Sir Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher. Perhaps a great one.
FROM “A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS” BY ROBERT BOLT
Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?
Sir Thomas More: You…your pupils…your friends…God. Not a bad public, that.
I never really set out to teach for a living. My original plan was to be a professional historian, and that’s what sent me to graduate school. But in the weird way that life will throw you a change-up, a conversation with one of my former professors put the idea in my head of teaching. The idea stuck around too long. I’d committed to a doctorate by that point anyway (a long story in itself) and needed to do something with that degree when I was done, and I ended up in the academy.
I taught for a year at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. It wasn’t a very happy year. I was new at this teaching thing and not much older than my students. My boss and I didn’t exactly get along with each other, either, and seven months in I was told I would be granted my free agency at the end of the academic year. I had started farming out some applications to other institutions. Newberry College, which was close to where I grew up, had an opening in my field. I thought I wasn’t qualified, but something told me if I didn’t apply I would regret it. Sure enough, Newberry was the only place that called me back. Two months later I had a signed contract. I was going home. It was meant to be.
I started at Newberry in August 2001, and in those two decades I have learned much. Sometimes it’s been by hard experience. Fortunately, my supervisors have been patient and supportive, and let me figure out my own way of doing things. About my third year in, I finally figured the job out (a common occurrence, I’ve since learned) and things got a lot less scary. It even got fun.
The way I learn things is through doing them. You can talk to someone all you want about theories and principles, but you can’t really understand the material until you take it in your hands and create. In my media writing courses, we do a lot of writing, and up against a deadline. The students learn how to write a 30-second radio ad, a hard news lede, and other assignments. They do it and do it again until I feel they’ve captured it. When it’s time for journalism, I send them out to interview people and file a story. If it’s good enough, it runs in the local paper (which, in a happy coincidence, is now edited by a former student).
In courses such as the media law course, or the senior seminar, it’s not as easy to send them out to do that kind of work. So it’s my challenge to make these complicated concepts understandable to people who have never taken a law course before. I do this by involving the students in scenarios that sound ridiculous (i.e., time-place-manner restrictions illustrated by the loudspeakers of a converted ice cream truck that sells liver and onions to neighborhood kids) but bring the concepts to life. I have to make the material interesting. Sometimes a lecture becomes almost like free-form stand-up or improv. But if it helps the students understand, that’s what I have to do. I also have to do that because if the students hate it when I’m boring, I hate it even more.
In two decades of teaching I’ve watched my kids (and yes, past a certain point they’re not my students; they become my kids) go off to do great things. Among them you’ll find print reporters, newspaper editors, public relations specialists, television reporters and anchors, radio personalities, television directors and producers, videographers, business executives, teachers, military officers…one of my students even got into a fairly prestigious veterinary school, which is no small thing. Whatever they do, they make me feel proud, and I love seeing what they do with their lives. I’m glad to have been a part of it.
Sometimes I’ve taken what I know out into the community. I’ve spoken at college presentations, academic conferences, conventions, and to community groups on a range of topics: how complicated scientific issues get simplified in the press, and how journalists and scientists can work together to reduce public confusion; how CBS and NBC sparred with each other to get the first films of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation on the air in 1953; how the broadcast industry and the military worked together to bring telecasts of the Apollo 11 mission to the people of Alaska; and I’ve also given presentations on my work about Ben Robertson and about Dave Garroway. I’m available to speak on these topics, as well as a few others, so if you’re interested, drop me a note.