The Influence of a Good Teacher

Tanner David recently completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She graduated from Grand Canyon University (GCU) with a 3.96 grade point average and finished the program in an astounding two years and eight months. That in and of itself is a tremendous accomplishment worthy of sharing. But what makes her degree all the more meaningful and unique is that her high school Spanish teacher helped her do it.

Back in 2005 when Tanner was a freshman at Willow Canyon High School, she enrolled in a Spanish class with Dr. Jason Ward, a now 32-year veteran teacher.

“We just communicated really well,” Tanner remembered. “He was super helpful and supportive.”

Tanner had Dr. Ward for two years of Spanish and attributes those early high school classes with shaping her perspective of Dr. Ward and the style he brings to his classrooms.

“To be honest, I can’t really remember many teachers from high school,” she said. “The most influential teacher I’ve been impacted by has been Dr. Ward. I just found his class very challenging for me. And so when I find a class challenging and then you have this combination of a teacher that makes you still want to come to class, it’s kind of hard to forget it. He just made everything really exciting, even though it was really difficult to learn a different language when you’re not used to it.”

While Dr. Ward made an impression on Tanner, the same was true of Dr. Ward.

“I remember her vividly well,” he shared. “She’s very hard not to forget. She was very passionate. I can remember that if she was really motivated on a topic, she would not stop until she had her point made, and nothing’s changed. She’s still the same.”

After two memorable years in class together at Willow Canyon, their paths wouldn’t cross again for many years. Tanner graduated high school and went off to spend two years at Glendale Community College playing volleyball, before transferring to California State University, Dominguez Hills, where she earned her degree in Psychology. She then went on to earn her Master of Science in Psychology at the University of Phoenix.

In December 2021 Tanner made the decision to pursue her doctorate degree at Grand Canyon University. Dr. Ward, while still teaching high school students at Willow Canyon High School, also happens to be a professor at GCU serving as dissertation chair and research methodologist.

“I teach these two classes specifically, and they’re both research-related classes. My procedure or process is always the week before I set up my classroom, I go through the roster just to see, you know, who’s attending, how many students there are, and how many I need to plan for. I saw her name and I’m going, you know, it can’t be. It can’t be Tanner David who I taught in high school. So I just sent her a little message through the platform and I asked her if she graduated from Willow Canyon High School? And she said, ‘yes I did!’ Well, then on our first day of class, I saw her and knew who she was immediately. I mean, she hadn’t changed.”

And so, after 19 years, Dr. Ward once again became Tanner’s teacher. He taught her two classes back to back in Foundations of Research Design. It was during those classes that Tanner first got the idea of expediting her studies. Dr. Ward presented an overview of the doctoral process to the class and timelines associated with it.

“He gave an outline and said, you can be done in under three years if you do these things,” Tanner remembered.

“And I was like, that’s what I want to do.”

“At GCU, we have this really amazing way of completing this process much more expediently,” said Ward. “We accelerate it because the prospectus and parts of the dissertation are completed as a part of the two residencies that are required. So it’s built into their coursework.”

While most students take between four to five years to complete the process, Tanner set her sights on three. The doctoral process is a long and arduous one, and her next step, and one of the most important ones, is the assignment of a dissertation chair. This is a faculty member who guides and supports a doctoral student through the process of writing their dissertation. As Tanner said, a chair is the person who oversees the entire process, and is sort of the coach of the team. The process involves a committee of people including content experts, a methodologist, and a quality review board.

Tanner knew after two years of Spanish and two courses at GCU that Dr. Ward was the person she would like to have as her chair. To have a favorite teacher is to not only develop a connection and mutual respect, but also to be compatible stylistically. Dr. Ward definitely has a style of teaching, and Tanner attributes his methods with her fondness to Dr. Ward.

“I knew how he operated in high school, and I remember him as a very straightforward teacher, and that’s the way that I operate,” she said. “That’s the only way that I know how to operate. I don’t like beating around the bush, and he’s always been a straight up type of teacher.”

“My style is not for everybody, but I’m very direct,” said Ward. “I don’t mince words and she does appreciate that because she’s very direct as well. My thought is, get through all the muck and and just get to the you know, the crux of what needs to be addressed. I believe that the two worst words in the English language are ‘good job’ because they do nothing for you to help you to improve.”

Through this journey Tanner wanted someone that would give her good criticism and feedback, because that was most valuable to her. But at the same time she wanted someone who could make her think outside the box and challenge her to be the best version of herself.

“You always have teachers that maybe are too nice or they’re too harsh to the point that you don’t like it,” she said. “There has to be a happy medium, and I think that Dr. Ward found that and it worked well for me.”

Dr. Ward was assigned as her chair, but he credits her determination and drive with being the catalyst for her success. He said after they got set up, she asked very few questions.

“She was very self-sufficient,” he said. “She was easy to chair because she required very little help on my part. So from that perspective, it was kind of nice because oftentimes, you know, there’s gotta be a little bit of hand holding, but in her case there was none.”

He said when students go through their academic quality review, they will usually have feedback and revisions to do, and then perhaps more feedback and more revisions.

“Tanner’s was approved the first time, so she didn’t have to go through all of the other stuff because she dotted every ‘I’ and crossed every ‘T,’” he said. “She told me just last week that she finished her entire program in two years and eight months. GCU says it’s a program that you can finish in three years if you are doing what you need to do and staying on top of everything.

Tanner was like four or five months ahead of that. I mean, and that’s just crazy. It’s exceptional. She just is a go-getter, and it’s been great to be a part of her journey.”

“I sacrificed a lot in the last three years,” she said of the process.

“There were times when I couldn’t do things because I was studying and staying up all night. I was also working full time while going to school.”

Tanner now works as the Director of Process Improvement at Oasis Behavioral Health Hospital.

“It’s an inpatient psychiatric hospital for kids and adults, and we also have a behavioral health inpatient facility connected to it as well,” she said. “My job specifically is to implement processes to make sure that the organization runs more fluently and it stays within compliance.”

While Dr. Ward credits Tanner’s drive and determination for her success, she said that it was Dr. Ward who was one of the biggest factors in achievements.

“When someone makes that big of an impact in your life, it’s something that you don’t forget,” she said. “You realize that people really don’t change, and they’re really just there to try to make you a better person,” she said. “So I think it was a great experience for me.”