Toward Excellence in Technology Education

Excellence in our profession comes as a result of the collective work of us all, applying our unique talents and abilities, for the benefit of the whole, including the people we serve. Text of a speech delivered at the FTE Spirit of Excellence breakfast in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Good morning! What an honor it is for me to have been selected to speak to this group of honorees and colleagues this morning. As I look out into the audience, I see some of my former students at all levels-undergraduate through doctorate. I also see people with whom I have worked over the years, including former colleagues and current colleagues. I would particularly like to recognize my friends from Finland, Mikko and Matti. I also see some people who have the goods on me-and others on whom I have the goods. Most important, I am very pleased to share the moment with those who are being honored this morning, those upon whom the future of our profession rests.
When some of my friends learned that I was going to deliver this speech, they kidded about whether it was going to be my "swan song" since I am clearly now a senior member of this great profession. Growing up in Montana where I knew few swans, I decided to check out what this means-after pretending that I already knew. The use of the term is in reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan is completely mute during its lifetime, except for singing a single, heartbreakingly beautiful song just before it dies. Trust me, this is not my swan song because I have never been very mute and I am incapable of singing at all, except for a few unmentionable occasions. However, if I do start singing, please call 911!
The Spirit of Excellence . . . this typified Donald Maley in all that he did. But what does excellence mean? I reviewed a number of resources on the subject such as Peters and Waterman's, In Search of Excellence, in which they identified a number of companies that were exemplary. I also looked at C. P. Snow's work, Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. I listened more intently to sermons on Sundays. I also reviewed Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Dilbert comic strips, and some back issues of Mad Magazine. In other words, I turned over a lot of rocks in search of the message I wanted to share with you this morning. I found little under those rocks that seemed to fit the occasion just right, so what I want to share with you are basically reflections on our profession and my life in it.
The root of the word "excellence" comes from the Latin and means to rise above. So, does excellence mean to do better than others? Does it mean that we should aspire to be better teachers than our colleagues in other subject areas? Does it mean to work harder? Does it mean to work smarter? To tell others about the good work we do? To respect the work of others? To value diversity? Excellence means all these things and more. Excellence is not a goal that is ever reached; it is an ongoing process. In fact, nearly one-third of the exemplary companies cited in the In Search of Excellence book were in financial trouble five years after the book was printed. Exemplifying excellence as a process, our own ITEA President Andy Stephenson includes the quote, "If better is possible, then good is not enough," in the byline of his correspondence.
As individuals, we cannot excel in all that we do. Some of us are excellent teachers, while others are good or average. Some of us excel in political action, while others dislike that sort of activity. Some of us know how to toot our own horns, while others are too humble to do so, even to a fault. Excellence in our profession comes as a result of the collective work of us all, applying our unique talents and abilities for the benefit of the whole, including the people we serve. So the breadth of excellence is indeed vast, and it can never be fully reached. Permit me, then, to focus on just a few aspects of excellence about which I feel passionate.
That word passionate-it is a good word for what I want to say this morning for it clearly implies human feelings. It is a word that was apparent in what I have read and observed about excellence. One could argue that for us to excel, it is a necessary precondition to be passionate about what we are doing. Passionate means that we have strong emotions and desire about what we do. Passionate means that we love what we do.
With this brief introduction, I want you to do some reflection. How did you get interested in technology in the first place? Was it a person who influenced you, or was it some experience that you had in your interactions with the artifacts of technology? Or was it some other factor? Given your interest in technology, who or what influenced you to pursue a career as an educator? Was it a person? Was it an experience? Was it the lesser of the evils? Was it a feeling of personal security that you felt you would derive from teaching?
Have you thanked the people who influenced and supported you in your career? Think about those people now. Visit them, call them, or write them if you have not thanked them. Do it as soon as you are able. I want to send you on a guilt trip about this, because if you do not thank the people who were significant influences on your life and the excellence you have achieved, then you have not upheld your responsibility in fostering excellence in our field. Though I did not know Don Maley very well, I felt honored that he knew me by name. I value the personal discussions that I had with him. I also regret that I did not thank him for his contributions to my life.
In any case, I am sure that there are as many influences in career decisions as there are individuals in this room. I must tell you, in all honesty, that my interest in technology sets me on the cutting edge of this field, as it is directly related to biotechnology. Yes, I got interested in technology through constipation! Let me tell you the story. When I was very young, I was always constipated. My mother tried many remedies to get me to spend the necessary time for the correct biological phenomena to occur, to no avail. Then one day she noticed that I was very interested in Popular Science magazine. So she restricted my reading of Popular Science only to those times when I was sitting on the toilet. Now you can only imagine, from your study of psychology, what happens when I see a Popular Science magazine in the grocery store! It is a true story, though.
As a result of being "passionate" about Popular Science magazine, I decided I wanted to be a scientist. It was many years later that I realized that Popular Science was a misnomer and should have been called Popular Technology. In fact, it is clearly still misnamed, and the Editor continues this misinformation as evidenced by what he wrote about science in the November 2007 issue. And I was misguided in my career development. How many young people today are misguided by the improper use of the terms technology and "science"?