Why I Teach Dr. Wendell Willis ('67) ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF UNDERGRADUATE BIBLE AND MINISTRY Before we moved to Abilene in the summer of 1994, I had spent about 20 years in local ministry in Texas and Missouri. Experiences in ministry vary, of course (as in all other occupations), but my family had good experiences in serving local congregations. My last 10 years of ministry were in Springfield, Mo. All the time that I did local ministry, I also taught part time at the university. I found both the ministry and the teaching meaningful. But when ACU invited me to join the Bible faculty, I had several reasons for doing so. I want to teach college students for many reasons. Like most teachers, I suspect, I became a teacher because of the impact teachers have had on my life. In my undergraduate school, I had a teacher who excited my interests and challenged me to excel. He helped give me the joy of learning, a lifelong gift. But in addition to those exceptional teachers I have had, I have other reasons for teaching. First, I find excitement and fulfillment in the classroom. I enjoy the challenge to lead young people to think more widely and more deeply than they have before. I really enjoy introducing them to new ideas and helping them try to understand and evaluate these ideas. I particularly like the give and take in the classroom. Second, I believe that teaching what I teach and where I teach allows me to serve the Lord and the church. Not only do I teach young people who are preparing themselves to serve in full-time ministry, I also teach those who will be members of local churches. As many have noted, coming to college is often a time when young people make new choices in their lives. Some use this time to claim their own faith and deepen it, but others lessen their commitments. These choices have lifelong - eternal - implications, and I want to try to impact their decisions. Third, I also find it fulfilling, as well as challenging, to try to encourage students to do their best work and not settle for "getting by." Too many students have been conditioned in public education to believe they will be rewarded without effort. This is true for both the brightest and the most ill-prepared students. I hope that, in my classes, they gain the value of disciplined learning and the results they desire. More than their grades, I want my students to discover the joy of learning. Finally, I enjoy teaching because teaching is stimulating to my thought and my life. I carry 3x5 cards in my shirt pocket because when I am preparing for class, I often have an idea which I either want to know more about or want to embody in my teaching. I really feel like this intellectual stimulation not only adds life to your years, but years to your life - it is therapeutic! Dr. Gary D. McCaleb ('64) ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT AND VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY From first grade through college, I always enjoyed school, but I don't remember ever thinking, even once, that I wanted to be a teacher. Neither my mother nor father were teachers. None of my grandparents were teachers. But during the more than 30 years I have been at ACU, I have come to cherish the opportunity to be in the classroom with the students. There is nothing quite like the first day of class of a new semester. It is a fresh beginning. There is anticipation and expectation on every face. It's the beginning of a journey, an adventure, an exploration. None of us knows exactly what will be discovered over the course of the semester's journey - New insights? Old paths? Keener appreciation? Deeper faith? Renewed hope? Lasting friendship? Higher purpose? We make the journey together. In reflection, I realize there are different reasons, every semester, every class that cause me to teach. Most recently in the Maymester class there were 27 specific reasons. They were Curry Aldridge, Amber Allen, Felix Alvarado, Chad Bankes, James Cogburn, Katie Coldwell, Michael Einkauf, Brooke Fuston, Laura James, Matt Judson, Matt Kelly, Cassandra Lopez, Marcus Lopez, Alisha Martin, Gina Martinelli, Mark Miller, Mark Perkins, Roderick Roach, Kara Roberson, Tracy Shane-Molnar, Tim Soehner, Brian Southern, Sara Stroup, Brent Thomas, Rachel Vandenberg, Andrew Way, and Lauryl Woods. This fall there will be a whole new list of reasons - about 70 of them. During every journey my life has been enriched. As G.L. Harmon has written, "Where could I find more splendid company?" Inexpressibly grateful for the experiences of the previous journeys, I look forward to embarking once again on an exploration, which prepares each of us for more effective Christian service and leadership throughout the world. Sherry Rankin INSTRUCTOR OF ENGLISH I distinctly remember the day I vowed never to be a teacher; it was a warm May afternoon in New Jersey. As I sat in a noisy high school classroom, listening to a harried, frustrated teacher explain the fascinating finer points of comma usage to a mob of disinterested, sullen teenagers, I made myself a mental note: "I will NEVER do that!" That was nearly two decades ago, and now I can't imagine doing anything else. But why? To be honest, it's not a question I've given much thought to, for the same reason I don't think about breathing. Teaching is just there - a part of who I am. I believe everyone teaches. All of us teach what we love, whether we are called "teachers" or not. We can't help it. I teach for the epiphany, for the moment of illumination. I watch for it in their eyes. I teach because I love what I'm selling. After all, teaching really is very much a sales position. I peddle ideas to a skeptical crowd, and the greatest reward is to see a tentative hand go up and to hear a student say, in essence, "I'll buy that!" When a snatch of poetry or a line of prose arrows its way through some chink in a student's plate armor of preconceived dislike, and that student sits up straight in the back row and jumps feet-first into a discussion he thought he was only enduring - then I remember why I teach. I teach because to love literature is to love ideas and people - and college students are people brimming with ideas and generally hungry for more. Students continually astonish me. Recently I spoke to a football player who had been moved to tears by a poem we'd read by Matthew Arnold (a Victorian writer whom I've always privately found a bit dull!). I will never read Arnold the same way again. A few weeks ago a student came into my office because he was confused by an admittedly challenging and difficult religious poem I had assigned. He sat beside me, frowning, his baseball cap pulled protectively low over his face. "I just don't get this stuff," he said, shrugging. As we talked about the poem, he began to lean over his book, nodding. When I showed him a particularly moving metaphor about Christ's crucifixion, he sat up in his chair and pushed back his cap. After a long silence, he said, "Wow. That's really nice." He sounded surprised. That's why I teach. Why would I want to do anything else? Dr. Michael H. Brown ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE "An education isn't how much you have committed to memory or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't." "The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying them afterwards." These two quotes from Anatole France form one of my reasons for teaching. Everyone realizes there is much that we know and much that we don't. I enjoy trying to close this gap. My teaching philosophy is to help students to continually learn more and to learn how what they know interrelates. Remembering many of the teachers I have had, the distinguishing feature of those I considered excellent teachers was their ability to draw out our natural curiosity rather than to simply have us memorize facts and dates. They did this without us realizing what they were doing. I remember my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Joe Fulks. We thought we were teaching ourselves at our own pace; in reality, Mr. Fulks was allowing our curiosity to direct our learning, while he provided guidance. My high school band director, Mr. Gerald Sledd, taught us there was more to music than Elvis, Chicago and the Beatles. We not only learned about music from the time of Gregorian chants to the present, but also that music was written in the context of its times and was an expression of the composer in musical form as opposed to word form. How did these teachers impact me and my teaching philosophy? They taught me that my chosen vocation would not exist in a vacuum but would be impacted by the world around me, and that the more I knew and understood about that world, the better-educated and better-prepared person I would become. In my teaching of accounting, I try to show this same philosophy. I not only teach the technical and professional accounting information, but also teach how accounting information and the accounting profession are impacted by economics, law, management, finance, communications, technology, human relations, society, etc. Hopefully, the students learn that the facts and figures are an integral part, but not the only part, of their professional preparation. I also am a firm believer in helping others improve themselves and their world. Ronald Reagan once said that the greatest gift any generation can give to its succeeding generation is "a sense of roots and a pair of wings." I believe that another fundamental purpose of a teacher is to give students "a sense of roots" in our history and traditions, our mistakes and successes, and "a pair of wings" to go make their world a betterment of ours and to make the commitment of passing their "roots and wings" on to the next generation. I believe I can best accomplish this by being a teacher. Dr. Carol G. Williams ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS I come from a family of teachers. My great-grandfather founded an academy in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. My grandfather taught my father in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Kentucky. My parents met while attending a "teacher's college" and pursued careers in public school teaching. My father eventually became a college professor of education, and my mother spent 25 years in the elementary classroom. Although in my early years of high school I declared I would never teach, by the time I was a senior, I knew I enjoyed and had some talent for it. I felt teaching would help me make a difference in young people's lives and let me serve as a Christian example. I also knew teaching was a career that could be combined with family and church responsibilities. Because mathematics was my favorite subject, I decided to become a high school math teacher. After nearly 20 years in the high school and college classroom, I began pursuing a doctorate in mathematics education at age 43. This coincided with a time when great changes began occurring in the way mathematics was taught. Technological advances provided some of the impetus for these changes, but the realization that students needed to focus more on conceptual understanding and problem solving was the prime motivation. The aims of this "mathematics reform" movement struck a responsive chord and inspired my career change from being solely a teacher of mathematics to a teacher of those preparing to be teachers. One of the major goals of my work is to help college students, particularly those preparing to be elementary teachers, gain competence in mathematics and confidence in their mathematical abilities. My years in high school and later college classrooms have been challenging. I have shed many tears of frustration. I have been threatened and once had my cheeks sandwiched with chalkboard erasers. However, these bad times have been far outweighed by the times I have been hugged or have received a note of appreciation. What keeps me teaching? The joy of having a student catch on to a mathematical concept. The hope that, along the way, I have influenced some young people by opening their eyes to new ideas and by helping them to overcome math anxiety. The opportunity to lend a sympathetic ear to a problem and offer a word of encouragement or advice. The prayer that they have experienced the love of Christ through me. This is why I teach. Dr. Chantrey A. Fritts ('53) PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION For 46 Septembers, I have started a new year of teaching. Where else could I get a fresh start so often and have so many second chances? Every school year is a kind of clean slate. When I completed the teacher education program at Abilene Christian University in 1953, I left Abilene to go home to Denver, Colo., to begin a lifelong career as a teacher. I was confident I had something to teach my junior high English students, and I felt secure in my repertoire of teaching skills. I had a love of English, and I had a great reserve of energy and motivation and an affinity for young people. This foundation formed the bedrock of my newly chosen career. There have been many challenges, of course, but most of all, there have been myriad joys to remember with pride. After teaching seven years at Byers Junior High School, I spent four years teaching English and counseling at the senior high level. Then I went on to a two-year stint as a curriculum supervisor in Denver at the administration building. I began my professional saga as an English teacher, but soon I took a diversion into the field of counseling alongside teaching. My last two years at Thomas Jefferson High School were immersed in full-time counseling and the administration of the counseling program. Concurrently with my professional work, I pursued a doctorate in counseling and completed that degree while never missing a year of teaching or counseling. I was clarifying my mission in life, but it was never outside thefield of education and those annual September beginnings. In 1967 I returned to ACU - now with a newly earned doctorate, a wonderful wife and two precious daughters who needed a high quality Christian education. My dream has been fulfilled - inspiring others to teach and helping shape their philosophy of education while sharing many tips that would smooth out the rough places of their beginning careers. I have been a teacher of teachers. For 17 years, I served as chair of the Department of Education. My Septembers have been followed by many rich experiences as a teacher and professor of education. At ACU alone, I have taught at least 7,000 future teachers and graduate students, including several second generation students. I have no way of estimating the number of public school young people I have taught. I teach because I love people. I have a mission to help students make a lasting contribution to the lives of their students in K-12 schools. But even more than that, I teach because I am in constant pursuit of making our culture better - a giant step from my little office and my friendly classroom in Chambers Hall. After all these years, my wife and I are still loyal members of the ACU family. Our daughters have completed their degrees and found husbands at ACU. All too soon, our four grandchildren will be at ACU. The cycle continues. In 1995, our older daughter, Deborah, and her husband, Dr. Jeff Paxton, endowed the Chantrey and Aynsley Fritts Education Scholarship. Earlier this year, our younger daughter, Jennifer, and her husband, Curtis Carpenter, generously added to the scholarship fund. We "bleed" purple and white in our family. I teach because I enjoy my subject, and I love to counsel students who have academic and personal questions of all kinds. My door is always open. I try to teach students to establish altruistic career goals, and I know that I have created ripples in high places, and low places, and in places I certainly have never envisioned - simply because I teach. I have shared Christ and the principles of careful planning, loving service, personal sacrifice and the Golden Rule. These are my keys to successful teaching. In 1995, I had quadruple bypass heart surgery six weeks before the school year was over. My friends and colleagues taught my classes while I graded papers and examinations at home. My students brought countless notes and gifts of all kinds to brighten my recovery, but when September rolled around in 1995, I was ready to return to my students. In two years, I expect to sing my September Song for the last time: "Oh, it's a long, long time from May to December, But the days grow short, When you reach September, When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, One hasn't got time for the waiting game. Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few September, November! And these few precious days I'll spend with you, These precious days I'll spend with you." Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6
		News | Sports | Hilltop View | Second Glance Back Issues | Feedback | Alumni Bookcase | Tipsheet | Our Staff .
		Last Update: Sept. 16, 1999 Page maintained by Jeremy Parish, parishj@nicanor.acu.edu Questions to Ron Hadfield, hadfieldr@nicanor.acu.edu http://www.acu.edu/acu-today/fall99/cover06.html