way I do it; it fits who I am; it
helps me be successful; and don’t let anyone tell you that you
can’t do something.
4. You taught me that not everyone will like you no matter what
you do and no matter how hard you try. I came back from a
Deloitte course evaluation, and the deans just hated me. Instead
of being upset with me, you assured me that you have to just say
what you believe, and some people won’t like you, and oh well.
5. You taught me to start by collecting data. I recall watching
most of your papers start by collection of data. I recall watching
your criticisms of work that was just abstraction on abstraction,
with no data at its roots.
6. You once told me to imagine that my mother was my
audience—if I could explain it to my mother, I could explain it
to anyone. Incredibly, this seems to work for every audience out
there. So I’ve passed that tip along to my students and it seems to
work for them too.
7. [remember that you used to tell us we need to be excited to
get up and go to work in the morning, that that was the most
important thing. For some people, it’s because of the people
you will be with. For some, it is because of the passion about
whatever it is. But, in general, I still give people that advice (and
it is advice I’ve also been giving my own kids). You have to love
what you are doing.
This is just a sample but it reflects what these former students, now
all in their 40s and 50s, remember about what I taught them. Hadn’t
they learned any facts from me? Didn’t I teach them some real stuff?
Some said in passing that they had learned the actual content of the
subjects I taught as well, but that that wasn’t as important to them as
the things they chose to write about. Why not?
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023742