LET US REMEMBER

If you were to visit La Salle today, you would discover that the two end classrooms on the first and second floors of McLean Hall have a somewhat different look to them. Variably called innovative classrooms, or classrooms of the future, these rooms don’t have whiteboards, let alone chalkboards. The paint applied to the walls allows for being written on and erased, so students can put up problems just about anywhere. Pupil desks can be coupled together in pods for group tasks or separated for testing and other solo work. Several monitors allow students to dock their laptops and show work to their group or the whole class.

Those used to traditional arrangements would likely enter these rooms and puzzle at the arrangement of furniture a bit before asking an obvious question, “Where’s the front?” Each room totally lacks the traditional teacher’s desk and chair with podium on a central axis anchoring the room to “the front,” ordinarily in close proximity to a door.

The absence of this “front of the room” is not simply a question of fashion, a reflection of the fact that departments have office space at La Salle, or a concrete way to inculcate the maxim, “good teachers never sit in the classroom.” It is a window onto a whole different style of teaching recognized as more effective and relevant in the third decade of the twenty-first century. The lecturing teacher at the podium dispensing knowledge, even on a platform in some earlier La Salle classrooms, has been removed from his perch. Now, information is everywhere, and the challenge is not so much accessing it but evaluating available data, constructing new knowledge from the interaction of what is already available and the insights of a group of learners. The teacher’s role transitions to that of a guide, a mentor—a coach, if you will.

Mike O’Toole ’68 was an instructor who understood the “teacher as coach” model years before it came into pedagogical and psychological high repute. His classes, while always rigorous, were and are rarely focused on student mastery of things he already knows.

Rather, he relentlessly probes, requires students to elucidate their thinking, poses counter arguments. As principal also, his nine years focused on “teaching excellence” have resulted at La Salle in an instructional climate that is stimulating, student-centered, and focused on continuous growth by students, whatever their ability level. These classroom prototypes piloted this year harvest the pedagogical seeds he planted.

Think of coaching in the context of La Salle alumni, and few names would come to mind more quickly and elicit more respect than that of Joe Mihalich ’74. Born in the shadow of La Salle College (as it then was), a professor’s son, he grew up in the world of Big Five basketball and played at both La Salles himself before a three-decade career as head coach at Niagara and Hofstra, including frequent championship appearances. Still involved on La Salle University’s staff today, he coaches all of us now on how to deal with life’s inevitable challenges with an inspirational grace, wisdom, and serenity.

You will also read in this issue of the Explorer information regarding exciting developments in our new Concentrations program. During the 2023-24 school year, we will be featuring five “live” concentrations: Global Business, Engineering and Robotics, IT Professional, Music Professional, and Digital Media and Communications. Another in the health professions continues in active discussion. The Concentrations program itself works on more of a coaching model than a direct instruction approach to learning. Students aren’t just presented information, they’re placed in situations where they must use what they know, garner insight from observation and participation, reflect actively on the fit between their academic learning, evolving real-world experiences, and the mentoring of alumni, parents, and others who are established in the field. Adults on the school’s faculty and beyond provide guidance, perspective, and refinement as the students “try on” careers that might remain as vague aspirations for years to come in the traditional model.

As should be no surprise, John Baptist de La Salle approached teaching from something of a coaching perspective three and a third centuries ago, alien as the concept of athletic competition might have been to him. In his famous Good Shepherd Meditation, the Founder observes:

In today’s Gospel Jesus Christ compares those who have charge of souls to a good shepherd who has great care for the sheep. One quality he must possess, according to our Savior, is to know each one of them individually. This ought also to be one of the main concerns of those who instruct others: to be able to understand their students and to discern the right way to guide them. They must show more mildness toward some, more firmness toward others. There are those who call for much patience, those who need to be stimulated and spurred on, some who need to be reproved and punished to correct them of their faults, others who must be constantly watched over to prevent them from being lost or going astray.

This taxonomy of student or athlete types can still be found in any classroom today, on any bench or sideline. Following de La Salle’s blueprint for how to attend to the developmental needs of your students and players may not get you into the PIAA or NCAA playoffs every year, but it will secure you a place in the hearts and minds of former students and athletes such as that held by Joe Mihalich and Michael O’Toole.