What Will I Learn from My Students?
Next Tuesday, January 16th, I’ll step back into an academic classroom for the first time in nearly 20 years. To say I’m excited would be a gross understatement. I have fond memories of my years teaching at both the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Many questions swirl in my curious mind. How has the collegiate teaching experience evolved? Will students be more or less prepared, motivated, and engaged? Will there still be that student in the back of the room with their feet up on a desk, reading the newspaper, counting the minutes until the class period ends? I know, I know, they won’t have a physical newspaper, but how distracted will students be? Will I need to ban electronic devices? Most importantly, will my highly refined dad jokes be a hit, or fall flat? I’ll be sure to wear my “Ain’t No Joke Like a Dad Joke” socks my eldest son gave me for Christmas last year as a good luck charm.
Beyond the resonance of my dad jokes, the thing I’m most curious about is this. What will I learn from my students? As a product of 1963 and a late baby boomer, there is a WIDE generational gap between me and the Gen Zer’s that will primarily populate my classroom. Both of our sons are late millennials, so I am woefully underprepared to engage with this new generation. However I should be okay if I keep my ears open, mind agile, and maintain the perspective that I’m there to learn as much from them as they are there to learn from me. I think I’ll reframe this old phrase “learn from me” to “learn with me.”
One thing is for certain. My class will be unlike any other college course my students have taken before. We’re going to spend the entire semester talking about the real world of business. No theory, no rehash of previous courses, no long papers that no one will ever read again, and certainly no cramming for a final exam that’s worth a huge part of the grade. I want students to remember this course for years to come as they head off into the world of business—they’ve done enough cramming and chasing grades for the sake of a higher GPA.
Instead, we’ll be working through the tenets outlined in my second book, The Balanced Business: Building Organizational Trust and Accountability through Smooth Workflows. The primary learning objective—the main takeaway from the course—will be an understanding of the all-important balancing act between trust and accountability in the workplace.
To this end, students will learn how to install my management operating system into the teams and businesses they will join upon graduation. Assessment will be woven into the flow of our work and peer assessment will be just as important as the assessment provided by the instructor.
To illustrate how this course will be different, on the first day of class, we’ll be discussing the concept of the accidental manager, and the importance of aligning one’s personal purpose with a chosen vocation. We’ll have a group discussion on several concepts that are essential to building resilience and a healthy relationship with work. Those concepts are self love, curiosity, courage, compassion, gratitude, agility, situational awareness, and self-awareness, just to name a few. The first assignment will be to complete my Personal Planning Guidebook.
Stay tuned in this forum for updates to the teaching experience. I’ll periodically share stories of what’s resonating and what’s not. Oh, and I’ll be working on an asynchronous, digital version of the course for both businesses and the general public that will become available in the late spring or early summer of 2024 so that you and your colleagues can follow along.
Stay tuned and have a great weekend…
