it, i'm done. some other people are trying to say i see since you can't an opening there. and he said on, guys, there isn't any. it's over. they're just wasn't any issue there to bring. >> i'm sorry i'm late. maybe have already addressed this but i'm interested in your take on the performance of richie who is now being accused in this election by being hardy to a variety of fraudulent or errors by commissions in this process the tell us what you think about how he conducted himself. >> i like laurie a lot but i did talk about that. [laughter] and really what i said was he was come in my view, so pure that it was the democrats were more angry with him than with republicans. they thought he would bend over backwards to be fair, and in the challenged ballots, about 1500 that were counted, there were 96

percentage rate of agreement across the board of the five candidate and board members, and they were only 14, 4-3 votes. so i don't think that there was any way that he could have been any more fair really, it is no indication that he side with frank at all even though he did appear with al franken in some campaign appearances before the election. i've heard people say the election was stolen, but it was stolen in plain view with 12 judges, half of them appointed by republicans. and so i think mark ritchie did a fine job. and again, i don't know he. i have never had dinner with him, but i just watched him and he seemed to do -- i was just in seattle and i met that elections officials there. and ritchie is respected around the country for his attempts to be more modern and to change the system that a lot of the things

that we change in our system here on absentee ballots since 2008 were something that ritchie wanted beforehand, but tim pawlenty vetoed some of those. it's not an endorsement or anything but i think he did a fair job. okay. well, thanks everybody, for coming. [applause] >> jay weiner covered a 2008 minnesota senate election and recount. he was the recipient of the frank premack public affairs journalism award presented by the minnesota journalism center for his coverage. for more information visit jayweiner.com.

>> up next bill smoot talks about "conversations with great teachers," a collection of interviews that he conducted with exceptional teachers to find out what makes them so effective. mr. smoot spoke at books, inc. in berkeley, california. >> thank you for coming. and i would like to thank books, inc. for having me, independent bookstores are a very important part of every community. so come back often. i want to start back just saying a word about how i wrote this book. its origins go far back into the

'70s when i was a graduate student in chicago, and i discovered the works of stud struggle. how many of you have ever read of studs turkel books? great depression of the was this wonderful old radio journalist who started doing looks with interviews and people. the one that i read first i think was the vision street and soon after that, his book working interviews with people about their jobs. at some point over the decade, i remembered thinking, i wish you do a book of interviews with teachers that i was a teacher. my mother was a teacher. and i thought it would make a great book your and some time a few years back i read in the paper that he was in failing health, and obviously we did no more books or can he has since passed away. and so at some point, i can't remember the moment, i thought what if i were to try to do one

myself. as a student, i've been a journalist, and so i thought, gee, maybe i'll give it a try, do a few sample interviews and see how they work and see if i find it interesting. and so i did. and i didn't just find it interesting. i found it fascinating. i was so compelled by talking with people about what it was like for them to be teachers, that i was hooked. and there were two decisions to make fairly early on. one was, would i just do a sampling of teachers, you know, good teachers, mediocre teachers, lousy teachers, and have it be democratic in terms of ability. or what i try to focus on great teachers. and i quickly decided to do the latter. i somehow felt that there are great teachers in this country, and this world. and i wanted to on of them and give them voice.

and also have the book be a way of exploring what is it that makes a good teacher. the at the decision that i made soon after i had started the book, which was somewhat accidental, is it occurred to me that certainly there were great teachers in kindergarten through 12th grade, and the university. but no doubt there were also the teachers beyond, because in some ways every aspect of society needs to be taught. it needs to be transferred to other people from generation to generation, and that a lot of teaching takes place beyond the classroom, beyond the secondary school and the university. so i pranced out, and in this final form the book as more than half of the entity is with people who teach in unconventional ways. there someone who teaches in ballet school. one of my favorite examples is a man who teaches al qaeda

wrestling. there is a major league manager who teaches the art of playing the infield. that's actually law in washington whose team is in the playoff at the moment as we speak. so that was the added decision that i made. it became a book about great teachers and all stacks -- aspects of life. so i want to do tonight is just tell a few stories about the people that i met along the way and read a few excerpts from the interviews. when i think about the book, one of the stories that often comes to mind is interviewing a retired sensing teacher who was in his 90s, and he retired from teaching when he was 91. and he started to tell me what it was like to teach fencing, and we were in his bedroom in the house where he lived and he picked up a fencing foil your

anti-demonstrated, and, you know, here's a man of 91 and he stands with this very erect posture. in fact, i kept that sort of checking my own, you know, sitting across from him. and he picked up the foil and suddenly became a 25 year-old and showed me the most going back and forth across the room. and then he said was the first things i always teaches how to hold the foil. and he put the foil in my hand. usages pick it up, and i did. he adjusted my grip. and he took my hand away after he had my grip the way he wanted it. and i had this odd sensation that i could still feel his hand on mine after he took it away. and so in some ways that became a sort of metaphor for me. i often would think about these interviews in terms of that lingering touch, and how in some

ways that was symbolic of everybody that i talked to, whether they taught in medical school or first grade, or taught fencing. and so i almost felt that in some ways every story about teaching is in some ways a kind of replay of that metaphor of the miracle of teaching. someone doesn't know or doesn't understand or doesn't have the skill, and then added the interaction with the teacher, after the touch, then they do. it's a kind of miraculous transformation. one of the teachers that i met was a man named stephen leahy who teaches in massachusetts. he was a teacher of fourth grade. and he was and explore a something that is now called project based learning. and what he did is he fashioned the fourth grade curriculum around projects. and so he talked to me about the

projects that he did. and i remember one of them, he said he had his fourth graders baked bread. i easily had this image in my mind that these little munchkins with getting flour on their faces, and i thought that sounds really precious. and so i said, do you mean they make it from scratch, you know, the yeast and all business? he said oh, no. we start by growing the wheat. and it took the whole school year, but by the end of the we had grow the wheat, harvested the week, ground into flour, you know, used to make bread. and he explained that first of all, he could build a lot of the curriculum into that, the science curriculum, mass in terms of measurement into one. but also for him, he said because he was teaching in an affluent suburb, one of the primary things he wanted to teach these little children is

that everything in life is not given to us, that bread doesn't grow on trees, people said about money all the time, that doesn't come from a store. that everything in life has to be made by someone. and so he will -- wanted to get them out of that since the time he thought they might have an teach them that things had to be made, deliberately and through human effort. and so what i found about a lot of the teachers is they often taught on two levels. they taught their specific content, but they also thought mental lessons, the sort of larger lessons that surrounds a particular skill or body of knowledge that they were teaching. and so one of his other projects was that before school started in september, he had the classroom cleared out. so the student came to school on

the first day in september, and there was nothing there. it was a bare room. and he said okay, this is our project for the year. we have to design and build our classroom. so the first thing they thought about was tasks, and they come again, talked about what a good student desk would be. and then they went out in the community and found a carpenter who would help them with it. and part of the curriculum for fourth graders in massachusetts is to study the pilgrims. so he said g., we're going to need money for the so let's study how the pilgrims got money for their voyage. and they did that and learned that pilgrims sold stock in the company, so they sold stock in the classroom and went around the community doing that. they got a volunteer from the bank to teach them accounting and how to keep track of the money. so the math lesson was built into debt. and he based the fourth grade curriculum on the idea of

projects. and at one point i said to him, something that i asked a number of the teachers, and that is, what is it that makes you good as a teacher? and it was an interesting question because, even though most of the people that i talked to were very loquacious and spoke easily about teaching, that was the one question that gave a lot of them pause. maybe out of modesty or maybe because they hadn't reflected so much on it before, so he thought for a few minutes. and this is how he answered the question. he said, i think it's something about seeing in every student their particular genius, something about their particular spirit, something that was fully formed for them, though it was trapped in a nine year olds body. it's about seeing the potential. well, potential is kind of a tried word, but seeing qualities that are sometimes not at all

represented by their behavior. so in miserable kids, they are haughty or bossi. you seek qualities of leadership. or in people who are whiny or always complaining, you see a depth of ability to turn suffering into something golden. i used to pray a lot about that, too always the what is the genius in each child that makes him or her absolutely unique you.i can think of a number of s decided into a beast and when they descended into seventh and eighth grade. and then at some point begin to emerge and he decided to become human beings. at that point they were able to reflect on themselves, and once the light begins to shine inward, they see two things. one, god, i was really a jerk. and two, wow, he somehow likes being with me day after day.

i've had several kids come back later and express that in one way or another to me. so there are those troubled kids who didn't think you're having any impact on, but then they come back later, and she realized he could have an impact. when you teach these kids you have no idea what they're going to become. you don't know who's going to become a fireman or who's going to become a narrow surgeon on is going to work in a factory. but what you hope for them is that whatever they become, they will somehow be able to see all of life and learn the lessons of life and relate that bigger principles of who we are and how we are related to each other. that would be my hope for the kids i taught. speaking of meta- lessons, another one of the teachers that i spoke with an english teacher at the high school level thought for a minute about what he

really taught, and he said, you know, i think what i really tried to get his pleasure. he spoke about teaching that the pleasure of reading literature and responding with heart, with soul, as well as with mind to the content of literature. often, people ask me about my own reflections on the book. and, you know, it's a fair question because i think in some ways it's a different book to every person who reads it, because the images in some some ways really comprised raw material, and the reflections are going to differ with every reader. and the lessons that you draw from the teachers are going to be different with every person. nevertheless, i've tried to think about what some of my own car, and it occurred to me, you come along after the book was finished, that one of the lessons i drew from it is that in some ways teaching seems not

so much like a separate art, but an extension of expertise. that is, a person becomes an expert in something. might be nervous or tree. it might be mathematics. and at a certain level of becoming truly knowledgeable in that area, truly wise about that area. having made that area of knowledge and skill truly one's own. that comes with that the ability to transmit it to others. and i think in some ways that might pose an interesting question for, well, you know, have you made in something and then teach teaching as a separate kind of art. now, this is not to say things can't be learned in its goals that i know a lot of people who have, but doing these interviews make me wonder if teaching

wasn't more a kind of an extension of being an expert. so for example, i interviewed a man named doug butler who spent decades becoming one of the best farriers in the world. that's the art of making and applying for shoes. and, finally, opened his own school, and is now, you know, known throughout the world and students come from all over the world, ireland, the states, saudi arabia. to study the art of ferrier under him. and for him learning how to teach the art of making and applying for shoes was the ultimate extension of his own acquisition of that skill and understanding. another was alan friedman, a neurosurgeon at duke university, who happens to have been the neurosurgeon who operated on ted kennedy when he had his brain tumor. now, here's someone who obviously doesn't have to teach,

but he does. and not only does is teach his own neurosurgery residents can he teaches undergraduate at duke, because he is so committed to it and because for him one of the ultimate expressions of knowing brain surgery is the ability to pass it on to others. the same was true of suki sure, a former ballerina who herself studied under balanchine, for those of you who know the ballet world cup and now teaches at the school in new york. and again, for her, being as good and as accomplished as she was in ballet, the ultimate expression of that was to know how to teach it to others. now, like a lot of these people she may well have had the teaching gene. because when she was very young, when she was 22, balanchine saw

enter a teaching ability and had her to start doing some teaching, even while she was at the peak of her career. another was ron washington, you know, known in the baseball world for his ability to teach other players to play the infield. and again, for him the ultimate level of his skill was to begin to understand how he did it, what were the principles that made him so accomplished as an infielder, and then knowing those principles, how he could pass it on to others. in a similar vein i met a man, a fascinating man named tom nordman who, when he was in high school, had been mr. basketball in the state of minnesota. which meant he was the number one rated basketball player in the state. and his primary skill as a player was that he was a phenomenal shot. he set a record for consecutive

free throws that still stands today, 35 years later. so he went to stanford on a basketball scholarship, and the first day in practice he got a lot of his shots blocked. it completely broke his confidence. he lost his shot. the coaches apparently didn't see what was going on, or figured they didn't have the time to spend with him. and so he spent four years at stanford riding the bench. never played in a game. left stanford, went to work for apple computer, got interested in golf and tennis, didn't pick up a basketball for years. and one day on his lunch break at apple, he went out to a basketball court and started to shoot. within five minutes he was swishing every shot. and so he started to think, how is it that i can do this?

and he began to think about it week after week, month after month, and finally came up with what he believed were the four basic principles of shooting. which he found to be unique and different than the way other people, being the great john wooden, coach at ucla talking art of shooting a battle. and so he began to teach it. and today, he is known as a teacher of the art of shooting. and his students range from nine year olds, to nba basketball players who hire him as a private coach. and so again, for him, a certain level of expertise, they made the transition to understanding how he was such an expert, and then finally, the ability to pass it on to others. i think that's particularly important to me, because one of those things that's always it would take me beyond belief is the same, those who can do.

those who can't teach. i'll say the expletive since this is being taped, but i always found that in being a helpful sign because it's one of those things that's idiotic in a way that makes you think about what's wrong with it. antony what's wrong with it is it misses, you know, the entire point of the greatest teachers. that they in fact are people whose teaching depends upon, not only the ability to do, but then further the ability to reflect on what they do, and know the essential aspects of it and finally pass it on to others. one of the story of experts, you know, one of the real treats of doing this book was being able to spend an afternoon with a great actor, martin landau. and he was explaining to me what

time it is pointed you can he sort of a method actor type, what it meant to act. and that even though he might be in an air-conditioned sound studio, you know, you might have to pretend it's 105 and in new orleans and you better start to sweat. so much that you believe in it. and so he said, excuse me, and he took his bare hand and pretended to be answering a call on his cell phone. and it was really convincing. i thought this is clear. but he continued to talk to this imaginary person, and, you know, got the phone and said excuse me. and went back to talking. and a second went by, and i thought, i began to doubt my own expense. and i thought, wait a second, i thought it was his bare hand. but cell phones are small, his hands are big. i think he's really talking on the phone.

and so it went on for another 30 seconds, and each is, you know, he said goodbye to the person. and this is true, i really did this. i reached across the table and i opened up his hand. and it was empty. and i thought, he is good. a half hour later, israel's cell phone rang, and he had to take a call. and i realized that the imaginary call was more real and convincing than the real call. and i thought, my gosh, this man is touted. and not only is he talented, but he has known how to pass it on to others, and generously does so. you know, when jack nicholson was edited by new york magazine, he said i can act for one reason, because martin landau put me through exercises over and over and over again, until i

could finally get it right. okay, finally one more story. vince done for many years was a firefighter in new york, and he eventually became a teacher of firefighting. this is what he said in her interview. he said, for the first 20 years in the fire service i didn't think about anything. i would go into these burning buildings and running and runout, and when it was all over i would come back to the firehouse and say, shoe and then go home, and have dinner with the wife. then all of a sudden when i became a deputy chief and got assigned to the bronx and had a lot of people under my command, i said, wait a minute, i'm responsible for them. and then i started to think about what i did. once you start thinking about what you do, you start writing,

and then you start teaching. you think him so exactly what happened here today, and why did it happen. we had this fire and we put the fire out, and during the fire a part of the floor collapse in the chimney fell and almost hit a guy. that's pretty interesting that i need to figure out why that happened and how to understand it. one day i remember wrestling a battalion chief. i had to go up the ladder and get them from the roof of the burning building. he was trapped up there. it was easter sunday, early morning. i took them down and gave him a hug. and this was a big, rough guy, and i'm sure he went out and had dinner with his family and never said a word about it. what i would home and started writing an article about how he got trapped up there took over the years i've written maybe 50 articles that i've gotten published, and a couple of textbooks. and it all came from just thinking about what i did.

most people in the police, fire and military don't really think about what they do. so the most important lesson i would tell anyone, and i know it sounds corny, is to go back and write about what you do. because once you start to think about it, then you realize everything. okay, another general theme that i found in a lot of the teachers was their sense that teaching was not so much transferring something from themselves to the students, as it was drawing out of the student some kind of a seed that was already in them. for me it's reminiscent of one of the well-known dialogues plato called the me know in which socrates begins a conversation with a slave boy who has no education whatever. begins to ask him a series of questions based on the way the

slave boy answers the question, he asked more. and by the end of the dialogue he has led the slave boy into what is basically a proof of the pythagorean theory of government merely by asking questions. so the implication is he had this knowledge, or at least the building blocks of this knowledge and understanding in himself all the time. and the genius of socrates as a teacher was to extract it and develop it. so one of the young teachers that i interviewed, a lot of the teachers were long in the tooth like myself, but a couple were in their '20s. one was a young man named joe who need who is an aztec dance teacher, and he said about his teaching, we, meaning teachers of aztec dance also if you that human beings have in their

bodies natural inclinations toward patterns, mathematics, rhythm, music, and dancing. human beings are natural dancers. i do want to call it magical but there's something very natural about the patterns. human beings are very receptive to the patterns and learn them very quickly. another teacher interviewed meng jan days was a teacher of zinn up in oregon and the former pediatrician, incidentally, says almost everybody who has spiritual life has a koan that they're carrying around inside them. for example, i had a catholic woman who came to retreat, and i asked her what is the question that you carry it around with you all the time. she said, my question is, is that anything outside of god? for example, how could there be

children, in bombings in iraq? how does god allow this? so we melted it down to this. is there anything outside of god is so she spent the week pondering that question and looking around her. is your computer outside of god? is your hand outside of god? is the homeless person at the side of the road with a sign asking for a handout outside of god? so the koan is a way to dig down through the layers of confusion to have insight into a deep truth. if you read about go on, they sound nonsensical. people often read about the call on, what is the sound of one hand clapping. that's actually a very deep inquiry into sound, first of all, and then into deep listening. with all tranninety how to parse them of the afterward so it becomes what is the sound of one hand, or what is the sound of

one, or what is the sound. so the teacher will help the student we find the essence of what the question is, and then guide them into learning so you begin to listen to all of the sounds of the world without listening to them. listen to them as if you never heard them before. it leads people to some very interesting insights. so again, it's that theme of teaching as if drawing out from people what blatantly as our to been there. one of the things that was really special to me doing this book, this is a bit of a personal confession, is i came of age in the '60s, and part of that, of course, was having great hope. but another part of that was having deep anger and even bitterness at a lot of the

institutions and people in american society within those institutions. and one of the things that was sort of liberating for me about doing this book was to meet so many people who were so good and so dedicated and so much giving their life to bringing about new knowledge and bring about new wisdom. a personal test for me was going to interview former secretary of state george shultz. is politics and mine do not coincide, and i thought, i wonder if i will be able to maintain my demeanor as a polite southern gentleman when i talk to this man, who i once actually heard speak just before the war with iraq and say, yeah, the weapons of mass destruction are

certainly there, there's a rattlesnake in your yard, you have to kill it. that was his metaphor. and aspen witt in d.c. and because he is quickly mentioned as a mentor for condi rice. and i want him to talk about that and maybe other mentor relationships that he has been a part of. it was a fairly odd that he wouldn't -- didn't want to talk about in particular. so i thought okay, this is probably an interview i'm going to scrap. but then he said, you know, he said the reason i decided to do this interview with you, i had written to him about the book and he said i believe teaching is really important. and he said in thinking about it, i realized that in every job i've ever had in my life i have basically been a teacher. and that for him the first teaching experience was coming back to princeton as a senior thinking it was going to be his year on the football team.

but he got his knee blown out in practice, and so one of the coaches saw it in a potential as a teacher. and so put him in charge of the freshmen backfield that he said that was my first experience of teaching it and i felt like every job i ever had in my life, whether was, in fact, he and economics professor at the university of chicago, or being secretary of state, or any other cabinet position that he held, he said basically i felt like what i was trying to do was set up an environment in which everybody on my staff was learning. and he said i feel like a piece of -- if people feel like they're running it will bring out the best in him and they will do the best job that they are capable of. and so i realized at that point okay, i was willing to forget the rattlesnakes in the backyard and out of, and i realized we were just two teachers sitting

down to talk about the nature of teaching. and in that context, he was not nearly so dour as he seemed to come off on television. and, you know, that we have our disagreements, was a nice man and one who had indeed always been sensitive to what it means to teach. and someone who is always taken that goal very seriously. sometimes people i asked what was your favorite interview, and that's hard because i really love doing them all. but this is the one that probably rises to the top of my mind the most often. it's a woman named odessa jones who teaches in prison. jackson lives in the bay area. some of you may know of are.

and she is actually one of three people interviewed who teach in jails or prisons. and in a previous appearance, someone asked me, g., y. three people out of 51, teach in jails and prisons? and i did not a statistic, but i looked it up and at any given moment, 2.3 americans, 2.3 million americans are incarcerated. that's a large population. so on reflection, you know, three people who teach in is just about right. rhodessa jones mostly teaches and incarcerated women, and this was the story that she told. she said i was hired by the california arts council 15 years ago to go into the city jail and teach aerobics to incarcerated women. for me as an artist getting this

call, i was ugly mystified, but i can't recall. so i just improvised every day for the first month. i strutted in there looking very fashionable, looking like danielle from solid gold, which was a television show from around that time. i had just turned 40, and women which is fascinated. i was black, and so most of the women were black or latino, and so the black and brown women really sat up and took notice. at 40, i was in great shape your time doing walkover's, handstands, backbends, bridges, splits. and i'm talking about my own life. i am merely telling the story of my life. i am taking them on the journey that has brought me to this place, to this jail, in this city, on wednesday morning at 11:00. in the course of that i talked about having a baby at 16.

i talked about my own dance with drugs and dangerous men. i talked about my own experience of looking for love in all the wrong places. and they were mesmerized. it nudged their memory, you know, the cheerleaders, the dancers. there was even a contender for miss black california, who i got and strung out on cocaine and was in for murder. my purpose was to take people out of this space where they say i'm a ho, i'm a dope thing, i'm a crackhead, i'm a speed freak. these are titles that people lay on themselves. and i'm saying you were so much more before this. before this, who were you? who were you and where were you, and what was going on before life started to hurt? and all of a sudden it was all like we were home girls.

i remember another incident where a young woman was talking about something horrific that had happened to her. she had been abducted and raped by a man who had been stalking her in school. and so she's telling the story, crying, hyperventilating, shaking. and another woman gets impatient with listening to her, and says, oh, that's not. let me tell you what happened to me. and then as a teacher, i step in and say wait, what do you mean? how can you sit there, and we've all been crying, and say that this woman's the story is nothing? everyone's story is valid. everyone's pain is priceless. and i just need to say in this moment to everybody that i am sorry that terrible things happened, but don't ever say that that ain't nothing. because she is giving it up in this moment. i could see that the woman who

i've been telling the story, who was about to react with anger and withdrawal was all of a sudden listening to the fact that i was saying her story was valid. just being able to reiterate this horrible thing that had happened to her was valid. and good for us all. i don't think anybody had ever said to that woman, i'm sorry. i don't know if she had even told the story to anyone before. as a teacher, you're always watching for that place where, as they say in hip-hop, you drop some knowledge. and also, where you opened up an avenue for new thought. two or three days later, a young woman who had said that it nothing, came back into our circle and said, i have something i want to say to alice. i'm sorry that i said that ain't nothing. and i've never said i'm sorry to

any beach before about anything. but ms. jones, you are right. and alice, i'm sorry, and i'm sorry that it happened to you. then she broke down and started to cry. and i'm like, wow. now, as any teacher will tell you, you're going to learn as much from the students as you attempting to impart to them. and i tell you, it changed my life to be working with incarcerated populations, mainly women. it made me much more grateful. it makes me practice gratitude. i really do. and that leads me to my last reflection on the stores that i thought about her, her last remark, that it makes her practice gratitude. and at first i thought, well, i guess she meant, you know, these women are incarcerated and i'm

free him and so i'm grateful that i'm in, you know, privilege the way that i am in life. i later realized that probably wasn't her primary meaning. probably what she meant is, and i think this is something that was nearly universal among the people that i taught, and that is, that was something about him that was so generous in their hearts, that their souls were so giving, that giving and receiving need. and so for them to give was to feel grateful for their ability to give. for them, giving was receiving. thank you. [applause] >> okay, so we now have time for questions. and if you would like to ask a

question, it's necessary that you step to the microphone here and speak the question into the mic. that's for the recording purposes. so don't be shy. if i can do it, you can. >> mr. smoot, i guess i want to give a pitch for good teachers, not great teachers. and i think a public school situations where somebody might have five classes, 150 students a day, and that they are struggling and trying to be the best teacher they can, and maybe they have teachable moments where they're great teachers, but on the whole, they are a good teacher. and that maybe we could create environments where, instead of five classes, maybe for classes with 80 student, and they could make it as a good teacher, not have to kill themselves, you

know, with time grading papers, not spend a life being always if i'd waited on test scores, and that if we could create this environment where a good teacher and be successful, i think this is what, like a public school system would need. what is your response to that? >> well, i think it's very well said. and i think your point is, is deeply true about teaching, and about many things in life. i mean, it's true, we can't all be martin landau. or ron washington. and i do think that in some ways the function of being able to admire and recognized great teachers and read about them is, first of all, it's an inspirational for all of us. but also, it's a way of reminding us that the great people don't mean the good

people don't measure up. quite the opposite. it's a way of reflecting back on the good people that they are good. i mean, to use an example from another aspect of my life, i'd a certain amount of fiction writing over the years. i've had a couple of short stories published. well, i'm not a great writer. but to me, you know, what i sort of realized, the fact that i have not talked or any number of 5000 other people i could mention, doesn't diminish the value of my own modest little achievement. in fact, it reflects on it. because what it means is that, you know, i'm the small echo of these larger people and so you know, i can feel a kind of modest pride in that. and i think your point is well taken, that you know in some ways there's a sense in which i

hope this book will cast a kind of, a kind of echo of now you and worth over all of the teachers in the world who are good, or even half as you say moment of goodness or moments of greatness. so i thank you for your comment. >> let's go to sports. spent when you were sitting in the front row i thought okay, this is a guy who will save me here. >> no, there's this military image that great players do not make great coaches or teachers. and i think underlying it is, it came to easy for them, not that, well, they work at it but it did come easy and that they have

trouble communicating it to others. you pick some examples of people who are great practitioners and great teachers but what would your response be to this, that great players don't become great coaches or teachers? >> i think very few of them do, because i do think there's a difference between a great talent and a great skill that and then, you know, as i said earlier i think we can almost see that there are two more levels. there's one, the understanding of how it is that you do what you do, which you know, some people don't have. they are just great and they don't know how they do it. you ask a great tennis player, how do you serve, you know, a ball at 125 miles an hour and they said i don't know, i just throw it up and hit it. so i think the next level is one, understand how you do it, and then the level even beyond that is understanding how you

take that wisdom and pass it on to others. because let's face it, there are a lot of great ballerinas. there aren't very many suki shores who could be at great at bowery and also teach it to others that or ron washington's who could, you know, play the infield and figure out what are the principles that allow him to play the infield error free. and pass that onto others. so i think it's a completely different skill. and i think you're right there's a big difference between talent and being able to teach it and i think there are also people who can figure out the principles and how to teach, who want themselves to click and dowd with the natural talent. >> why getting for example, a basketball player like shaquille o'neal, no one seems to be up to teach them how to do free throws? you mentioned --

>> he should call tom nordland. and, you know, i asked tom nordland, i said, so, can you compare teaching a nine year old and teaching in nba player? and he said oh, yeah, and i know is much more teachable. they are open, they don't have the ego, you know, they're not surrounded by all the trappings. and so they are completely open. and i went on to say, so, how do you teach but suppose you're trying to teach me. i played a little basco when i was younger and wasn't very good. i said, would you just had me shoot the ball and six how does it feel? and he said, no, i would ask how does it feel, because the answer could be it feels great. he said the questions i would ask would be what questions. what just happened? where was your elbow?

did the ball lineup with your eye and a basket? because he said ultimately, everything depends on awareness and self-awareness. and the only way, he said, that i could build awareness is by asking questions. and he said i could, he said i think i could even help someone with their playing of the violin, even though i can't play the violin. i said really, how? he said i would say play this piece and rate it between one and 10. and then i say okay, play it again and rate it between one intent again. okay, what was the difference between seven and the five. and he said just by asking questions, you can try to get someone into the awareness mode. and that was a team that came up in a lot of the teachers, namely, the importance of asking questions as opposed to getting answers.

>> i also work in the schools and i find it very inspiring and very intimidating. it's hard enough to be a good enough teacher, let alone a good teacher. but am wondering, in our own lives where all kind of teachers and learners. you know, it might be one relative, a brother, sister, a kid on the block. how does this relate to being someone who relates to people in your own life as both a teacher and a learner? does this have any relevance to the topic of conversations for teachers? >> well, i think it does, and, you know, one of the reasons i branched out into so many areas of life was i do think that teaching and learning are, i mean, they are the glue that holds life together.

and they have been in formal ways. you know, you learn to do brain surgery. you learn to do for shoes that you learn high school mathematics or high school physics, but you're absolutely right. i mean, every day we all teach things to one another. they can be, you know, little things like how to start the car. or if you know, larger things like hey, here's a way that i think maybe you could do with your coworker. and i think that in every successful society, whether it is family, and neighborhood, a town or a nation, there has to be teaching costly going on. and ultimately you're exactly right. we are all teachers and we are all learned that and one of the things certainly that characterized this is very select cast of great teachers, is that they all had an enormous

curiosity, and they have not ceased to think of themselves as still learning. learning from the students in learning from other sources about their subject area. you know, and sometimes making radical changes. i mean, i interviewed a fascinating physics professor at harvard named eric missouri. who had been teaching successfully at harvard large lecture hall class in physics. and got good student evaluations. but by giving a certain kind of test which he action got from another source, he began to think, you know, my students don't really understand the physics that i'm teaching them. and based on that completely revolutionized his way of teaching. and so, i mean, i think another part of it is, you know, this constant drive to get better and

the sense that teachers are lifelong students themselves. >> i'd like to know how you identified the people you're going to interview, how you approach them, and it has you prepared for your interviews with them. i will take my answer off the air. all right. i did contact people in a variety of ways. sometimes i might have googled certain teaching awards. i tried for every person to have two separate reasons to believe they were great teachers. in some cases, for example, a couple of people in the sports world, ron washington and tom nordland, i got from a sportswriter. i just e-mailed a sportswriter and said, you know the world of sports, are the people in that

world that you really believe our great teachers. and he will back and said absolutely, and gave me those two names. and then in finding and other things about them, you know, that was confirmed. in some cases, i got an idea, and then pursued the person. so for example, i thought, i like ballet watching it. i thought, so is got to be a great ballet teacher there and so i started looking at dance magazines and dance articles in places like the "new york times." and the name suki shor kept coming up over and over again. so that's how i contacted her. the wild ideas, i remember from when i was a kid that there was such a thing as alligator wrestling didn't even know that it has a long history, goes although it back to the seminal indians and it is passed on to either someone has got to be

teaching this. so i set out there, you know, to find a in particular by googling alligator wrestling. and sure enough i found this man who's really good at teaching it. and it was a fascinating interview. and, you know, he had real insight into teaching. and all the things you need to do to really train a competent alligator wrestler. so is in a wide variety of ways. than what i did was i just contacted the people, usually by e-mail, sometimes by letter. and i was expecting to get turned down a certain amount of the time could especially as i got into people who were very busy or were well known. i got turned down by virtually no one. and i later -- and some are people who turned out a lot of interviews. so i later realized that the reason was these were people who were so dedicated to teaching,

that the fact that they were going to be interviewed about teaching as opposed to, you know, what it's like to be rich and famous or powerful or something of this sort, made them incredibly generous with their time. and so, you know, i virtually got no no answers. you know, they all agreed. okay. we are about out of time. i would like to thank you all for coming. i've enjoyed talking to you. and i hope you enjoyed listening. thank you. [applause] >> for more about author bill smoot and his work, visit billsmoot.com. >> you've been watching the tv on c-span2. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of nonfiction books, public affairs, history, and

biography saturday morning at eight through monday at 8 a.m. eastern. >> coming up next on c-span2, the communicators with texas congressman joe barton, senior republican on the energy and commerce committee. . . >> host: with the republicans in the majority in the 112th congress, legislative agendas will change as will