What makes a great teacher? I have been asking myself this a lot recently.
Instead of simply sharing my views I will do something much better. Bob Swap
has been honored by receiving the teacher of the year award at his major
research university. I have talked with his students and I know how much he has
changed lives. His approach to teaching incorporates a global perspective, and
this too is something that needs more emphasis in our inter-connected world.
***********************************************************************************
Questions
When
did you find the passion you have for environmental sciences, global
development and the many other areas of research you are involved in?
I was always a curious kid – always
asking questions and completely enthralled by the coffee table books that my
parents had at home. I can remember as a
first – third grader sitting on the family coach and looking at the pictures
and reading about them – a number of the books were more about nature and
history as well as some big old atlases.
I suppose that that helped to whet my appetite. One book in particular also stuck with me –
how to garden organically – Living in Ames Iowa at the time, having access to
all of that land with all of that rich, black soil was incredible. I fondly recall hunting for salamanders and
garter snakes in the fields… The environment was just so present and immediate
whether the never-ending fields of corn as high as an elephant’s eye or the
severe thunderstorms or blizzards – It just really had an impact. Follow up on that with our move to Virginia
Beach when I was heading into the fourth grade and that love of exploring and
capturing critters and fishing just fed that interest – I consumed all of the
little golden guide books – the ones on freshwater sport fish, insects, snakes,
trees, etc. All of that tied in nicely
to my involvement in scouting (which I pursued to Eagle) and the camping
etc. Proximity to water and pan-fishing
was also chicken soul for my intellectual soul – however, I have to admit that
spending time with my dad and brother fishing for largemouth bass out on Back
Bay in southern Virginia Beach was one of my fondest memories – the early 3:45
am departures to be able to put the boat in the water just before first light
was amazing…
I also went to scout summer camp every
summer from 12-17yrs old and it was during that time and working on nature
related merit badges that I started to really make the connections between love
for the environment and the science behind it – it became something that I took
for granted – this incredibly rich set of experiences out in the environment
and the science behind it – It came so easy and I just thought that it was
something that everybody else saw/knew and appreciated…
I can’t forget the conversation I had
with my high school physics teacher in 12th grade – he asked me
about what schools I had applied to and why – I told him my choices – W&M,
VT and UVA – he approved of all three, yet knowing my love for the environment,
he threw out something that has stuck with me to this day – “You know Bob, UVA
has a Dept. of Environmental Science.” I
told him thanks, but I was going to be a doctor – pre-med all the way – and he
said, “well, just remember that they have that Dept. and it is pretty
good.” Little did I know…
With respect to my interests, upon
accepting my admission to UVA, I applied for and was accepted into the
“Curriculum One” scholars program, a program developed by Carl Trindle to
produce well rounded and informed students who intended to be science majors –
that program opened my eyes to the power of interdisciplinarity. When coupled with an ever-expanding
appreciation for Jefferson and all of his interests (especially in natural
history), it just kind of all came together…
During my first two and a half years I
was a pre-med major as well as a walk-on football player – like many entering
students, I had a challenge adjusting from what worked for me in high school to
what would work for me in the College… I quickly discovered that large gen ed
and large pre-med courses did not work for me.
And trying to maintain the pre-med load with the walk-on experience was
also not working. In the second semester
of my second year, on a lark, I took my first environmental science course at
the U – and I did not look back. I
walked off the team just before the start of my third year – went through
summer ball and was just a week before the start of the year, but just walked
away – I threw myself into environmental science head long and just grew
exponentially as a student and as a scholar.
I had reconnected with my passion and that made all of the difference.
I was fortunate enough to have Jim
Fourqurean as my graduate teaching assistant for that first environmental
science course in ecology. Jim and his
advisor, Jay Zieman, got me signed up for the major and also got me out in the
field helping Jay’s grad students conduct research in the Chesapeake Bay.
Once enrolled as a major, it was during
that third year that I heard a seminar by the person who would become central
to my formation as a scientist, Michael Garstang, who was speaking on the
importance of the Amazon Basin as “the firebox of the atmosphere.” Garstang
presented on the research that they had just conducted in the central Amazon
Basin about 50km outside of the city of Manaus.
I found myself being drawn into his seminar and at the end when he asked
if there were any students who might be interested in participating in the next
field campaign scheduled for the following year, I felt my arm rising. That is how I got started on the
international aspect of my environmental and ultimately my development work.
 |
| Manaus |
While on the ground outside of Manaus
in the late 80’s I couldn’t help but encounter images and circumstances that
were forever formative – the memories of bearing witness for the first time in
my life to families living on garbage dumps, or families working day and night
making gravel by hand, or of staying with families that would go days waiting
on municipal water supplies to function left deep, deep impressions upon
me.
I also participated in athletic
activities growing up – in a variety of team sports – baseball, basketball,
football, volleyball, etc. While not a
star player, I used my power of observation, my access to the inner workings of
athletic teams, and my experience with leadership to further learn about team
dynamics – not in a judgmental fashion, but more in a causal fashion (e.g.
“when you do this you get that”). This
insight into human systems coupled with my insights into natural
systems/environmental systems has probably given me a leg up on many other
researchers and educators. Furthermore,
my time holding down menial labor, temp jobs, pizza delivery, fry cook,
newspaper deliverer and nightclub bouncer, also provided me with many
opportunities to see things from a lived perspective not readily available to
many academicians. I have come to learn the narratives of people on the edge,
highly intelligent people who encountered very unfavorable circumstances. I quickly came to realize the value of
engaging knowledge beyond the borders. All of these experiences have gone into
my intellectual toolkit and have provided me with some much-needed insight at
different times throughout my career.
Before
I ask you to talk about your research I want to focus for a while on the
importance of teaching and mentoring. Depending on your answer to the
last question can you talk abut a teacher or mentor or two who were important
to you? How did they ‘reach’ you and what sorts of things did they do to help
you on your path?
As I tell my students and as I have
been fortunate enough to experience – we all stand on the shoulders of those
who come before us. I have definitely
benefitted from inspirational educators all throughout my educational
career. In high school Mr. Koeppen
(biology), Mr. Hoots (physics) and Mr. Lambriola (12th grade AP
English), all impacted me and opened up my eyes to the power of the process of
inquiry. At the University of Virginia,
Jim Forquerean (Ecology TA), Jay Zieman (Undergraduate Advisor), Hank Shugart,
Steve Macko and Mike Garstang (M.Sc./Ph.D. advisors) all broadened my concept
of what it means to be an engaged scholar.
As I have continued to evolve as an
educator and a scholar, I have continued to learn from a gifted cohort of
Graduate Teaching Assistants, Junior and Senior Faculty, most notably Lyndon
Estes, Keir Soderberg, Suzanne Walther, Clare Terni, James Ngundi, Ethan Heil,
Siddartha Pailla, Jonathan Walter, Caroline Berinyuy, Loren Intolubbe-Chmil,
Claudia Ford, Kent Wayland, and Carol Anne Spreen. Furthermore, I have learned greatly from my
international colleagues, again, most notably Harold Annegarn, Joseph Francis,
O.G.S.O. Kgosidintsi, Shuaib Lwasa, and Shirley Pendlebury. I cannot say exactly what it is that
specifically ‘reached me.’ It may be the way that they use the power of the
narrative to educate. It might also be
their intellectual curiosity and the way that they are open to other ways of
being.
Professionally/programmatically, I have
benefitted greatly from my interactions with seasoned NASA program and project
managers. Tim Suttles, Michael King,
Chris Justice and Steve Platnick all provided guidance, mentoring and wisdom
essential for my being able to serve as the U.S. Principal Investigator for the
Southern African Regional Science Initiative – SAFARI 2000. S2K was a large five-year program involving
well over 200 scientists from 16 different countries that focused on the
emission, transport and impact of southern African aerosols. That group of gifted scientists and engineers
also possess an uncanny ability to manage programs and people. I learned so much in the ways of ‘human engineering’
related to how to develop, implement, trouble shoot and wrap up a large
international science initiative from them.
They represented a blend of on the job experience, life lessons, on the
ground experience, know-how when dealing with the complex work of negotiating
with governments, inter-governmental agencies, and universities. I am
incredibly fortunate to have worked with those folks early on in my
professional career. What a gift to have
them as team-mates and professional resources.
What all of these fine educators did
and did well is that they were able to find ways to engage, to find ways to
provide an access point, an entry point to their wonderful world of knowledge. Perhaps I can best summarize it by saying
their respective holistic approach to education and research, the way that they
engage and their use of the three ‘R’s’ – Respect, Reciprocity and Relationship
– are all things that I take away from my interactions with them.
 |
| airborne sampling campaign across southern Africa to better understand the effect of aerosol and trace gas emissions. |
You
received one of the highest honors a faculty member can receive: the Carnegie /
CASE Virginia Professor of the Year. Can you talk about the ways you approach
teaching? What makes a great teacher?
I recall one of my undergraduate
professors stating that an effective teacher is one who can take the same
information and present it at least three completely different ways. To me, a great teacher is some one who can
bring passion into a classroom, who is present – in the complete sense of the
word, who can make knowledge and wanting to find knowledge accessible the to
majority of their students and lastly, who can spark the fire of wonder and
inquiry. I try to bring an activation
energy into the classroom and to use that energy to realize the latent
potential of each and every student in my classroom. As an educator, I feed off
of the engagement. I am not naïve enough to believe that I can reach each and
every student, but I sure as hell can and do try! Perhaps it is the competitive
athlete in me – I could never seeing myself not trying – not giving some effort
– whether on the field, in the classroom or in the field. That just isn’t me.
Regarding the Carnegie/CASE
recognition, I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to have the
opportunity to engage undergraduate students throughout their intellectual
journey. To be acknowledged here in Mr. Jefferson’s Academical Village as a
teacher who has made a significant impact on the minds and lives of young
people is incredibly humbling. It means
so much to be recognized for something that one feels so passionately about,
and for doing work that brings so much joy and satisfaction.
To be recognized for outstanding
undergraduate teaching at the level of the Commonwealth as the CASE Virginia
Professor of the Year is a singular honor that I will treasure the rest of my
life —I can only hope my future teaching will warrant this recognition that the
Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching have chosen to confer on me. Furthermore, this award signifies for me that
the art of teaching still lies at the heart of the work that we do in the
academy.
This honor has special significance to
me when I reflect upon the individuals who inspired me as a student; the
communities who have embraced me as an educator, providing opportunities to
teach in diverse settings; and the colleagues who helped mentor me as a
teacher. The award also provides those who have paid the quiet price, my
family, with some validation that the work I do matters and that others know
this. Without this collective support,
this kind of recognition would not have been possible. My hope is to continue working with students
in such a way that catalyzes their intellect and curiosity and sparks their
life-long passion for learning---while at the same time, students and colleagues
do the same for me. It is in this way that I intend to carry on, honoring those
in the profession by sustaining my own investment as an educator.
Can
you take the other side and say what makes a great student?
I think that what makes the difference
between a good and a great student is that ability to let go of feeling as if
one has to have the right answers and moving towards having the right/good
questions. It has been my experience
that those students who let go of the “product” based approach, that is
focusing primarily on grades, and give in to the process of inquiry, of being
present, of actively seeking, tend to develop the types of skills that make
them great students, not just at the university, but great students in life, as
well.
I like teaching the course because,
just like a river has a set river course, no two days of water flowing down
that river course are exactly the same, so two no two editions of the course
are exactly the same. What I like is
that that course has been a real opportunity for me and my colleagues to
impress upon students just how the environment helps to give rise to the
peoples and their cultures of an area.
So often, we tend to focus on how humans and their cultures impact the
environment. Sometimes it is very
humbling when one comes to see that the opposite is not only possible but
happens more often that one thinks.
The skills that they leave the course
with are related to negotiating cross-cultural differences. Traveling with students from other cultures
in an intensive and confined setting across a range of environments (from urban
to peri-urban to rural requires patience, understanding and a sense of
humility. All traits that I have heard
stood former students well in the working world. The other thing that students in this
program will not get in a traditional or even virtual setting is access to
‘informal’ knowledge authorizes – that is information from sources from outside
of the academy. My students have been
impressed with their interactions with community members of the years and their
lived experiences and personal and historical narratives. Such information also creates dissonance at
times with what they have read about in books or on the web. It provides for many teachable moments. Such an atmosphere is very difficult if not
impossible to create on a university campus.
Having access to such figures and learning how to listen respectfully
and to then reflect upon what they have been exposed to are all things that I
have known students have taken with them after graduation.
 |
| Bob Swap with students in Limpopo Provence |
I
would like to ask a somewhat related question. You use the term service
learning several times in your course descriptions. How do think the students
who work with you internalize this passion and interest in service? Can a
passion for service and commitment for public good be taught?
It has been my understanding that we at
my university tend to select those elite students who are inclined towards
pursuing positions of leadership upon their completion of their education. Those who at teach at Virginia are quite
fortunate to have students who want to put their knowledge into action. Many
want to put this knowledge into action to have an impact on/for the good of
larger society. Some in the professorial
ranks view this as being ignorant and naïve – I tend to view this as an asset
that can be utilized, with proper mentorship and respectful engagement, to
achieve the students’ desires as well as to contribute to their overall
educational experience while at university.
I have found service learning to be an effective mode of achieving these
larger outcomes. Service learning, at
least from my perspective, allows for students to learn how to work
collaboratively in real world settings.
It forces students to recognize that they do not have to have all of the
answers and that this is okay. It drives
home the point that there are many others that are experts. As I like to tell
might students, every person you meet is an expert in something you are not as
they know things that you do not.
Using service learning and trying to
teach service learning is not easy and requires educators being comfortable
with pushing away from the product driven mindsets and to focus on the
process. It also requires much front end
loading on the part of an educator to help students ‘unlearn’ and become
comfortable with the discomfort of uncertainty and to ponder questions of
connectedness outside of the traditional university ‘bubble’ of existence. I
think that service learning also provides the student with an institution with
an opportunity to instill a sense of humility rather than to further inculcate
hubris within a student. Overall, when
done properly, it has been my experience that the payoffs of service learning -
for the student, the communities involved, the faculty and the larger
University – outweigh the potential negatives thereby making it worthwhile.
Regarding whether a passion can be
taught, I believe that passion from an educator can be the spark that causes
something bigger and farther reaching to ignite. I don’t think one teaches passion. I think
that one can model with passion and presence in the classroom, just as one can
model lack of passion and disengagement in the classroom. This is one of the
challenges in higher education today – how can one effectively teach the
importance of learning and embracing the ‘process’ when many in the profession
model through their own non-verbal communication that they have ‘arrived’ –
that they are ‘made’ members of the Academy? We can lecture until we are blue
in the face, however, how can we expect our students to be passionate about
things larger than themselves if we educators in the classroom do not model
passion for never losing the wonder in what we do? I think that a gifted
educator and communicator uses passion to make others aware and once they are
aware, how could they ever go back to being unaware and therefore unengaged?
In
your interview with Eris Qian you say we cannot keep doing what we are doing globally
without paying a price. Can you talk a bit about this and do you think the
current generation of students has the background, understanding and commitment
to make significant change?
This is where I think the notion or
rather the appreciation of connectedness comes into play – what I was thinking
of in particular is your cell phone. How
many times do we take for granted that the phone is going to work when we need
it to work? And, if it doesn’t work,
what do we do? Throw it away (or send it
to a black box ‘recycling’ center) and get another one. Yet, how many of us realize what goes into
that cell phone? What materials supplied
by whom? Coltan, short for
Columbite-tantalite, is used in the electronic components of all phones. Some Coltan from conflict regions in Africa
and is supplied by child labor.
Similarly, I show a video in my classes entitled “Digital Dumping Group
– The story of E-waste.” Those students
who have been exposed to this type of information where not aware of the costs
– human and environmental – that our current consumptive patterns have
associated with them. It has been my
experience that once students see how much of their waste goes where, they
often begin to think about their personal consumption. So, in many ways, it goes back to the point
that I have made earlier, I have found that once a person becomes aware of how
they have been aware, it is difficult to go back to being completely
unaware. That is one of my hopes – that
by being able to demonstrate to students about how they are connected to each
other and other communities around the world.
 |
| Child mining for Coltan |
In a wonderful article authored by you and your students you make it clear that your efforts succeed in
avoiding some of the concerns about community programs:
“As students, we often hear criticisms of international
service-learning, criticisms that include projects not being maintained once
the outside implementing teams have left the site and that many of these types
of encounters are based on extractive engagements where student teams focus on
projects almost exclusively (Brown-Glazner et al., 2009) and where the
community has little equity.” (Sandy & Holland, 2006; Nelson &
Klak, 2012
How
do you manage to do this?
First of all, I think of the term
‘development’ along the lines of working with others to realize their latent
potential (just like a coach, a teacher, a professor, etc.). Community development would then be working
with a community to realize their own potential to address their concerns. It is not
doing for others it is about working with
others to realize latent potential.
Working with others
necessitates getting into the trenches, getting muddy, engaging with the
complexities of life, complexities that are well beyond anything one can read
about in a book or listen to in a staid lecture. This kind of work requires
searching for commonalities and engaging any and all strengths that a community
possesses. To learn about the strengths
that different groups possesses requires one to be proximate, to be engaged, to
be present (in its totality) with others.
This can be difficult for many students, especially those that have been
groomed to be the best of the best.
Being present with others means taking a step off of the bullet train to
success and just flat out chilling with others.
It has been my experience that deviating from ‘the plan’ or the ‘pathway
to success’ causes some students to experience great levels of anxiety. As an educator, deviating from the plan
requires me to be present and available to help mentor students through these
uncertainties, to help students realize that many of them have the answers to
their own problems and just need someone to help them work through this rather
than to pontificate to them.
The way that I have tried to manage
this is to respond to the expressed needs of a community – a community that has
invited us to come visit them. [By the
way, this is where I tend to diverge from some of my academic colleagues.] By
listening to their expressed needs and working collaboratively on a joint venture,
where all parties have some equity in the process, it has been our experience
that the communities arrive with the types of engagements and approaches that
they are seeking. My students also are
instructed to think about capitalizing upon what these communities have in
abundance – what assets that they already possess. The students really aim to use an asset-based
approach to community-based development that requires entering a community with
more questions than answers. This approach also requires coming to think about
capital in all of its forms – social, human, environmental, cultural, etc. It
requires flexibility and collaborative problem solving skills. It also requires a great deal of
humility. What my students are cognizant
of and really try to minimize is the creation of new dependencies upon
outsiders for the solutions that they community seeks.
You
describe your work with students this way:
“Since 2003, I have been actively
involved in advising and supervising undergraduate and graduate students
interested in conducting research, participating in international service
learning projects, and experiencing educational activities in southern Africa
and elsewhere. I believe that now, more so than ever, these types of
educational experiences have emerged to be an essential component of a
comprehensive University education.”
Why
are these experiences essential? Do you feel that colleges are putting the
resources into making this happen in such a way that more student can
participate?
It is easy to point to many, not so
pleasant situations around the world today and to say that “that is not my
problem…” and “my getting involved would do more harm than good so I am not
going to get involved…” I raise this because a lack of exposure to these types
of experiential learning activities that service learning/community engagement
provides (both at home and abroad) helps to illuminate just how connected we
are – as humans, as communities, as nations, etc. My experience having done these types of
activities for more than a decade is that these students have needed to travel
8,000 miles to be able to see 8,000 feet in a different light. Such experiences provide students with
perspective changing and at times, life altering.
I think that the way that a student who
participated in one of these immersive, intensive educational activities put it
sums it up nicely: “I went to Africa to change the world. In the end, Africa changed me.”
I also want to take this opportunity to
stress that these types of service learning and community engagement activities
conducted in domestic settings can be equally as “foreign” to students who have
had little if any exposure to other, less resourced communities. The impacts can be and are often as profound
and life changing as those experienced by those who have conducted
international SLCE activities.
Regarding the question about resources,
let me try and put it this way – the resources needed are not just financial –
they are human and they are programmatic.
It is easy for an institution to throw out a sound bite regarding a
financial commitment regarding these types of programs, but what does that
really mean? Does the university have
any skin in the game? Are they committed
to those professionals that are themselves committed to this type of education
– professionals that are often viewed as children of lesser academic beings
from a traditional disciplinary perspective – and what form does that
commitment take? Has the institution
formalized such programs or are they always to remain in some institutional
state of perpetual bastard-dom? There
are people who want to support these types of efforts, but they want to do it
in a joint fashion – they want to know that there is commitment to a joint
venture, not just a one-way proposition.
In my estimation, universities still have a long ways to go to provide
the types of resources necessary to facilitate an expansion and longevity of
this kind of educational experience.
Do
you think there are too may programs sponsored by schools and groups that are
little more than poverty tourism?
I think that at times, we in higher
education are as guilty as our students of focusing on products, metrics and
throughputs, rather than on engaging with other human beings. I come from a blue collar, background with
strong Midwestern ties. One of the
things that I always caught flak for was coming across as being ‘so damn high
and mighty thinking that you are smarter than everybody else.” I raise this
point because sometimes in higher education, especially with these kinds of
programs, there is a tendency to think about the ‘others,’ those that we seek
to engage with as being some less important, less central to us and this is
dangerous – for several reasons, most notably because it tends to reinforce
differences and a sense of social/cultural hierarchy/superiority. It reminds me
of a phrase that my dad would seem to always have at the ready in these kinds
of situations “there’s another case of hurray for me and the hell with
everybody else.” Poverty tourism in my
mind comes pretty close to that sentiment – people wanting to experience ‘big
pain and big suffering’ out of some form of personal guilt, and once the
tourists have been able to emote, they clamber back on to their jet airplane headed
back home for the ‘burbs… Poverty tourism, in my mind does not require actually
connecting on terms that are dignified for both parties.
WRT poverty tourism – we as a people
wouldn’t be going to visit these places to see these people in these situations. Or rather, these people who are often the
objects of poverty tourism have something we do not have – we are the ones
seeking something from them – so in that vein, who are the impoverished in that
type of relationship?
Developing metrics to discern impacts
of these types of international educational experiences beyond simple numbers
and assessing language proficiencies requires a commitment to observing
students over a longer arc. Given the
budgetary constraints and the need to provide decision makers with ‘facts’ and
‘outcomes’ numbers, at times have become a proxy, an in many cases a proxy that
has little to do with the efficacy of a particular program. It is as if higher education has come to
mirror what has happened with food production in the U.S. over the past 4-5
decades – bigger is better, cheaper, mass produced food is the answer. Hopefully higher ed can learn from larger US
society with its recent move towards locally produced and sourced foods, often
involving smaller quantities and higher qualities (high quality production of
better tasting and nutritious food). If
cattle can move from overcrowded, poor quality massive feedlots literally to
greener pastures, why cannot students do the same, metaphorically speaking?
We in higher education have to really
address the question of whether it is about checking the box or about learning
the process. As long as we go for
international programs that produce big numbers while tending to objectify
others or portray others as lacking / dependent and/or as having no agency or
being empowered, especially wrt international programs, my belief is that we
are diminishing the opportunity for meaningful engagement between people from
different spheres of the global society.
You
describe your research this way:
My
current research continues to be focused on understanding how global change, in
its broadest form, helps shape regional environmental systems, especially in
the developing world. I want to identify and understand relationships between
environmental and human factors that underlie the biogeophysical /
biogeochemical processes occurring in developing world ecosystems.
Specifically, I study the aerosol & trace gas emissions, transports, and
impacts at regional scales. I am also interested in the nexus of environmental
sciences and human health issues in the developing world. I am moving in this
research direction through collaborations with colleagues in the UVA Schools of
Medicine, Nursing and Engineering.
What
advice do you have for students, even those in secondary school, who might be
thinking about pursuing some of the issues you are involved with and some
of the research you do? What should they be looking for in particular
school or department?
Don’t be afraid to try different things
during their first year – take some widely varying types of courses with very
different content and formats. This is
one way to help a student identify their passions. I also strongly encourage students to sit in
on different lectures, talks and events – they are free and low risk on the
part of the students – be open to trying out these different modalities and to
listening to different points of view.
See what resonates with them.
WRT looking for a school or department
– again, it is as much about feel – does the subject strongly resonate with the
student? Do they have a good feeling about it? Do they feel passionate about
it? If so, they are halfway there. Also,
if upon visiting a school or talking with faculty, or more importantly with
current students in a program, the students should be listening to their own
body, to the feelings that they get – do they have that sinking feeling? Do
they sense a lack of passion? Do they feel that folks are going through the
motions – these are all great warning signs that a particular program or school
may not be for them – and it is important to keep in mind, it is not that the
programs or schools are bad per se but rather that they might just not be the
right fit for that particular student.
Are
there courses or skills they should develop that will prepare them to take part
in programs like yours?
I would encourage students to never
lose the wonder. I would also hope that
they seek to understand before making themselves understood. And I would strongly encourage them to work
on their people skills, especially their active listening skills. I also think
that it would be a good thing if a prospective student can demonstrate that
they have purposefully undertaken some activity that is completely orthogonal
to their interest and articulate what they learned about themselves and those
they worked with. And along those lines,
I look for students that like to journal. If they can do these things, then
they have the right stuff.
Anything
else you want to add?
I think that it is worth sharing that I have broken a chair
on every continent that I have visited.
There was a streak for a while of having broken on in every country that
I had visited – not sure if that streak still lives. Why I mention this is that it is hard to get
high and mighty and thinking that one is better than another when one is busy
breaking chairs and literally and figuratively being brought back to earth!
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| Bob with students and community members |
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I hope that anyone who wants to teach will read these words.
I hope that anyone who wants to learn in the world we live in today will read
these words too. Instead of paraphrasing Bob’s words my teacherly advice would
be to go back and read his words again. There is so much wisdom for anyone
interested in education—in any subject and at any school or university.
In a new book that has been very highly reviewed, the author
shares words about a great teacher she met:
But the more I learned
about Magdalene and her teaching, the more I saw that what looked like mind
reading was in fact the result of extraordinary skill, not inborn talent. Her
success did not depend on her personality, which— inward, pensive, and
measured— was in many ways the opposite of Hollywood’s mythic teachers.
Instead, Magdalene’s success relied on a body of knowledge and skill that she
had spent years acquiring. Teaching, as she practiced it, was a complex craft.
Magdalene showed me that the illusion of the natural-born teacher is at best a
polite version of the old adage attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “He who can,
does. He who cannot, teaches.” By imagining teaching as a “voodoo” mixture of
personal charisma and passion, we are saying, essentially, He who has
intelligence, does. He who has charm, teaches. I have come to think that this
is a dangerous notion. By misunderstanding how teaching works, we misunderstand
what it will take to make it better— ensuring that, far too often, teaching
doesn’t work at all. Green, Elizabeth Building a Better Teacher:
How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone) W. W. Norton &
Company. Kindle Edition.
I think if the Bob’s name were put in place of Magdalene’s
name these words would help to summarize how Bob became one of the best. Just
reading through the list of names of people he has learned from and collaborated
with underscores that he learned how to learn and learned how to teach. What he
does is not magic; it’s the result of experience and an incredible work ethic
too. It’s those things that often bring success rather than luck or magic or even
the newest technology or gimmick, or educational theory.
He has spent an incredible amount of time on the ground in
Africa forging trust and relations and showing students how to learn in and
from a community and how to learn from each other too. His efforts to share his
passion have changed lives in the communities he has worked in and at his
university. He is also not afraid to say what he thinks, something that is not always rewarded in the world.
I can say that he has changed the way I understand global studies,
environmental science and a whole lot else. I am very grateful that he has
taken the time to share his words here. I hope that many will have the
opportunity to learn from him in the coming years.
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