Meador Manor

Sooners or Cowboys? In Oklahoma, one is often expected to take one side or the other in the rivalry between its two largest institutions of higher education: the University of Oklahoma (OU) and Oklahoma State University (OSU). I am bemused when asked which team I support. I earned 162 credits and a bachelor’s degree at OU, but I also earned a dozen graduate credits at OSU and 36 graduate credits and a master’s degree at the small private Southern Nazarene University.

So I consider myself a Sooner, but I can also lay claim to having been a Cowboy and part of the Crimson Storm. If one goes back to grade schools, I was also a Patriot, a Trojan, and a Colt at various Putnam City schools in Oklahoma City and Bethany. I posted last week about my undergraduate coursework, so in this post I’ll shift to the last 51 of the 210 college credits I earned: my post-graduate work.

That began in 1992, three years after I moved to Bartlesville. OSU and Phillips Petroleum partnered to convert a former science lecture hall at Bartlesville High School, where I taught physics, into a compressed video room with two large monitors, speakers, multiple microphones, and video cameras. That allowed OSU to offer interactive graduate courses to teachers via an audiovisual feed with Stillwater.

I was never interested in becoming a school principal, but OSU offered a program to earn a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. I could see myself one day transitioning to curricular administration, and having a graduate degree would mean a slight bump in my paltry pay, so I enrolled.

I enjoyed an educational statistics course via compressed video, which had lasting value in allowing me to assist students with analyzing science fair project results for statistical significance. After that, Fred Wood, the dean of my alma mater, the OU College of Education, offered an excellent in-person course in professional development. I was delighted in how he practiced what he preached, ensuring that he made extensive use in each class of the very techniques we were learning.

But then I suffered through a couple of terrible courses taught over compressed video by an arrogant OSU professor. I learned very little from the jargon-laden deconstructionist drivel he assigned. Alan Sokal, who famously hoaxed a journal that espoused deconstructionism and postmodern philosophy, would have had a field day with the journals we had to consult.

I had logged onto the early internet throughout the previous decade via the engineering computer system at the University of Oklahoma, but in the early 1990s the world wide web was still in its infancy. So our research materials were still analog.

I had to get an identification card at the University Center of Tulsa (UCAT), which back then was a joint operation by OU, OSU, Northeastern, and Langston. I would drive down to Tulsa some weekends to access journals stored on microfiche for my graduate class research.

Microfiche stored tiny photographic images of journals on film cards, which you loaded into a magnifying viewer. If you needed a copy, you could pay by the page for smelly wet reproductions from a wet electrophotographic process.

The only lasting benefit I got from those two courses was that for one class the professor insisted that we go out and rent the 1990 Christian Slater film Pump Up the Volume. That introduced me to Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen, and I became a lifelong fan of The Godfather of Gloom.

My next course was on children’s literature and was so uninspiring that I dropped out, having discovered that OSU’s College of Education had lost its NCATE accreditation. I had earned 12 graduate credits via OSU and 3 via OU, but I wasn’t interested in any more from them.

Later in the 1990s, Southern Nazarene University (SNU) started offering condensed graduate courses where you could drive down to Tulsa for a three-hour class once per week, write papers on the weekend, and earn a master’s degree in educational leadership in two years. They included all of the journal material you would need in three-ring binders, instead of you having to hunt things down on microfiche. Nowadays, of course, all the material would be provided online. But then, although they required that you have a laptop computer, the program actually made almost no use of the technology.

I got more out of that program than my earlier graduate work, and I earned a master’s degree and school principal certification, but I still had no intention of becoming a building administrator. I just wanted the experience to help me in my leadership of the science department and for the salary boost a master’s degree would bring. However, since I stayed in the classroom rather than becoming an administrator, the pay boost was so small that it took over a decade to earn enough extra to pay for the degree from the private university, even after parlaying my earlier 15 graduate credits into an additional salary boost.

My 51 hours of graduate work was thus split up as 36 at SNU, 12 at OSU, and 3 from OU. I jokingly say that I have a master’s degree in education leadership and half of another in curriculum and instruction. Eventually some of that helped me in the administrative role I assumed after leaving the classroom, in which I direct my school district’s technology and communication efforts.

Why Choose Sides?

The truth is that I have no allegiance to the Sooners or the Cowboys sports teams, not because of divided loyalties, but due to indifference.

One illustration of my disengagement from sports is back in the 1970s when I worked in the student store at our intermediate school serving grades 4-6. Boys would purchase pencils representing various teams in the National Football League. I was clueless about the teams and colors. So a kid would demand a “Packers” pencil. I would start hunting, and he would add, “Green Bay Packers!”

When that didn’t speed me up enough, he would groan and yell, “The green and yellow one!”

I remember some kids would purchase a pencil for a team they didn’t like. Then they would just snap it in two. As they strutted off, I would scoot the remains into the trash, muttering, “What a waste of a perfectly good pencil!”

The Recruit

The only university sporting events I ever attended were a few football games at OU, since my girlfriend and I had student season tickets during my freshman year. After that, I was never at a game until I had graduated and was recognized at halftime as the Outstanding Senior of one of the university’s colleges, in my case the College of Education.

As I stood out there on Owen Field, way above me was the Santee Lounge up underneath the overhang of what was then Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. I gazed up there, recalling a funny moment up there the summer before I started my freshman classes.

All of the university’s scholarship recipients had been gathered together and introduced up in that premier area of the stadium. I was one of the R. Boyd Gunning Scholars, which at the time was the university’s most lucrative academic scholarship.

When he introduced me, Dr. Stephen Sutherland, whom I would later work for in OU Scholars Programs, mentioned that he had first heard of me through Donnie Duncan, the university’s well-known athletic director. He joked how I was the only R. Boyd Gunning Scholar that had been referred to him by the athletic department.

What he didn’t explain was that a coworker of my father was also a friend of Mr. Duncan, and he had mentioned to Duncan my academic achievements. That is what prompted Duncan to pass my name along to Sutherland, and he had skeptically looked into my academic record, realized I was indeed a top-performing high schooler, and started recruiting me.

The only reason I remember any of that is because, after all of the introductions, there was a mixer up there in the Santee Lounge of the scholarship recipients. Several attractive girls, who appeared to be fit athletes, walked up to me and were clearly sizing me up in my dress suit. I started to think university life was going to be interesting. Then one exclaimed, “I’ll bet you play tennis!”

I was confused, and answered, “Uh, no.”

That prompted another to grin and state, “You run cross country!”

“Er, no.”

A third added, “So what are you great at? Chess?”

I finally realized that they presumed I had come to Duncan’s attention for my athletic prowess, and my slight 5’8″ frame had them all speculating what sport I excelled at.

I’ve always been far too honest, and they were clearly disappointed when I explained how Duncan had heard of me. Once I confessed that I had never played any sport and had no athletic ability, and I didn’t even know how to play chess, they lost all interest.

Boomer Sooner.

Traditional teacher preparation has cratered in Oklahoma, which saddens me since I and the 2,663 students I taught from 1989 to 2017 benefited so much from my choice to major in education back in 1986. When I enrolled at the University of Oklahoma (OU) in 1984, I originally majored in Engineering Physics. Two years later, right after being named an Outstanding Sophomore in the program but having become disillusioned with that major, I applied to switch to Science Education, feeling the call to teach high school physics.

Dr. John Renner, an outstanding leader in science education and the learning cycle, interviewed me. I thought he would be thrilled to have me, given my academic prowess, but after reviewing my transcript he tried to turn me away.

He said I was too bright to be teaching high school science, that full-time physics positions in Oklahoma high schools were quite rare, and that I should stick with Engineering Physics. “Get your degree and then teach physics at a university, not a high school.”

I’ve always been stubborn, and I insisted that I wanted to train to teach high school physics. Renner eventually caved, providing me with the opportunity to develop my pedagogical skills. The university also protected me from being too narrow in my teaching specialization by requiring me to expand my science courses.

My original major demanded plenty of physics, engineering, and some electronics plus one course in chemistry. My new major required additional credits in astronomy, botany, psychology, geology, zoology, ecology, geography, and physiology. That allowed me to earn certifications to teach Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Botany, Zoology, and Earth Science in an era when you had to have a certain number of hours in each subject as well as pass a certification test in it. That way I would be marketable to a much larger selection of school districts.

However, in my job search after graduation, I was equally stubborn about wanting to only teach physics. I turned down offers to teach various non-physics subjects at three different districts before I snagged the full-time physics position in Bartlesville, which I held for 28 years before transitioning into administration.

As it turned out, I never taught using my other science certifications, although I have zero regrets about the varied coursework. I loved the various sciences, and being certified in the other subjects did help me in my 20 years of chairing the science department across grades 6-12, since I had a background in what my colleagues were doing.

My switch in majors had me earn 20 credits in education courses, plus another 10 as a student teacher in Bill Fix’s physics classes at Norman High. That undergraduate education coursework set me up for success in my chosen career. A course in Educational Psychology was especially helpful, along with the Piagetian theory and practicums in teaching science, using materials by Dr. Renner and direct guidance from Dr. Edmund Marek. Spending a full semester with Mr. Fix using the learning cycle in physics, first observing and then gradually taking over his classes, set me up for success when I had my own courses a year later.

Even though switching majors meant spending an extra semester in school plus some summer school classes, without scholarship support, that worked in my favor since it meant that I did my student teaching in the first semester of the school year. I was able to observe firsthand how a master teacher built rapport and established norms with groups of students. Because I graduated in December 1988, I spent the early months of 1989 substitute teaching in the Putnam City school district I had attended in grades 1-12. That too was helpful in that I was temporarily embedded in multiple high schools and a variety of subjects outside my expertise. That was a crash course in classroom management, often with students in mandatory courses who were far less motivated than students in an advanced elective science. It also meant I was 23 years of age, rather than 22, when I started teaching in Bartlesville, and I’m sure that extra year of maturing helped somewhat.

Unfortunately, that sort of education coursework and practical preparation is what many now applying to teach in our public schools lack, since they certify through alternative means. I am an expert in pedagogy, but that expertise is often undervalued by people who naively think that subject expertise is all that matters.

Here is the breakdown of my 159 undergraduate credits, which provided me with a solid background in both my subject and the art of teaching:

I am proud of those 30 hours in education, because I know what a difference they made in my performance in the classroom. But nationwide participation in traditional teacher training plummeted 35% from 2010 to 2018, and it simply collapsed in Oklahoma, with enrollment down 80%, by far the largest decline in the nation.

Another somber statistic is that in 2009-2010, 1,731 people completed traditional teacher preparation programs in Oklahoma, but a dozen years later that fell to 1,092.

Districts like the one I’ve served for the past 35 years have responded by paying experienced teachers to serve as mentors and having additional training and pull-out days for new teachers to allow them to observe master teachers and seek their advice. But those efforts pale in comparison to the 20 college credits (approximately 60 hours of coursework) I earned in pedagogy plus the additional 18-week internship in my traditional teacher preparation program.

Oklahoma’s Normal Schools

Collegiate teacher preparation in our state was originally done in “Normal” schools. The term arose from the French école normale, a sixteenth-century model school where teacher candidates were taught model teaching practices. The first three higher education facilities established by the Oklahoma territorial legislature in 1890 were OU, OSU, and the Territorial Normal School for teacher training in Edmond. That is now the University of Central Oklahoma, but I knew it in childhood as Central State University, where I competed in an annual piano contest.

Central State Normal was joined by Northwestern Territorial Normal School in Alva in 1897, which became Northwestern Oklahoma State University. That same year, the Colored Agricultural and Normal College was established in Langston for African Americans; it is now Langston University. In 1901, the Southwestern Territorial Normal School was established in Weatherford, which is now Southwestern Oklahoma State University. As a child, I also competed in an annual piano contest there.

After statehood in 1907, three additional normal schools were created in the eastern part of the state: East Central at Ada, which became East Central University; Northeastern State Normal at Tahlequah, which is now Northeastern State University; and Southeastern State Normal at Durant, which is now Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

The normal schools first standardized on six years of instruction: four years of high school courses and two years of college work, with graduates earning a life teaching diploma. They became state teachers’ colleges in 1919, adding two more years of instruction to confer bachelor’s degrees in education. In 1939 they were converted into state colleges to offer additional types of degrees, and by the early 1970s they were comprehensive regional state universities.

OU’s degree-granting College of Education was formed in 1929 by Dr. Ellsworth Collings. Enrollment rose from 100 to over 1,000 by 1946. Think about that: OU wasn’t a former normal school, and it still boasted 1,000 education majors in 1946, when the state population was 2.1 million. By 2022, the state had almost doubled to 4 million, but there were only 1,092 people in the entire state who completed a traditional teacher preparation program.

Collings might be best remembered today for Collings Castle at Turner Falls, the ruins of his vacation home, but I know him for Collings Hall at OU where I took some of my education courses.

Nowadays traditional teacher preparation in Oklahoma is similarly hollowed out. There are still some students who benefit from teachers who had that full-featured preparation, but many who don’t. That isn’t normal, in two different senses of the word.