PEDAGOGY FOR THE BACK FORTY Article and photo by DALE ROLLINS, Ph.D.
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edagogy is a term you don’t hear very often on the back forty. It’s defined as “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.” Having just retired from AgriLife Extension after a 33-year career as a wildlife specialist, I had plenty of opportunities to see pedagogy up close and personal. While I never had any formal training on the subject, I was blessed to experience some great teachers in my nine years of college and even more through the years. And let me include a “thank you” to various administrators for putting up with my unorthodox teaching styles. I thoroughly enjoyed my career and am confident that my love and passion for my subjects were obvious to my audiences. Now as I dissect some of the essential elements of being a successful
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teacher, I offer the following as common denominators: 1. Show your passion. Does anyone in TWA question the passion of folks like Dr. Bill Eikenhorst, Greg Simons and many others in TWA leadership positions? When one’s passion shines like a diamond, how can you not be impressed? I’m known mostly as a “quail man,” not that I don’t like waterfowl or whitetails. At an awards ceremony one time in Austin, the person introducing me opined, “I’m pretty certain that no one has ever uttered the word ‘quail’ as much as Dale Rollins.” 2. Toastmasters. I always encourage my grad students and others to visit a meeting of Toastmasters International. Toastmasters is a user-friendly setting to enhance one’s speaking, listening and communication skills—it surely helped mine. And to this day I still
remember Dr. Deke Johnson challenging us with: “Opportunity knocks…who will answer?” I can typically sniff out Toastmasters by the way they conduct themselves at the lectern. 3. Quote me. I’m a confessed quoteaholic. It’s been said that a quotation at the right time is like life bread to the famished. I can cite folks like Aldo Leopold, Will Rogers and Winston Churchill about as well as anyone. Their wisdom takes on a timeless character to so many of the issues we face today. When I conceived the Bobwhite Brigade back in 1993, I wanted to include inspirational quotations like those that adorned the walls of my FFA classroom back in Hollis, Oklahoma. I can still recite most of them 50 years later. Since then, “Silver Bullets” have taken a life of their own in Brigades-ese.
