It is easy to want to cover up in some way as professors…

In today’s episode, President Jose Antonio Bowen encourages us to become good at “Teaching Naked.”

Guest: Dr. Jose Antonio Bowen, President, Goucher College

Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning

This episode, we start with Bonni’s recommendation and ask Dr. Bowen questions from Storycorps.

The thing that teachers do best in the classroom is to be human beings, and to get to know their students as human beings, and to make that connection between what matters to their students and what matters to them. (Jose Bowen)

Bonni admits to one of her bigger failures in teaching in the past few years

Driving the stick shift car and not always having it turn out the way we want it to

Overcoming the failures – Jose gives advice

We are opaque as to our own intellectual accent. Everybody has an accent in the way they speak, but they also have an accent in the way they think.

Academics, in particular, are bad examples of learning, because we learned in spite of the system. We’re the odd balls. We’re the weirdos. We’re the people who liked school so much that we’re still here.

Most students don’t learn that way.

Failure is simply part of the game. Disconnect is just part of what happens. (Dr. Jose Bowen)

The end of the story

Nobody uses a laptop while doing yoga or playing tennis (Jose Bowen)

I believe in noisy and messy classrooms. Complexity. Lots of failures. People having to confront real problems. Confront each other. Confront me… (Jose Bowen)

For beginners… need to set the stage and expectations… after that, they know how the game works.

Jose closes the podcast episode with his recommendations.

Change is hard. It’s hard for you and it’s hard for your students… Keep asking your students what’s working. Expect some failure. It’s not a linear process.

That’s the process of learning and we’re all learning how to do something new: And that’s how to be better, more engaged teachers.  (Jose Bowen)