Thomas J. DeLong - Teaching by Heart: One Professors Journey to Inspire

After a recent World Cup, I heard a member of the Brazilian team lament, We never felt the shirt. The expression suggests a lack of engagement and passion, and from the moment I could differentiate between a mesmerizing teacher and a passionless teacher, I knew which teacher was feeling the shirt. In seventh grade, I couldnt take my eyes off Mr. Walter Stickel as he told story after story about Lewis and Clark trudging up the Columbia River in a rainstorm, chilled to the bone.

It was then that I became a student of great teaching. This book attempts to unpack what Ive experienced, studied, and observed over the past fifty-two years regarding teachersto convey how in their best moments, they can lift people up, and in their worst, let them down.

At times, Im also going to draw parallels between teaching and leadership. While these are two distinct activities, my experiences as a Harvard Business School professor and as a corporate leader have demonstrated that these two disciplines are inextricably intertwined. More to the point, Ive found that the best teachers are also leaders, and the best leaders are also teachers. For this reason, I will occasionally discuss both in concert, especially the lessons teachers can learn from leaders and managers.

I will take you inside great institutionsHarvard being the first and foremost of themattempting to impart how to lead and teach. I will also take you inside my own head and heart. Ive felt the shirt as teacher and leader, and on occasion have misplaced my shirt somewhere between home and work.

Ive experienced the highs and the lows. In terms of the latter, I read a teacher evaluation form on which one student wrote she was frightened to come to my class, fearing that I would make fun of her. I never did, but my humor frightened her. Though Im not intending to make my students fearful, that was the effect in this case. When I read this evaluation, I felt shame and guilt and remorse and self-pity all wrapped in a messy emotional package. Ive also received a letter from a former student expressing how his life was transformed through my teaching; the letter brought tears of joy. The positive feelings dissipate quickly, though, and the negative ones linger.

As teachers, we focus more on our inadequacies and failures than on our strengths and accomplishments. Ill deconstruct why this is so. I will walk you through the heaven and hell of teaching by dissecting and analyzing what Ive experienced in the Harvard Business School classroom.

Yes, the Harvard classroom is different. But its also the same. Harvard is an elite institution, light years removed from a junior college classroom. But Ive found that a classroom is a classroom, no matter the institution that houses it or the age level of its students. Ive taught in Utah, in corporations, and in various venues globally. Though Im going to focus primarily on Harvard Business School, the vast majority of the teaching experiences I describe are universal.

I hope to take you on an adventure where, at the end of the experience, you will be better able to develop a sense of what makes a great teacher and pick up lessons about how to teach and lead better. I know this is an ambitious objectiveyou may be wondering if this is a book about teaching or a psychological study. But as youll discover, understanding your patterns of behaviors is crucial to any discussion about teaching. You need to ask yourself: What is it that I do consistently that assists me living and teaching, that leverages my talents in unique ways? Just as important, you need to understand those emotional or behavioral patterns that sabotage your efforts to make a difference.

Ill discuss what needs to be done to disrupt those patterns so that you can experience the present without being encumbered by your past or by the fears you have of the future.

Ill also delve into the mysteries and occasional miracles of teaching. For instance, how does a teacher enter a state of being where she feels flow for eighty minutes, creating magic by stringing a series of one-act plays together during the class session?

Well spend a lot of time inside the classrooms of Harvard Business School, where Ive taught for the past twenty years. I will deconstruct the process of creating a curriculum and preparing for an eighty-minute class, describing the nerve-wracking fifteen minutes before class begins and the intricate, idiosyncratic nature of the teaching experience. Along the way, Ill step back and connect specific classroom behaviors with leadership issuesin organizations, teams, and ones own life.

And Ill askand answersome provocative questions:

• What happens on multiple levels while teaching? What am I thinking and feeling while at the same time trying to process what the students are thinking and feeling?
• How are my internal conversations affecting how I teach? What are the students internal dialogues revolving around? Are they in the classroom or somewhere else?
• How might I pull them back into the moment, so they are having an intimate, personal experience with seventy-nine other students?
• What am I thinking and feeling in those reflective moments after a class has ended?
• How can I manage my emotions, review what transpired in the classroom, write down notes on how Ill connect todays lesson with tomorrows lesson, and evaluate the performance of my students?
• As I gaze out the window of my office, what am I conjuring in my head? Are my thoughts and emotions constructive, destructive, numbing?