Ken Rand

 “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative

expression and knowledge”

Who said the above quote? (worth 5 extra credit points). Was it…..

a)     Socrates?

b)     Albert Einstein?

c)     Jaime Escalante?

d)     Ken Rand

Answer at the end of the chapter. Don’t peek yet.

So, let’s talk about ‘Great’ teaching and the ‘Art’ of teaching.

To me, great teaching is truly an art form. If you don’t believe this to be true, then just observe some Master teachers and you will instantly see that these teachers possess a special gift and yes, have mastered an “art” form.

A great writer is also an artist. Right now, I am in the middle of reading an incredible book and I am inspired by the author’s ability to take her writing into an art form. She has the incredible gift to amazingly paint a picture with her words. Now, as I am writing this paragraph, I wish I had 10% of her gift. A master teacher has a different yet similar gift. This ability to inspire, motivate and even entertain a group of 30, even 50 or possibly more students is something special to witness.

It is unfortunate, in our chosen profession, that we do not get enough opportunity, either mandatory or voluntarily, to observe Master teachers. Observing a master teacher, in my opinion, is comparable to watching a gifted artist or reading the words of a talented writer.

Why is that? Why don’t we share more? Do administrators really think we enjoy working on accreditation surveys at department meetings, or participating in some boring administrative paperwork or listening to a keynote speaker who’s talking about something we already know or worse yet, don’t care about? I need to be careful here because I have recently been invited to be a keynote speaker, but I know that I am far from boring.

It is unfortunate how too many department meetings have absolutely nothing to do with ‘teaching’. During my 47 years of teaching, I actually cannot remember even one department meeting where we talked solely about ‘teaching’. There is something wrong with this picture. Hopefully you will be hired by, or are already working, at a school which is committed to ‘good practices’, and their department meetings focus on ‘teaching’ and not on administrative reports.

And why aren’t there some incentives and allotted time for us to do visitations of other teachers? How about giving us the time and incentives for us to share what works (and doesn’t work) in our own classes? In my opinion, it is well worth the financial investment to get teachers to visit their colleagues and to learn and to share with them. There is so much to learn from each other.

Most of us have heard the following phrase and description of a great teacher, “that truly is a ‘gifted’ teacher.” This brings up the question as to if teaching is a born gift or is it something that can be acquired (learned?) and/or perhaps is it both? Unlike other art forms, it is my belief that teaching is one gift that can be learned and acquired. I don’t think you need to necessarily be born with the ‘gift’ or talent to teach. In my opinion, the one ingredient or aptitude for being a great teacher is to simply have the “desire” and the “passion” to change the lives of young adults. Yes, it also helps to be comfortable with public speaking, but I believe that this can become an acquired skill over time.

To be a professional artist, musician, or writer or even a professional athlete, one must have, and be born with, much more than a minimum of talent. Of course, anyone who is a professional in those above “arts” also had to endure hours and hours of studying and practice to perfect their skills and even then, they needed to continue to practice after having perfected these skills. Though I don’t think you need to be born with the ‘gift’ for teaching, I do believe that as teachers we need to take each day as a practice session. For teachers, practice is a necessity, but practice does not make perfect. As the renowned educator, Patricia Cross has said “Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent”. We need to practice the right methods otherwise we are doing nothing but perfecting the wrong skills.

My dad was a gifted pianist. He taught himself how to play the piano at the age of three. Even with this rare gift, he had to learn from the best teachers and the best schools, (Julliard School of Music in New York City) and he had to practice for hours upon hours, and he did this throughout his professional career. He would often tell me that even when he was performing, he was still practicing.

I have learned that a small part of this acquired ‘gift’ of teaching, is the ability to get every student to believe that you are speaking only to them. It is as if they feel that they were the only student in the classroom. Eye contact is extremely important. How to do this, I believe can be an acquired skill. Students who are lucky enough to have teachers who have a ‘passion’ for teaching, look forward to going to their class. They are eager and go to class and anticipate ‘learning’ something new every day. 

Teaching is a relationship. It is not one- sided. It involves two people. The teacher and the student. If you are teaching in grades K – 12, then don’t forget to include ‘parents’ as part of that relationship. Constant communication with the parents of your students will go a long way to improving their success.

No relationship can work when only one of those involved speaks and gets ‘heard’. No relationship can work, especially student/teacher, when one person does not care about the intellectual background and the knowledge and emotional state of the other.

A Mystery and a Dilemma:

Early on in my teaching career I realized that to be a great teacher there was a mystery I needed to solve and a dilemma to answer. The mystery for me was how could something (mathematics) be so simple to me but yet be so confusing and complicated for my students. The dilemma was, of course, how to I get them to understand what I understood. If I could just unlock this mystery and answer that dilemma then I would be on the road to becoming a successful teacher.

I was able to answer the mystery and solve this dilemma by realizing that mathematics for many people, is very abstract. If I could make mathematics concrete (real), which also means to make it ‘visual’ and relative to their experiences then I would increase my chances for success. 

Here’s a quick example. Very early in my career I was preparing to teach a lesson on an algebra concept called ‘like terms’. To a ‘math’ person, 5a - a is easily 4a. But, to a ‘non-math’ person it can be very intimidating, and quite often their wrong answer is often “5”.

My approach was to bring in a bunch of apples to my algebra class. I started by writing an extra credit problem on the board. “How much is 5a - a? I also wrote, “The first five students who bring me the correct answer on an index card will get 2 points added to their next quiz.” I was pleasantly surprised how students began to rush to my desk with their index cards showing an answer. It always amazed me, throughout my career, how much harder students were willing to work for ‘extra’ credit, then they would for a regular assignment.

Without announcing the winners or the answer, I opened up a bag of apples and said (and showed by displaying the apples) “Just play along with me. How much is 5 apples + 3 apples”? Thirty hands go up with the correct answer of “8 apples”. I could see some of their eyes saying “Duh!”. “OK, then how much is 5 apples take away 3 apples”? The class responded quickly and loudly “2 apples”. “OK, how about, 5 apples take away 1 apple”? Again, this very smart class responded unanimously “4 apples”.

Then my eyes went over to the extra credit problem on the board, and then I looked at the class. I repeated my looking at the extra credit problem a few times and I noticeably raised my eyebrows as if to say “hint, hint”. Then smiles slowly appeared across all of my student’s faces. They could now totally understand that 5a – a equals 4a. And then, better yet their newfound knowledge led to a brilliant student question, “So, Mr. Rand. Does this mean that there is always a “1” in front of the single “a”? And “Can we use any letter, or does it have to be an “a”?

So, by bringing in the apples, I was able to take something that was abstract and made it visual and relative to their knowledge. If I was an English, History, or Science (etc.), instructor, I am sure I would find a way to make the subject matter ‘interesting, exciting, and relevant’ for my students.

Connecting and Engaging with our students:

I believe, as do many others, that as educators and instructors we have a much broader responsibility. A broader purpose. We need to look at “educating” with a holistic approach. We need to get our students to go beyond the subject matter that we are trying to teach them. We must prepare them, not only for the next course in our discipline, but also prepare them and teach them how to collaborate with other people and at the same time, we need to guide them how to think for themselves.

In fact, we need to prepare them how to “learn” and in doing so we need to be able to teach to a variety of learning styles. It is actually more important that we are ‘experts’ in those learning styles, than for us to be an ‘expert’ in our chosen subject field, especially considering the wide diversity of cultures that are now part of our everyday teaching experience. By doing this we make our jobs and those of our colleagues that much easier.

I have never thought, for even one moment, that as a math instructor that my only goal was to teach my students how to solve an equation or how to figure out a word problem. Nor, if I was an English or History instructor, that my single objective would be how to get my students to write an understandable paragraph or memorize important dates in history.

I have always felt that it was my responsibility to teach my students how to ‘think’. Unfortunately, too many of us get bogged down in trying to get our students to memorize formulas, facts, dates, etc. If I can teach my students “how to learn” then they will be successful, not only in my class but in other classes as well.

Here’s another quote:

“The art of teaching today’s students’ largely relies on our own ability to connect and engage them in their own learning process.  By doing this, what was boring becomes inspiring. What was work, becomes fun. What was once impossible becomes possible.”

OK…Who said this one? (Give yourself another 5 points for the correct answer)

Was it?

a)     Plato?

b)     Jaime Escalante?

c)     Ken Rand?

d)     Pat McKeague

Answer at the end of this chapter!!

I’m not sure if we can have excellent teaching without first wanting to “reach” our students and we are more likely to ‘reach’ our students if we are willing to connect and engage them in their own learning process. Unfortunately, too many of us are content with just being good at what we do. Too many of us tell ourselves that the students who really want to learn will learn, (despite us), and the rest of them are just lazy. I am sorry, there is no other way to say this but teachers who truly feel that many of their failing students do not learn simply because they are “lazy”, really need to think about choosing a different profession.

This contentment or complacency and negative thinking, in my opinion, can lead to mediocrity. There is no room for mediocrity in teaching. Imagine seeing the following comment on a posting for hiring a teacher, “Wanted: Science instructor with mediocre ability.” Or would you ever write a cover letter for a teaching position that says “I am just an average instructor, perhaps even a good instructor, but I have my Ph.D. and I know my subject very well. 

“I am a better teacher because of my failures,

Not because of my successes”

(5 more points): Who said the above quote?

Was it?

a)     Jaime Escalante?

b)      Benjamin Franklin?

c)      Aric Bostick?

d)      Frank McCourt?

Mediocrity is not only a disservice to our students, but it is also a disservice to our teaching colleagues and our chosen profession. How can we expect more from our students than we ourselves are willing to give? As for me, I’m still learning. The good news is that in my 47 years of teaching I could swear that I have gotten better each year and that I have learned some new techniques and gimmicks along the way.

This includes 47 years of learning about my profession by going to conferences, 47 years of visiting classes of other instructors, 47 years of experimenting, 47 years of practicing, 47 years of ‘listening’ to my students and 47 years of failures and successes. The bad news is that there is so much to learn, and so little time, and technology is changing faster than many of us can adapt to (except for our students who are way ahead of us). The good news is that if we accept that ‘our best is not good enough’ then we as teachers will be open to endless possibilities.

I can think of so many of my colleagues who are very good teachers and I want to shake them by their shoulders and say, “Don’t you want to be a ‘great’ teacher?” I can’t help but wonder why they are simply satisfied with their status quo. In one way, I really do understand. We all have our routines and most of us are effective, and we are comfortable with our current style. Why change? Why risk it? Why get out of our comfort zone. So, what if only 50% - 60% of our students can finish their class successfully with a C, B, or A (which is way too common a statistic in community college classes, especially in mathematics).

About a year ago, with the assistance of my colleague and friend, Johnny Perez, I gave a full-day seminar and workshop at my former college (Hartnell Community College) on how to use games and technology to connect and engage with your students. About 70 full time and adjunct (part-time) faculty from a wide variety of subject areas, showed up on a Saturday six-hour workshop. Not bad.

During the break, one of the attendees, a math colleague of ours, came up to me and said “Ken, quite frankly, this is very entertaining but I’m never going to use this stuff. I am just here to get the flex credit.” Like some of our students, this comment made me realize that you can’t ‘reach’ everyone. Especially those who don’t want to change or be reached. Fortunately, he was a minority of one. Perhaps you can now understand my reason for choosing the title of my new book to be, “One Teacher at a Time”?

Too often, many of us either don’t know how to reach our students or even want to reach them. After all, we are not getting paid to be our students’ best friend. Just for the record, most of my closest friends, are in fact, either former students or colleagues. As a teacher, we take on many roles including, counselor, parent, teacher, role model, authority figure, confidant, and sometimes even a friend. The task of taking on so many roles can be confusing and even stressful. When should I be just a teacher? When do I become a confidant? When do I become “the BOSS”?

However, it is not about being your students’ best friend, and I had to learn this the hard way. It is simply about connecting and engaging with them on both a human and educational level, and finding a way to reach them, and this is true no matter what subject or course or grade level you are teaching.

The art of teaching does not depend so much on the instructor’s knowledge of the subject material but more on the instructor’s ability to “make it simple” and engage and connect with their students. I am not saying that an instructor should not “challenge” his or her students. Challenging your students is a necessity. But giving your students the confidence to face and meet those challenges is way more important than the level of intellectual skills of the instructor. We are all experts in our fields. We all took tests on those skills to qualify us for classroom instruction. We all know our subject matter. But do we know how to teach?

To become a teacher, you do not take a test on “How to teach”. I often made it a point to be on the hiring committee when our school would finally get funds to hire a new teacher. One of the attributes that I would always look for, as a member of that committee, (while reviewing over 50 applications), was a cover letter that used the word “passion.” I am a sucker for the word “passion” because “passion” is the driving force behind wanting to become an expert at “teaching” not just an expert in a specific field. Passion is one of the characteristics that separates a good teacher from a great teacher. Passion is the motivation to help and change the lives of our students, one student at a time.

So…What is Great Teaching?

I’ll bet that most of us can count on one hand the number of truly ‘great’ teachers we have had. Here’s a quick story about a great teacher that I had in the 7^th grade when I was fortunate enough to have Mr. Shapell as my math instructor.

What Mr. Shapell did for me (us) was to drill us on basic math tables until we became walking calculators and he made it fun by making a game of it and then rewarding us with extra credit. (I don’t think even basic calculators existed at that time.) There is no doubt in my mind that it was because of Mr. Shapell, that I became really good at math. Yes, this was seventh grade where we were already supposed to have instant recall of these basic facts but the question was, for him, had we perfected these skills.

Because of his daily one-minute daily drills, especially with the multiplication facts, I, and the rest of his students, were able to work with fractions without any problem. What do fractions have to do with the multiplication tables, you ask? EVERYTHING! When we had to add  I was able to know instantly that the common denominator was ‘72’. Mr. Shapell built up our confidence so much that we were able to do anything in math that he wanted to teach us. He realized the incredible importance of student confidence and the importance of the multiplication and division facts and you can add to that the importance of making it ‘fun’. Once you have these basic facts permanently in your brain, and the ability to recall the answers instantly, your confidence allows you to be open to much more difficult concepts in math like fractions and algebra and even word problems.

By the way, the specifics of that drill were very simple. At the beginning of each class, Mr. Shapell would have us prepare a piece of paper that had 50 of those basic skill facts (five rows of 10 problems). He then told us to switch papers with someone sitting nearby. He gave us one minute to do as many as we could. Yes….one minute. Every day. Every single day. What is also important is that he showed us a great technique as to how to practice and perfect the memorization of these facts. 

As a math instructor, I try to impress upon my students that it is infinity more important to ‘understand’ math than to ‘memorize’ it, but this is not true when it comes to the basic arithmetic facts. I can still remember walking down the hallway with my other seventh grade classmates on the way to his math class where we would take turns shouting out to each other things like “what’s 7 times 8, quick don’t think about it”. 

So then, exactly what is ‘Great’ teaching? I was once interviewed by a reporter for a school newspaper at Hartnell community college, where I have been teaching for the last 28 years of my career. During that interview, I remember the student reporter saying to me, “Your reputation is well known. How did you get this reputation? What drives you?” I told him that I refused to accept that “my best was good enough” and that this belief was a driving force for me to become a better teacher, and then he continued to probe (good reporter) and I thought some more and then I told him “My students inspire me. They are always finding ways to challenge my ability to reach them not only in mathematics but as a human being.” 

He went on and asked me what I thought was the major difference between a good instructor and a great instructor. Without hesitating I said, “A ‘good’ teacher is able to get their students to reach their full potential. However, a ‘great’ teacher gets their students to go beyond their potential, to take them to educational places that they did not think imaginable or that they thought they were capable of.”

In case you have not read the Introduction, the following is worth repeating.



The art of teaching in its simplest form is to successfully transfer our knowledge to the minds and habits of our students. However, to me teaching is more complex and artistic. We need to engage and connect with our students even if it is one student at a time, to inspire their self-confidence, creativity and desire to learn.

Answers to the three quotes:

#1)  Albert Einstein

#2)  Ken Rand (moi)

#3)  Aric Bostick (a gifted teacher and keynote speaker)