Lessons learned from my experiences as a teacher

I am a teacher. My first teaching job was in college when my mentors and friends Tom and Joyce Farrell hired me to teach tennis in a Madison (SD) summer recreation program after my freshman year in college.  I wasn't a great tennis player nor a great teacher but it was a job, I liked Tom and Joyce, so it was a win, but didn't convince me to become a teacher.

My next teaching job was during college at SDSU. I was taking both psychology and child development classes and my next class option in CD was "Introduction to Nursery School Teaching". For 2 afternoons a week for a semester, I was the only male with 4 other women teachers in a class of 20  three year olds. It was the most fun teaching experience I have ever had, before or since! Three year olds are a hoot! They are curious about everything, very concrete thinkers, and open to new experiences. Awesome teaching time for me.

My next teaching job was during my first year in grad school at UT Southwestern. Contact Dallas, a crisis/suicide hotline non profit, was looking for trainers to teach the telephone volunteer counselors how to respond to suicidal callers. Dr. Chuck Kluge hired me to be a trainer teaching basic helping skills and I did that for a couple of training classes. He later became a mentor and hired me to work for him part time in his private practice while I was in law school. 

At that point in my graduate school career, I thought I might find a graduate school faculty position post PhD, but my experiences with faculty politics during graduate school changed my mind.

After finishing the "Psychiatric and Psychological Evidence" book with Professor Dan Shuman from SMU Law School, I approached Dan with an idea to develop a class with both law students and psychology grad students, based on the book. The idea was to allow these two groups of professional students to learn how to work together as lawyers and expert witnesses. We pitched the concept to the Dean of the law school, and to the chair of the psychology department at UT Southwestern, and they both loved it. So Dan got an adjunct appointment at UTSW and I got adjunct appointments at both UTSW and SMULS. For me it was the perfect compromise: I got to teach, and avoid the incredibly intense cut-throat politics of a full time faculty position.

For the first half of the semester, Dan taught the psychology students about the rules of evidence and relevant statutory and case law, and I taught the law students about psychological testing and psychiatric diagnoses. For the last half of the one semester class, lawyer/psychologist teams engaged in mock trials of cases involving insanity defenses, will contests, personal injury, child custody, child abuse, and domestic violence. Our students loved the mock trial simulations since they got to actually practice and develop their skills in a realistic courtroom setting. (Our classroom was a courtroom in the law school). For me it was a very rewarding experience seeing my vision for a quality learning experience play out so successfully, and the feedback and ratings from students was universally very positive. 

After 8 years of teaching as an adjunct, I was ready to move on. Shortly after I stopped teaching at SMULS, I got a call from Dr. Steve Perkins, the director of the Cohort MBA program at UT Dallas' Graduate School of Management. My friend Dr Karen Prager was a tenured faculty member in psychology at UTD, and thought I would be interested in a new challenge. I was. 

Steve had just been hired as as he reviewed the curriculum, he found that the Business Communication course curriculum was outdated, and the instructor had left. He asked me to redesign the course to make it more relevant to our group of domestic and international MBA students. (Of the 35 students admitted to the program, about 20 were international students from all over the world.)

Using my lessons learned from my earlier adjunct experience, I designed a course that was 50/50 lecture and simulation. Each class session involved some mini-lecture information about everything from interviewing through performance reviews to firing, followed by simulations of each of those business situations based on fact situations I provided. Students were divided into 4 person groups, with 2 students playing the simulation roles and 2 observers to provide feedback during the debrief, and then they would switch roles. For the last part of the semester, the student teams had to develop a concept for a startup business, rough out a business plan, develop a pitch with everyone on the team participating, and then pitch their plans to the class and take questions from the "investors". 

Although they were not initially enthusiastic at first, to say the least, (the reputation of the earlier class apparently made them a bit resistant), by the end of the term, these bottom-line driven MBA students loved the class! It was the highest rated class in the program for the four years I was there. The opportunity to develop relevant business communication skills and then to create a business idea and pitch it to a business savvy audience was a hugely successful educational experience.

Throughout this period I was a very busy professional volunteer teacher/speaker. I gave numerous speeches to professional development seminars for groups like the Texas Psychological Association, Texas Bar Association, Texas Academy of Family Law Specialists, American Academy of Matrimonial Law, Texas Society of CPAs, and many other nonprofit organizations.

After a period where life complications prevented me from teaching, I found out that the Business Leadership Center at the Cox School of Business was looking for leadership seminars for the the BLC students. I designed, pitched, and landed the opportunity to teach a 2 hour seminar entitled "Managing Difficult People". I taught that seminar for two years, and received two Teaching Excellence Awards based on ratings from my students.  A family crisis interfered with my scheduled third seminar, and subsequently the series ended.

Lessons learned:

The adult learning research is quite clear: adults learn best through experience and discussion. My teaching experience confirmed that truth, in spades. My students were polite, even attentive, when I lectured, but when given to the chance to practice/perform in a relevant simulation, they were ENGAGED and real learning happened.

Adjunct teaching did allow me to enjoy teaching without entanglement in the politics of academia. But as an adjunct, I not only gave up reasonable compensation for my time and obvious talent (highest payment was $2000 per semester or about $30/hr) but also the opportunity to be more engaged with my students.

Teaching provided me with a rewarding balance to the stresses of my day to day consulting business of dealing with lawyers and clients in high conflict divorces and custody cases with high net worth people. In retrospect, teaching probably lengthened my consulting career and not only delayed the onset of my MI but likely lessened its severity as well. Teaching was almost always a positive and rewarding experience for me.

I like teaching when I can design the learning process.

The opportunity to teach is a gift. 

I am good at it. 

I miss it.