Fear Isn’t Fatal, and 12 Other Things My Students Taught Me About Teaching

Four and a half years ago, I stood outside the first classroom I would enter as a teacher. My right hand clenched the doorknob, and my left clung to my bag full of syllabuses.

I had come to the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications as the first-ever Karel Chair in Public Interest Communications. Frank Karel, an alumnus of the College, and his wife Betsy funded the chair to build the field of public interest communications as an academic discipline — from scratch. That requires me to establish a curriculum that exists nowhere else, to connect people already working in the field to each other and to our work and to find and share the science that can help people communicate more effectively to drive positive social change.

Before I came to UF in 2010, I had worked in public relations and strategic communications for close to 20 years. As a senior employee of a large private foundation, I never struggled to get people to listen to me. That happens to people who work in foundations, whether or not they’ve earned it, because people often are willing to assume that financial resources, intellect and wisdom are linked. (They are not.) Students don’t suffer from these kinds of misapprehensions. The only thing that gives you credibility in a classroom is whether you can teach them, engage them and convince them they can succeed in their chosen field.

So, there I stood, never having taught before and with no curriculum to guide me. I sucked in my gut, pulled the door open, and walked in. And I was laid bare.

My teaching philosophy is rooted in what I learned from my students in that first semester of almost literally making it up as I went along. It has been honed by the advice and mentorship of colleagues who graciously took me under their wing, including Mike Foley and Norman Lewis, two previous University of Florida Teachers of the Year who are both on the faculty in my college. And it has been shaped by the lessons learned in organizing the frank gathering, the only one of its kind that attracts public interest communicators from around the world.

This year I was honored to be named Teacher of the Year at the University of Florida. What I’ve learned in these past four years has evolved into a set of rules that guide me through each semester.

1. Create opportunities for students to practice their skills and interact with professionals.

We’ve created the frank gathering here in Gainesville to, among other things, connect public interest communicators from throughout the world. This year, close to 200 students played a critical in bringing this gathering to life. They coordinated and helped train high-level speakers, like Benedict Carey of the New York Times, and Ben Jaffe, director of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Students recruited and trained volunteers, wrote and designed our materials, booked bands, trained others and led sessions. Close to 300 communicators flew to Gainesville for this event from as far as Mexico and Alaska. They included the head of corporate social responsibility from Glaxo Smith Klein, the senior vice presidents for communications from several of the largest foundations in America, world-class scholars like Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and the heads of every communications agency who does work in this field. In this setting, our students participated as equals.

Last year, countless UF students gained internships and jobs through connections they made at frank. One participant who runs a highly influential environmental news service told me, “I came to frank last year because of the impressive speaker lineup. I’m coming back because the passion and professionalism of the UF students inspired me and rekindled my enthusiasm for my work.”

2. Be available and accessible.

During my first semester here, few students (if any) showed up for my office hours. In class, I would beg them to come talk to me. They didn’t. I had to give them a reason and make them feel like they could openly share their goals. To get them to do that, I had to share my own mistakes and disappointments. If you don’t tell them otherwise, students will assume that you have always been as they see you today.

3. Don’t do them the disservice of having low expectations.

This generation has been told they are extraordinary. It’s my job to show them that they’re not, but that they can be. One way I push them to become better writers is to do theatrical improvisation exercises with them. They use what they learn to think more nimbly on the spot, and to bring rhythm and music to their writing. This not only teaches them to be better at what they do, but that the path may not be straight.

4. Create community.

While I am grateful for my relationships with students, their relationships with one another will matter more over time. To help them connect with one another in class, I have them face each other, rather than me, when space and furniture permit. I encourage them to cook for each other and bring treats to class. And this semester, I borrowed a tool from the orators of Hyde Park and had them stand on a soapbox and tell the rest of the class what they care about. Each student told an unforgettable story, and when I arrived for the next class, they were all chatting animatedly with one another rather than idly checking their phones.

5. Show joy.

I love this job. I love the students, I love the process and I love public relations and public interest communications. I show that joy by being happy to see them, always. If they miss class, I tell them I missed them and why. If we’ve got a topic that’s less lively than others, I’ll share stories that helped me understand the importance of theory or evaluation and how that helped me succeed. I get excited about quizzes, and in return, they tell me how much they enjoy taking their quizzes. My joy in teaching them and being with them is obvious and unavoidable.

6. Help them become skilled collaborators.

As part of my research to prepare to do this job, I asked a friend in the field who owns her own agency what she wants from new hires. She said, “Don’t give me a super hero who can do it all, give me someone who can learn from others, and learn enough about other disciplines to ask good questions. I need people who can collaborate.” So we bring in speakers from other disciplines, including many outside this college, and urge the students to use them as resources to make their work better. My public interest communications course is open to every major, and I make a point of welcoming fresh perspectives into a discussion that would otherwise be dominated by public relations students.

7. Teach them that we’re already in the “real world”.

My students aren’t allowed to describe a “real world” that is somehow separate from their lives here. Everything they do while they’re in college is tangible and has consequences. The earlier they see themselves as members of the professional world and interact with other professionals, the easier their transition from college to the working world will be. And the fewer apologies they’ll have to offer. In my classroom, every exercise and topic builds into something larger. Every assignment becomes part of a later assignment. Each assignment becomes a life lesson.

8. Take risks, and do things that scare you.

Most of our students have been trained by the Florida public education system to depend on rubrics, and to do what others tell them to do. The result? It can be excruciating for them to think creatively and take risks. In my classes, they get points off for proposing tired ideas, and for not pushing themselves to do things they haven’t done before. So one student sang her final presentation. Another delivered hers in epistolary form. The more important result is that they routinely apply— and get hired for — positions they would have only dreamed about.

9. Fear will not kill you.

It’s hard to make a classroom feel like a news conference, but exercises can recreate the emotion and stress associated with them. For example, in Writing for Public Relations, they write a speech and get graded on how well a classmate delivers it. In Public Relations Strategy, they go on camera and do a live news interview. It terrifies them, but what they remember is the exhilaration of having done it well.

10. Steal (er, adopt) all the best ideas, and share what works.

I ask students about what they love about other classes and put those ideas to work in my classes. Every time I experiment with something that works, I share that experience with my colleagues who teach the same class.

11. There is no “because I said so.”

No practitioner is credible simply because she studied public relations in college. As professionals and teachers, we earn our credibility. I teach them how to establish their credibility in the classroom so they do it naturally when they begin their careers or continue their education.

12. It’s less important to know how than why.

Teaching a student how to do something well is not difficult. In most cases, if you offer a few examples and give them specific direction they will master the precise skill you want them to acquire pretty quickly. But the students who understand why they should do something, create something, try something will teach themselves how. So in teaching the why, we not only teach the value, but more importantly, how and what to teach themselves.

13. Be honest, and get others to be honest with you.

I once asked a student who asked me for an opinion on her cover letter for that 10 minutes of my life back. We knew each other well, and she knew that I had high expectations for her. But we must be honest with our students when they do well, and when they don’t. I expect them to do the same with me and ruthlessly seek their advice to make my course better.

Are these rules I’ve made for my classroom working? I think so. Will I have more to add in five more years? Certainly.