Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Today on episode number 514 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Transformative Education: Lessons From More Than 50 Years of Teaching with Joe Hoyle.
Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:24]:
Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. Joe Hoyle is back on Teaching in Higher Ed. He’s an associate professor of accounting in the Robbins School of Business at the University of Richmond. Joe is also an accounting teaching fellow presently. He’s currently completing his 53rd year of teaching. In 2015, he was the 1st recipient of the Cook prize for undergraduate teaching presented by the American Accounting Association.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:20]:
In 2006, he was named one of 22 favorite professors in the US by BusinessWeek. In 2007, he was named the Virginia professor of the year by the Council of Advancement and Support in Education. In 2012, he was named one of 9 favorite professors in the US by Bloomberg Businessweek. In 2013, he was one of several college teachers highlighted in the book cheating lessons by James Lang, and James Lang, in fact, is who connected me with Joe Hoyle many years ago, and I’m so grateful for the ways in which James Lang has connected me with amazing people like Joe. Joe is the coauthor of 2 textbooks, advanced accounting, currently in its 15th edition, and financial accounting, currently in its 3rd edition. He has written a free online book called Tips and Thoughts on Improving the Teaching Process in College: A Personal Diary. He’s written over 240 entries for his teaching blog, which has more than 735,000 page views. He’s coauthored an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about his experiences in joining a government accounting course with a course on Victorian literature.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:44]:
And his new book, which we’ll be reflecting on today, transformative education, is available as a free download. The link will be in the show notes, and it’s based on Joe’s more than 50 years as a college professor, and his goal in writing the book comes from the words of Nelson Mandela, education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Joe Hoyle, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed after all of these years.

Joe Hoyle [00:03:14]:
I’m delighted to be back. I remember it was so much fun as our first conversation. I don’t know if we were doing it differently, but I remember pacing around and talking to you and thinking that we all just talked for hours. I loved it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:26]:
Yes. And James Lang was so generous and kind to connect us and had such good things to say about you. I knew I was in for a treat to to talk to you way back then, and after reading your book, which for listeners is a free resource we’ll be talking about throughout the conversation, but anyone who wants to pick up and learn more from Joe, you’ll have an opportunity to do this. I really enjoy reading book dedications or, you know, those front parts where you get a little personal glimpse, and I would love to start our conversation with having you tell us a little bit about Sarah and the impact she’s had on your life.

Joe Hoyle [00:04:00]:
Well, Sarah Sarah and I have been married for 53 and a half years, and I have taught for 52 and a half years. And so I always tell everybody that the the two pillars of my life, the two pillars that have kind of served as my foundation, has been Sarah who’s put up with me all these years in teaching, which I I certainly love to do. And so over the years, she’s just been so helpful to provide the resources I need. And one of the stories I always tell people is that after after we’d been married for 50 years, she kind of informed me that she was Bonni to quit cooking because she’d done it for 50 years and hadn’t liked it. And I had a choice at that point. I could either starve to death or buy stock in restaurants and just go to restaurants at the right time, or I could actually learn to cook. And so we started using HelloFresh, and I have found that cooking is fascinating. So every night the deal is I do all the cooking, and she cleans up afterwards.

Joe Hoyle [00:05:02]:
And it has just been so much fun to to learn something so incredibly new and different for me and to be productive. I like the idea of being productive, and cooking gives me that that chance. So I don’t get quite as much work done as I used to do because now instead of that hour of writing a book or making a lesson plan, I’m actually in my kitchen chopping up broccoli or something like that. I I you know, I’m 76 years old, and and if you had told me 50 years ago that I would be having so much fun in my job and in my life at 76, I wouldn’t have believed it. And I think things like taking up cooking at 76 was a pretty good idea, to tell you the truth.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:40]:
There’s another person who’s had a major impact on you and also another restaurant. By the way, today’s episode is not being sponsored by either of these restaurants. So Taco Bell. Tell us about Taco Bell and another person who’s had a huge impact in your life.

Joe Hoyle [00:05:56]:
Yeah. Paul Kligman was was my my very best friend here on campus, and I tend to be very exuberant and very just say whatever comes to my mind. Paul was always very, very thoughtful. And so years years years ago, without any real planning, we started going to Taco Bell once a week. And we went to Taco Bell because Paul had worked at Taco Bell when he was in high school and he was such a loyal person. The fact that they had given him a job in high school just made him a lifelong Taco Bell person. So we would go every usually every Tuesday. And for 1 hour, we would sit there, and we would talk about things.

Joe Hoyle [00:06:39]:
And Paul was I could always ask Paul what he thought about something. And it would be this long pause, and he would eventually come up with such a wonderful idea. So we discussed for years every single aspect of teaching. How do we get students to do the work? How do we test students? How do we motivate students? How do we make classes easier or harder? Yeah. We just talked to and, you know, we also talked about politics and religion and baseball games and all kinds of stuff. But almost every week, we talked about teaching. And I always said I said this in in the textbook and in the, teaching book that one of the things if you wanna become a better teacher, find someone who has an interest in teaching like you do. And every week or 2, get away from campus or get away from your office and just sit and have a cup of coffee or a taco and talk to about teaching.

Joe Hoyle [00:07:34]:
Anything I have to tell you today is Bonni be less important than sitting around with a person that you know and talking about your students and how they do. And Paul was about 12 years younger than me, and, unfortunately, 1 90, I had a heart attack and died. And it’s been, you know, just such an emptiness in my professional life and my personal life that the person that that I knew so well and that that helped me so much to think about teaching. I think that idea of thinking about it is something I stress a lot. It’s been it’s been it’s been difficult. It does teach you, though, that that that life has an end to it. And if you’re gonna make the best best of your life, and Paul really did make the best of his life, you better do it now. Don’t put it off.

Joe Hoyle [00:08:20]:
You never know what’s gonna happen.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:22]:
You didn’t share that in the book, and I’m so sorry to hear of that loss of that friendship and imagine how close the 2 of you were. You were reminding me a little bit of the expression that I’ve learned from guests of this podcast who talk about writing is thinking and thinking is writing, and I was thinking about thinking is teaching and teaching is thinking the way in which you just these and just really probably teaching too. You know, teaching is learning, and learning is teaching the the way that those two things intersect in your life. If we were to come visit you in your office, we would see a cartoon taped to your office wall. Can you since this is an audio podcast, can you describe this cartoon for us And, what it what it tells us about teaching.

Joe Hoyle [00:09:08]:
I’m a big believer in that you need to recharge your batteries. You teaching can get to be a tough job. Students don’t always do what you want them to do. Your administrators do not always do what you want them to do. And so I always tell people, take care of yourself as a teacher. So I have a Charlie Brown cartoon, a Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schulz. And in fact, it’s it’s right above where I’m sitting right now. And Charlie Brown and Linus are walking down the street, and Charlie Brown talks about the fact of I thought I’ll never get this quote exactly right.

Joe Hoyle [00:09:47]:
I thought the purpose of life was to be happy, help other people, and make the world a better place. And Linus looks back at him and says, yeah. That’s true, Charlie Brown. We can’t all be teachers. And I just think that’s such a wonderful thing to keep in mind. You know, the goal of life to be happy, to help others, to make the world a better place, I don’t think you can ever underestimate how valuable the job of teacher is. And one of the things when I wrote Transformative Education, which is the book book we’re kind of talking about, one of the things I wanted people to to think about was that if you’re a teacher, you have what I believe is the most valuable job in the world. And and that’s such a wonderful opportunity.

Joe Hoyle [00:10:38]:
I get people all the time that say, I wish I had the chance to work with people. As a teacher, we all work with people, and we do it all the time. And we have that opportunity every day to make a difference in their lives. So whenever I get kind of discouraged, this you know, and this is a job where you do get discouraged. When I get discouraged, that cartoon from from Charlie Brown about, yeah, but we can’t all be teachers. But, yes, we are teachers. We have that. And I just think that’s something worth remembering.

Joe Hoyle [00:11:07]:
And I always try to to stress that to people.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:11]:
Throughout the book, you use an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine as analogous to good teaching. For those who aren’t familiar with them, what is a Rube Goldberg machine, and have you ever attempted to create one of your own?

Joe Hoyle [00:11:27]:
The answer is and and I I may have the history of this wrong, But in I think it was the 19 twenties and 19 thirties, there was a was a person who drew cartoons for the papers named Rube Goldberg, I believe. And Rube Goldberg, there would be a task like turning on a light switch or making a cup of coffee. And so he would draw this elaborate cartoon where you set fire to a bonfire and that burned the cord and that cord turned off something. It turned it hit a seesaw and everything. And all of a sudden, the light switch came on. And so it they got become more more fascinating. I myself have not built a Rook Goldberg machine, but my younger son teaches high school in Norfolk, Virginia. And one of the assignments he gives to his students is to build a Rube Goldberg machine, and then they videotape them all working.

Joe Hoyle [00:12:20]:
So it it’s fascinating because it it stimulates creativity. So you’ll you’ll have one student roll a a bowling ball down a gutter, and that bowling ball will hit something, and that will do something else, and that will do something else. The point of it in using it in the book was a lot of people talk to me, and and and they kind of are looking for simple answers. And they say, you know, what’s the magic pill I could do in order to become a great teacher? And my comment is teaching. You know, I have about 70 students per semester, which is, for my size, school is relatively normal. I have a friend who teaches 848 students a semester. I have a friend who teaches about 15 students a semester. So it varies by who you’re talking with.

Joe Hoyle [00:13:10]:
But great teaching is terribly, terribly complicated. You take things like communication. You take things like testing. You take things This morning, I had an email from a professor in Alabama who wanted to talk about the problems he had had with makeup test. Students who were supposed to take a test, and they would call up 30 minutes before the test and say, I’ve got a cold or my uncle died or whatever. And so there’s just a 1,000 different little components to being a good teacher. And so my idea was that if you really wanted to be a great teacher, you had to realize that teaching was very elaborate and very complex. And the only way I could think to describe that was to talk about re Goldberg machines, where 18 different things had to happen before you got your cup of coffee.

Joe Hoyle [00:14:11]:
And so if you want a student to learn something about Macbeth or you want a student to learn something about quantum mechanics, it’s not just that you walk in and say, let me tell you about Macbeth or let me tell you about quantum mechanics. There’s just an elaborate process where you prepare them for class and then you work with them after class and then you test them and then you just so I just thought that that was and for me, and again, so many of this stuff is just this is the way I feel about it. For me, it was exciting to think about teaching as being so elaborate in so many different variables and so many going back to my conversations with Paul Klimtman. We can Dave conversations for 40 years because teaching is so very complex. And no 2 students are the Dave, and no 2 days are the same. And so I wanted some way to to to let people know that I was going to look at teaching in not just 1 or 2 ways, but in dozens of ways. And there was all kinds of places in those dozens of ways that they could become better teachers.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:22]:
You spoke early in our conversation about learning to cook, and I know that’s not the only new skill you have attempted to acquire in recent years. Tell us a little bit about this process of learning something new as it relates to taking Tai Chi classes, taking photography classes. What have those two things been like for you?

Joe Hoyle [00:15:42]:
Yep. I learned real early that it feels different when you’re the teacher. When I was a student, it was so weird to walk into class and feel stupid. And a teacher would call on me, and I would give an answer. And he would he or she would roll her eyes and say, oh, no. No. That’s wrong. And I would feel stupid.

Joe Hoyle [00:16:02]:
And that was that felt bad. And then once I became the teacher, all of a sudden, I was the smart one in the room. And it was easy to lose empathy for what students felt like. So very early, I started trying to take as many different classes as I possibly could outside of school. And I always try to make sure it’s something that I’m not good at. And there’s lots of things I’m not good at. So I’ve taken ballroom dancing. I’ve taken jewelry making.

Joe Hoyle [00:16:31]:
I’ve taken classes in Russian culture. But but two quick ones. The last 5 or 6 years, I’ve taken Tai Chi. And I if you have people on your in your audience who are, let’s say, over 50 and want to be teaching for another 50 years, I would highly recommend Tai Chi. It’s both good for you physically and it’s good for you mentally, and I have a wonderful teacher. And after 5 years, I am still incredibly bad at it. In fact, 2 days ago, I had a Tai Chi class, and I was working as hard as I possibly could to get the movements correct. And he would come over, and he would very gently and kindly move my hand or have me stand a different way, or he would show me something I was doing incorrectly.

Joe Hoyle [00:17:19]:
And it’s just so helpful to go, well, I’m not the smart one in the room on on this. And having a good teacher who’s kind who’s kind to you is just very, very important. And you you go back to school then, and you walk up in front of class. And it makes you a better teacher because you remember then what it’s like not to be the expert of of these classes. And I tell a story in transformative education. I was taking a class in large format photography, And so there were 5 of us in the class. And so we we were going to do this on Saturday Sunday. And so Saturday, we were going to take 2 2 pictures, and the teacher was Bonni to go home that evening and develop them and bring them back for the class on Sunday so we could discuss them.

Joe Hoyle [00:18:09]:
And I really wanted to learn large format photography. I just thought it would be fascinating to do. You know, you get under the hood, and you you you’re you’re pretending you’re taking pictures of Abraham Lincoln or something like that. And so we all took our two pictures, and we all sent the negatives home with, the teacher. And when he came back the next day, he only had 4 there were 5 of us, and he only had 4 packs of pictures. Because one person in that room had messed up and their pictures had not worked. And so he told us when he walked in, I didn’t write anybody’s name. So I’ll hold up the pictures and you tell me if they’re yours.

Joe Hoyle [00:18:47]:
And so he holds up a picture, holds up a set of pictures, and one person takes them. And he holds up another picture, and another person takes them. And pretty soon, we’re down to 3 people, and there’s only 2 sets of pictures left. And he holds up another one, and it’s not me, and we’re down to 2. It’s musical chairs. There’s 1 chair left or 1 pack of photos left, and there’s 2 people left. And so everybody in the room knows that one of these 2 people got it right, and one of these 2 people got it wrong. So one of these people is the dumb one in the room.

Joe Hoyle [00:19:21]:
And I’m sitting there, and I’m going, oh, Lord. Please don’t let it be me. I don’t want to be the stupid one in the room. And so he holds up the last two pictures and they’re not mine. I’m the one who failed. I didn’t get it right. Now, it was totally unimportant. This was just a weekend class of large format photography.

Joe Hoyle [00:19:45]:
Nobody really cared, except I did. I was the one who had failed. And all I had done was to put one thing in backwards. Simple mistake. Anybody could have done it. But I really felt like I had failed. And so I come back to the University of Richmond where I teach the next day or on Monday, and I had a different feeling for those poor students who were not doing well in my class. And I just think that’s good.

Joe Hoyle [00:20:14]:
I think that all teachers, if you go through the hallways, it’s not uncommon for teachers to complain about the poor students. And sometimes I think we lose our empathy by being the smart ones in the room. So I always tell when I give presentations, I always tell people one of the things I would suggest is go out and take a class where you’re Bonni be bad because it will help you remember what it’s like to be a student. And so I Dave had a lot of fun over the years, but I’ve never done the Anthos very well. But Tai Chi is wonderful. Strongly recommend that, but find a good teacher. Find a kind teacher. That’s helpful too.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:55]:
You invite us throughout the your work to set a 5% improvement goal each year, and I consider you to be a numbers man. You’re not gonna be, you know, as as skilled at accounting as you are without having a a preciseness when using numbers. Why not 1%? Why not 10%? Where did you come up with 5 percent as a, worthy goal to pursue?

Joe Hoyle [00:21:19]:
You know, I think one of the things to discourage people is they think they have to become better immediately. And so whenever and and I talk with lots of people about teaching. And there’s always this, I can’t be a great teacher. I can’t be a good teacher. And I go, back up. Let’s only try for those goals. Let’s just try to be better by this time next year. And so many years ago, when I gave one of my very first presentations, I was trying to think of some way to explain that to people.

Joe Hoyle [00:21:53]:
To say, listen. This is the goal is not to be great tomorrow. The goal is to be great, you know, in 40 years or something. And so I simply wanted to be able to tell people to make progress. So I was giving a presentation. This was actually a presentation at a small high school. And I I suggested to them oh, they were such nice people. They had so many wonderful questions.

Joe Hoyle [00:22:18]:
I suggested to them this came out almost randomly. I suggested that they create a 5% club. And the 5% club was that they would get together every 2 or 3 months or once a year or whatever and talk about what they had tried to do to become better as teachers. And I just threw out kind of randomly 5% as a goal that would eventually get you to to greatness but didn’t seem to overwhelm people. If I if if I walked in to, you know, to any class and said, I want you to be 80% better by this time next year, well, nobody would do that. That would just be that would just be so discouraging to people. But you and I and everybody else can get 5% better. So my my thought was that they would create a 5% goal.

Joe Hoyle [00:23:13]:
And I’ve actually made this suggestion in other presentations. And get back together in a year and everybody talk about what they did to get 5% better. Now, of course, my thought is if you shoot for 5%, you can get more than 5%. But at least 5% isn’t an overwhelming number. You know, and and what I always tell people is if you’re 5% better this year and you’re 5% better next year, you will be absolutely amazed by how quickly you become a great teacher. It doesn’t take nearly as long, but you’ve got to do it a little bit at a time. Probably talk more about that over the years than any other single thing I’ve ever talked about, that idea of gradual improvement. Think of in fact, I talk in the book about the 3 Es, experiment, evaluate, and evolve.

Joe Hoyle [00:24:06]:
The 3 Es, but they always start with experiment. And I always say the 3 Es equal 5% improvement. Experiment, evaluate, evolve, get to be 5% improved.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:18]:
It can be so discouraging for us when we go through the course evaluations, and we could have, I’m sure, many, many conversations at Taco Bell just about that one topic alone. But one of the things that you stress is about the stories, the power of the stories that we tell ourselves, and tell us a bit about listening to the audiobook of Wild, a memoir by Cheryl Strayed.

Joe Hoyle [00:24:45]:
I I am I am I am a storyteller. And there’s probably no story that I like better than this one, to tell you the truth. One of my goals is to read 25 books a year. I have trouble sitting down and reading books because I’m busy, and I just don’t so about 40 years ago, I started listening to audiobooks. And I guess if I’ve listened to 25 books a year for 40 years, I’ve listened to about 1,000 audiobooks over that time. So I was driving to campus. This must Dave been about 7 years ago. And I was listening to the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

Joe Hoyle [00:25:21]:
And if you’ve not read the book, it’s a great book. She’s having a very difficult time in her life. And she she wants to do something. Her mother has died, and she wants to do something just to almost to purify herself. So she decides to walk the Pacific Crest Trail, which is 1100 miles. In my part of the world, I’m here in the East Coast, we have the Appalachian Trail. Well, the Pacific Crest Trail is the equivalent on the West Coast. Now she has never been a hiker.

Joe Hoyle [00:25:56]:
She doesn’t know anything about this, which seems just to me to be insane that she would start out in a purification by trying to walk through a fairly rugged terrain 1100 miles. So she gets to the day before she’s Bonni start. She has the wrong boots no less, just to make it difficult. And as you can imagine, she loses her nerve. The night before, it’s like she’s just not going to do it. And she tells herself so I’m driving alone, listening to this book, which is read by Cheryl Stray, which makes it even better. I mean, she’s reading her own book. And she says a quote and I won’t get the quote exactly right.

Joe Hoyle [00:26:37]:
But the quote is this. Fear, to a certain extent, is a product of the stories we tell ourselves. So I decided to tell myself a different story than the one women typically hear. Not exactly the right quote, but close enough. I was so taken aback by that one sentence that I did something I had never in my life done. I pulled my car over to the side of the road. I hit rewind. I found a pencil and a piece of paper, and I copied it down as she said it the second time I heard it.

Joe Hoyle [00:27:17]:
I of all the sentences I’ve heard in the last 10 years, that was probably the one that, to me, was the most impactful. Fear, to a certain extent, is simply a product of the stories we tell ourselves. So I decided to tell myself a different story. Now you can change the word fear to hate to annoyance to a lot of different things. I want to tell myself stories that will get me to where I want to go. Whenever I’m up upset at things, and I’m a human being, I get upset like everybody else, I try to think about the stories that I’m telling myself that’s getting me to that point. For example, I’m 76 years old. It’s easy when you’re 76 years old to tell yourself a lot of elderly stories.

Joe Hoyle [00:28:09]:
I’m falling apart. I’m about ready to go, I hate to say die, but I am 76 years old. And whenever I get in a mood of telling myself those kinds of stories, I try to say, listen, you gotta tell yourself some other stories than this or you’re never Bonni make it. Now the reason I put that in the book, other than the fact I love that quote, is that I talk to teachers all the time, and the first time they start telling me is negative stories about themselves. I, you know, I don’t lecture well. I don’t give good tests. I don’t know how to grade well. I don’t know how to motivate students.

Joe Hoyle [00:28:48]:
The stories that most teachers tell themselves are absolutely going to hold them back. So you have plenty of listeners on this podcast. And I would suspect that most of them, if not all of them, are teachers. The first thing absolutely the first thing I would suggest to any of them is think about the stories that you’re telling yourself that are holding you back from that 5% improvement. Because I’m betting, unless you’re an odd person, that there are stories about your students, stories about yourself, stories about your school that are holding you back. So your success or your lack of success is a product of the stories you’re telling yourself. So tell yourself different stories. And I just think that’s such an important message to hear.

Joe Hoyle [00:29:40]:
I I’ve always wanted to write Cheryl Strayed and tell her how much I appreciate that line, but I suspect she’s heard that before, to tell you the truth. I I I it’s almost like a religious experience for me, that idea of what are the stories you’re telling yourself that are holding you back from being the kind of successful teacher that you can be. Oh, I I’m glad you brought that up. That’s that to me is just a wonderful sentence. I just love that sentence.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:07]:
Before we get to the recommendations segment, there’s one more story I’d love to have you share, and this one is from the 19 92 movie, a league of their own. And this one, for those not familiar, starred Tom Hanks, Gina Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, and one that I had forgotten, Joe. I don’t know how I forgot this. Madonna was in this movie, and somehow I forgot that from, well, having watched it when it came out in the in the early nineties. And it has to do with a story that so many of us can tell ourselves of just, it’s too hard. It’s too hard. What does this movie have to tell us about how we might consider that story we tell ourselves?

Joe Hoyle [00:30:44]:
Madonna in a baseball uniform was interesting an interesting part of that movie, to tell you the truth. I remember being at that movie. I didn’t remember it was 1992. And they got to the end, and I thought, oh, this is great. I wish I had again or even a piece of paper and a pencil so I can write this down. But luckily, it’s on YouTube, and you can watch this. So it’s the during the World War 2, women formed a baseball league because so many of the men were fighting in the war. And so there was a women’s baseball league that that played excellent baseball and drew in fairly good sized crowds and and was popular for several years.

Joe Hoyle [00:31:20]:
And they Geena Davis, the actress, is the is the star of her team. She’s the catcher. She’s great. But she’s married, and her husband’s back, I think, in Oregon. And she’s out running around the country playing baseball. And it’s been a long season. And they’re tired. And they don’t get paid very much.

Joe Hoyle [00:31:39]:
And Tom Hanks is the manager of the team, and he’s funny. And he’s a baseball fanatic, and he’s funny and interesting. And so they get to to almost the end of the season, and Gina Davis just gets tired of it. And so she calls her husband and tells him to come get her. And so one day, the husband drives up, and Gina Davis packs her bags and goes to get the car. And so Tom Hanks comes roaring out of I think they were at a hotel or something. He comes roaring out of the hotel and says, Where are you going? And she says, I’m going home. And then she makes a comment like, it just got too hard.

Joe Hoyle [00:32:20]:
And I agree with her. It had been hard. And then Tom Hanks looks at her and says and again, I won’t get the exact words correct but he says, it’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. And then the famous words I love so much, it’s the hard that makes it great. And the reason I put that in the book, and you can you can figure this out for yourself, teaching is hard work. Every student is demanding of your time and energy. Teaching is hard.

Joe Hoyle [00:32:55]:
And I have people come to me all the time and want me to tell them how to make it easier. The answer is, it’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everybody could be a great teacher. It’s the hard part of it that makes it so great. I’m obviously obsessed or a fanatic about teaching. And so when I think about it, I want everybody to be a great teacher, but I don’t Bonni make it easier for them. When I write a book, the book doesn’t start off with, here’s 15 ways to make teaching easy. Teaching is hard.

Joe Hoyle [00:33:32]:
It’s a Rube Goldberg machine with lots of different complexities to it. I that you have to understand. But when you get good at it, when you change a student’s life, when you make a student a better, better person, it’s the hard part of it that really makes it great. The movie is a league of its own. You can you can see it, I’m sure, on Netflix or Amazon Prime or something like that. Great movie. Madonna in that baseball uniform is fascinating, but toward the end, that line will just touch you, I believe.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:09]:
This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I have 2 things I’d like to recommend today. Before I do so, I wanna quickly remind people who may not have been listening for a while or even the the person I’m married to sometimes doesn’t understand the rules I instill in myself for recommendations. I try not to recommend the same thing twice, although I have failed at that once that I’m aware of. I suspect probably in all these years, I’ve maybe done it more than once, but it is totally fair game for me to recommend something that someone else has recommended on the show, because how great is that that you get to hear about all these amazing things that you might try. So I I I consider that to be totally fair game. So I’m gonna recommend 2 things that have have been recommended before on the show and just so grateful that people do share. And by the way, other people, they don’t have to follow the rules because it’s fun when somebody recommends the same book maybe 5 times.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:01]:
By that time, I go, this must be a really good book I should pick up. So the first thing I wanna recommend was actually a song shared by Will Hennessy on episode 499. He mentioned that being folk music, the artist is John Craigie, and it’s a live recording of him singing a song called dissect the bird. And it’s all about kind of how if you overthink things and you were to dissect this bird, then you’ve basically not enabled the song the song the bird to continue to sing its song because you just basically remove the ability for it to do that. He’s so funny in the live recording. In fact, I’ve started to listen to more of his music, and I love his live recordings because he really interacts with the audience and is is a really funny guy. So some of the lyrics are are, quite comical. I I love when we can get glimpses inside of people’s heads and just see the humanity in one another.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:57]:
So that was a fun one for me to listen to, and thank you, Will, for that recommendation back on that episode. And the second thing I’d like to recommend, I’m pretty sure Dave, my husband, has recommended before on the show, and that is a photo frame. I received a photo frame from him for Christmas. It’s the aura photo frame. Although there’s lots of good ones out there. I like this one because you can really easily set it up to display photos that you have maybe in an album that you’ve set aside, if you have a favorites album or something like that. And you can get really precise about how often you’d like those pictures to change.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:35]:
I’ve just gone with the default setting of every 10 minutes. I’ll see a new picture that’ll show up or a short video. It shortens videos down to 30 seconds, and it doesn’t play the sound unless you tap on it or something, which I’ve not even really tried to do at this point. But it’s so lovely just to be able to have I I Dave helped me position it right next to my monitor when I’m working from home. And so I can just get these little glimpses and and memories of things that are so special to me. And so that’s my recommendation is, you know, maybe listen to a great song like dissect the bird and maybe get yourself a digital photo frame where you can just enjoy those memories and set it up so you can just be reminded of things and people that are special to you. And that’s all I have to recommend today. And, Joe, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you would like to recommend.

Joe Hoyle [00:37:22]:
Okay. I teach accounting, and so most people think accounting is nothing but numbers. I always, in my upper level class, I always ask my students every semester. I’ve done this for probably 30 years. I ask my students to write a couple paragraphs about the best book they’ve ever read. And I get so many fascinating responses. And I do this because for two reasons. I do this because I want students to think about what greatness feels like.

Joe Hoyle [00:37:54]:
What is great? So just the idea of evaluating a book I think, is good for them. And I also want to encourage them, even if they’re accountants or whatever they turn out to be, to remember how important reading is. So the idea of thinking about what is best, I think, is just good for people. And I think it encourages them to read broader. So I think about best books myself a lot then. So I’m going to recommend what I thought was the best book I read in the last year. And this is Bonni to be a little bit longer than just giving you the name of the story. But the best book I read last year was Tom Leck by Ann Patchett.

Joe Hoyle [00:38:34]:
And I didn’t read and you already know this from hearing my earlier story about Cheryl Streit. I didn’t read the book. I listened to the audiotape. And the audiotape was read by Meryl Streep. And I want you to know, until you’ve heard Meryl Streep read Tom Lake, you have missed a real treat in your life. But I Bonni expand it a little bit more than that. The story about Tom Blake is built around the play Our Town. So before you read the book, go to YouTube and look up Our Town, and it’s on YouTube with Paul Newman, the actor, being the central figure.

Joe Hoyle [00:39:18]:
And take an hour and a half, and watch the actual video of Paul Newman starring in Our Town. And then turn on the audio cassette or audio CD of Meryl Streep reading Our Town. And you all had 2 of the greatest literary experiences that you can have because the the the play Our Town so well feeds into the book that it just makes a wonderful relationship. And so as far as the best book I read last year, it wasn’t just Tom Lake. It was Tom Lake read about Meryl Streep, and highly recommend that. You’ll love it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:57]:
Usually, I prefer to have books read by their author, but I suspect this would be one of those cases where how could you go wrong with Meryl Streep reading your book? That’s incredible. That sounds amazing. I can’t wait to go take a listen and and watch Paul Newman in our our town. I’ve not seen that production before. Thank you for these recommendations. And, Joe, thank you for this tremendous resource, and we’re gonna have a link in the show notes to anybody who would like to download this free resource. You know, a lot of times, Joe, people talk about things being free and sell. There’s nothing in life that’s free, and I do know that you’re gonna have a caution for us because it’s not exactly free.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:34]:
You do ask something of us as your readers, but, Truly, you don’t even ask for an email address. That’s usually a lot a lot of times people, oh, you have this free download, but you want my email address and all the things. So this Truly, you can go to the website, you click download, and off you’re running. But you do ask your readers to do something for you when we finish. What would you like us to do after we finish reading your book?

Joe Hoyle [00:40:56]:
Well, this is this is a 75,000 word book. This took a lot of my time. But from the day I started, I swore to myself that I was Bonni make this absolutely free. And the reason is that I think if we’re gonna save this planet, and there’s a great quote from Nelson Mandela that says, education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world. I think if we’re Bonni change the world, we have to start with education. So, therefore, I wanted to help people think about changing the world through better education. And I didn’t want to sell it to them. I wanted to give it to them.

Joe Hoyle [00:41:36]:
And so from the very beginning, I really wanted to do this for free. I didn’t want to hoard these ideas. And part of this comes from Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Teachers Do, where he talks about people dying and taking their knowledge with them. And I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to share that. But early in the book, I tell people this. I said, I will give you this book free. But if you use anything in your class, send me an email and tell me how what you did and how it worked.

Joe Hoyle [00:42:06]:
Because I’m curious. I’m just curious to see if it worked for you and if it didn’t work for you. If you write a book and it must be 8,000 ideas in this book you already know that most of the ideas won’t work for everybody, but a few will. And you’re really, really interested. It’s like sending one of your students out to the world and wondering what happened to them. I wanted to know. So yes, the book is absolutely totally free. There is no hidden charges or anything else.

Joe Hoyle [00:42:33]:
It’s free. But if you do use any of the ideas, my email address is on there. Send me a note and say, here’s what I did and here’s how it worked. And I think that’s a fair trade. I really do.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:44]:
Joe Hoyle, thank you so much for joining me once again for this conversation on Teaching in Higher Ed. What a generous, joy filled conversation.

Joe Hoyle [00:42:53]:
You’re a superstar. Thank you for just having all these podcasts. I can’t tell you enough about how wonderful the work you do is, and I hope you continue to do this for 85 more years.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:04]:
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure getting to have this conversation with Joe Hoyle after all of these years and such a pleasure to have you listening today. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest.
And if you have yet to sign up for the weekly emails from Teaching in Higher Ed, you’ve gotta head on over to teachinginhighered.com/ subscribe. You’ll receive the show notes from the most recent episode, but even more than that, quotable words, other recommendations that don’t show up in the regular episodes. And head on over there now, and we’ll look forward to having one more opportunity to stay connected throughout the week.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:56]:
Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.