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Dr. George Stone, who is retiring in December, has been a history and teacher education professor for 42 years and has been a division chair at four different colleges, including the last nine years as chair of the Pat Walker Teacher Education Program. His lifetime work has positively impacted thousands of teachers. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in the classroom in your career Let me mention just four. First, advances in technology certainly would be at the top of the list. I watched the development of VCR and later DVD machines as well as personal computers and their corresponding use in the classroom. I remember in 1979, for example, I used part of the money I had been awarded as a result of being selected the Teacher of the Year at Sterling College to purchase a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer. It used a cassette tape as the memory device. I’m talking about the kind of cassette tape that I plugged into my car radio to listen to music! The tape had a little duck programmed into it that walked across the computer screen. We thought it was the coolest thing we ever saw! I attended every state-wide computer conference held in Kansas during the 1980s, and there were several each year. Then, in 1991, I bought my first lap top, the first on the market. I was told that I could “control the world” with that machine. I’m still laughing about that remark! A second enormous change is centered in the textbook. I have textbooks on my office console that I used when I first started teaching history and government as a National Teaching Fellow in 1967-1968. Those textbooks are hardback, very thick, and contain hardly any pictures. Many textbooks today by contrast are paper back, contain lots of pictures, and aren’t particularly intellectually challenging. If I would bring textbooks to my classes today similar to those I used in the 1960s, 70s, and maybe even 80’s, my students would rebel. Too many university level students today simply cannot read at the intellectual level of their parents and grandparents. That shouldn’t be surprising. They are much more oriented toward visual learning given the visual and audio technology that is so 12 Today, FALL/WINTER 2009 much a part of their lives. Third, students before the 1990s expected college level courses to be principally lecture courses. Professors spent hours preparing lectures and hours and hours reading essay exams. Now, that is still true to day for many professors, but more and more courses have become more student oriented. Professors still prepare, but many require undergraduate students to be more engaged in research and writing. And, instructors use dynamic technology in modern classrooms to enhance student learning rather than depending upon lectures. (Some would say boring lectures!) Undergraduate education today is probably much more interesting than it was when I started teaching. Fourth, university professors today are rigorously assessed as teachers. When I started teaching that was not at all the case. If a dean walked into a professor’s classroom, the professor would say, “The dean is here today and must want to talk with me. The class is dismissed!” The professor was the captain of his or her ship and no administrator would dare, would even dare, to be so presumptuous as to think he or she could evaluate a professor’s work. There were ways particularly poor instructors were asked to leave, but it was not done by administrators walking into the classroom and evaluating a colleague’s teaching. That has completely changed today. I have been a division chair or a dean in four private universities over the past 38 years, and, while I do enter professors’ classrooms to evaluate their teaching today because I am required to do so, I still feel guilty about it. If I receive complaints from students, then I visit with the respective professor. But, I am uncomfortable walking into a colleague’s classroom unless I’m invited. Younger division chairs don’t have that problem so much because all that changed before they joined a university faculty.
What are some of the areas in which educating future teachers has changed over the years Let me cite four. First, teacher education is much more rigorous today than it was years ago. Today, teachers are much more carefully identified, and the course of study is much more difficult. Second, the Pat Walker Teacher Education Programs at Ozarks require our teacher education students to have much more work in the arts and sciences at Ozarks than many institutions do. Our early childhood majors must complete a minor in psychology; our middle level majors must also complete an academic major in history/literature if he or she is seeking licensure by the state in social studies/language OR a major in composite science if he or she is seeking middle level licensure by the state in science/mathematics. Secondary education majors must also take an academic major in whatever discipline they plan to teach at the high school level. Third, our teacher education students must complete a year-long teaching internship in the senior year. Most institutions today require only one semester of student teaching. Fourth, our local public school colleagues are much more involved in the preparation of teachers coming from the University of the Ozarks than ever before. For generations, teachers were prepared to teach K-12 students in a university classroom without K-12 students present. That has changed dramatically. We now have our students in K-12 classrooms in our beginning education classes. What are some of the biggest challenges facing young teachers today My experience has shown that almost every young teacher worries about classroom management. Most are worried about whether they can control the classroom. The students in our program, though, generally don’t worry about that because they have had a full year’s experience in the classroom, and consequently, they have learned how to manage learning in their classrooms. Beyond classroom management, the biggest challenge facing young teachers today is the stress brought about by state testing of students. I won’t go into all of that here, but every teacher knows what I’m talking about. What are a couple of things you’d want every teacher education student to know before he or she steps into the classroom for the first time Teacher education students must know their academic disciplines. There is no time to learn what to teach when the teacher first steps into the classroom. Teachers must know the subject matter before they ever step into the classroom. Equally important, teacher education students must be committed change agents who know how to teach the subject matter of the child to the child. I can say with real confidence that graduates of the Pat Walker Teacher Education Program at University of the Ozarks are well-prepared to meet the challenges of today’s classroom. Our faculty and staff have made certain of that. How dire is the potential shortage of classroom teachers in the country in the coming years There are severe shortages of teachers in certain areas of the country and in Arkansas, in particular. I have seen preliminary figures for Arkansas, and, if those hold true, I can say it appears there will be a continuing shortage of teachers and administrators for several years. To meet that challenge, a good many states have adopted non-traditional licensure programs for people who hold college degrees, but who did not complete a teacher education program in one of the nation’s schools of education. Thus, it is a way into teaching for people who may have held positions in business or industry, but, for whatever reason, believe they would like to teach at the K-12 level. I understand that many of these folks stay in teaching for a year or less and then leave because they quickly learn that teaching children is not what they thought it was. How do you see the teacher education program at Ozarks evolving over the next couple of decades Currently, our programs are further developed in some areas than the national accrediting agency, National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), requires. We already have in place, for example, a year-long teaching internship at the senior year level, and we require a minor in psychology for all Early Childhood Education majors as well as majors in the academic disciplines for all Middle Level and Secondary Education majors. The change that is coming will be a closer relationship between and among the Pat Walker Teacher Education Programs and the local public schools. It appears as though the accrediting agency may well be requiring us to operate professional development schools within our local school systems. It will be interesting to see exactly how that will work. I honestly believe, though, the biggest changes will be brought about over the next twenty or thirty years through electronic technology. Technology is moving at an astronomical rate today, and, if it continues as it is, I think we will likely see much more instruction delivered electronically. I have no idea how such instruction might look thirty years down the road, but I’m confident it will be very different from the educational world we live in today. I’m just curious enough to wish that I could live long enough to see the college and university of 2040. Today, FALL/WINTER 2009 13
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