The One Thing All Great Teachers Do: Nick Fuhrman (Transcript)

And I guess I kind of became a Ranger Bill groupie, because I went out and I started following this guy around. He probably wondered what is this little kid, the seven or eight year old kid doing in the back of the room watching me everywhere I go. He’d go to the library, we go up there and see him. All of these things… that picture there with Little Nicky there, Ranger Nick with the uniform holding the eastern kingsnake.

You know, I finally got the courage to go up and talk to Ranger Bill even after doing a junior Ranger program with Ranger Bill. I’m about eight years old at the time.

And I ended up saying: is there anything that I can do to be around you more, to shadow you, to help you. And I tell you what he said, “Yes sir, you sure can.” And I ended up for about the next eight years cleaning a lot of cages out, all right.

And the owls and hawks are not the cleanest animals in the world but I got a chance to be around this guy and watch the way he was teaching. And I’d go out with him on the stages in different places and watch him teach.

And after a little while maybe I was 11 or 12, he’d said “Nick, why don’t you hold this turtle and stand up and talk about it a little bit? Nick, why don’t you hold this Eastern screech owl and tell the audience about it a little bit?”

I did that stuff and I turned 16. And Ranger Bill says to me… I’ve been doing this eight years going out and talking… and Ranger Bill says that: “Nick, this is all you’ve ever known, is watching me teach and want to teach with animals. So why don’t we offer you a job?”

So I was the youngest guy working for the state of Maryland the Department of Natural Resources, little 16 year old kid with my ranger uniform and everything. And I would start going out there and using animals to teach with.

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Now you had to be 18 to drive a state vehicle. So I had to drive my old Chevy Blazer, I’d put the seats down in the back, I’d put those carriers the birds in there and we’d go out and I’d talk.

And I couldn’t teach a bunch of high school kids. I was younger than they were, weren’t even going to listen to me. But I could go out, I could teach younger kids and I visit camps and things and use animals in teaching.

I remember one day it was in November sometime I was at an event and I was holding an owl on my glove over here. And I remember a news guy came up to me and he had a camera there and put it my face. And he said “I’m standing here with Ranger Nick.”

And when he said that I felt like I had really made it, you know. My whole life… this is all… my great grandmother used to say, really called me a little preacher boy. And if I didn’t do this Ranger thing, I’d probably become a preacher. And people say well maybe you ought to think about doing it. But I didn’t.

And that guy called me that and it was a profound moment. Well I continued teaching with those animals for a number of years and that led me down a path to college and graduate school, and at the University of Georgia now for 10 years teaching students how to do what Ranger Bill did 31 years ago, still talking about it. And he was there for 45 minutes. Profound impact.

Ranger Bill wasn’t just presenting information; he was teaching. And there’s a difference.

I want you to think for a second about a great teacher in your life. What would you put in that blank? Great teachers… what? Think about it.

I’ll give you seven and a half seconds, no cheating. Keep it to yourself. I’m going to come back to it in a couple of minutes. We’re going to talk about that because I have my own thoughts about what great teachers do.

Celebrate Mistakes

The first thing that I think great teachers do is they celebrate mistakes. Errors… things that happen that weren’t planned that we have a choice as an educator whether to capitalize on this or ignore it.

Bob Ross, that television artist that paints things on TV, call them happy accidents. It’s a happy accident we made here. Okay.

In the education world we call these things teachable moments, just makes it sound better. You make a mistake, you call it a teachable moment and sometimes from time to time… I don’t know if y’all see this or not, I know I’m not supposed to leave the rug but something’s going on over here. I hope they forgive me. I’m going to come over here.

Talk about a teachable moment, look what’s going on right here. This… you’re not going to… hey, what are you doing, what… you’re not going to believe this… not that this was planned or anything. But all of a sudden I look over there and there’s our state reptile, a gopher tortoise. We’re talking about teachable moments. I had a choice to make right now.

I could have either ignored that and continued on, or it could have become a distraction and so I thought let’s capitalize on it’s a teachable moment. So let’s talk about if you don’t mind, and indulge me. First let me tell you a little bit about Shelly. Okay, this is Shelly and look at the face. I mean is that not the cutest.

So Shelly is 12 years old, she’ll get almost a hundred years old when she’s at her max on life span, she’ll get about three times the size, Shelly is a gopher tortoise, a state reptile. Georgia, that state reptile that’s pretty cool. She is a keystone species. Man, that sounds important, and it is. Just like an archway has a bunch of stones on it and there’s one stone at the top that holds all those other stones in place.

If you take that keystone at the top away all the other stones fall down. You take this little lady out of an ecosystem, keystone species, all these other animals are going to be impacted, because she digs these gigantic burrows in the ground, that are the size of a school bus.

And when fires come through in South Georgia and North Florida, all the animals that the fire would otherwise burn up, these animals go into her burrow. So she is essential in an ecosystem and she is a species of concern right now. These guys and gals are a whole lot out there anymore, so we got to do what we can to help them.

So I’m so glad that she decided to make a little entrance every once a while, she’ll kind of whet our luck. She’s waving at EULA. You do that to kids and the kids everybody’s waving back, you know. That’s just something else.

All right lady, well I tell you what, Miss Becca is going to come out here, a turtle herder, thank you Becca; I’m going to give her back to you, look at that. She’s frisky now; be careful.

Yeah, celebrate mistakes. Next time you make a mistake, call it a teachable moment; you’ll feel a whole lot better about yourself and other people it’s a teachable moment.

First thing, great teachers do is they celebrate mistakes.

Appreciate Differences

Second thing I think they do is they appreciate differences. And I don’t need to tell you that as a professor at UGA, I got a lot of different kinds of students in my classes; everybody’s different. And that’s great because they bring all these different perspectives and levels of experience into that classroom. But every one of them has something in common and every one of them has something in common just like most of us do in this room tonight.

Everybody deals with public speaking anxiety. Sure, communication anxiety. And the students that are in this class come into this class with me that I call Teaching With Animals and it is just what you can imagine: a class about teaching with animals.

We learn about public speaking but we integrate animals like that, animal in that picture and help students overcome anxiety by handling an animal and teaching with it and they’ll tell me they’ll say Ranger Nick, they’ll say when I’m holding this turtle or this snake or this alligator, or the salamander I don’t feel like everybody’s looking at me, they’re looking at the animal and I can relax and I can be a better teacher. And not just a presenter.

Appreciating those differences is so important. One of the best things that I’ve ever done at the University of Georgia through that class is have those students come together, take those animals and go about ten miles down the road to extra special people.

If you’ve never heard extra special people or ESP as we call it, let me tell you, if you’re in need of a hug, go on down to ESP, you will feel so welcomed and so appreciated. ESP is a place with literally hundreds of folks with disabilities, with learning issues come together and they thrive… special needs. They come together.

I get my students with those animals and some of those students are scared to death to stand out in front of an audience and give a presentation and I get it. But they go to ESP and they see those faces just like my student Dakota there and they take that snake out or that turtle that salamander they interact with those special needs kids and they see this difference that they can make.

Those participants look at my students like they’re celebrities. They come to ESP and they want to take pictures together. They know the animals, they know the animals by name. And my students visit there and it builds their confidence.

Appreciating differences. Think about ESP, I tell you what an incredible organization.

So the second thing great teachers do is they appreciate differences.

Relay Feedback

The third thing that great teachers do I think, is relay feedback. Now when I’m in class I can look out at my students and I can see if somebody might be having a bad day or something’s on their mind and I can ask them about it: Hey how’s everything going there? Give them a pat on the back and at a boy and at a girl, fist bump a high-five, everybody needs that positive feedback.

We’re so sometimes caught up on negative things that we don’t take time to say: hey you did a good job on that.

Well students of mine know that I enjoy grading. Grading my assignments tells me how I’m doing as a teacher; it’s a really cool thing. And my students know that if you get a 90% or above on one of my assignments, I put a stamp on it. And I have friends of mine that know that I teach college and they say: Nick, I mean they’re not second graders, you’re putting a stamp?

Yeah, you get a 90% or above I put a turtle stamp on there and I write… Exshellent Job, I write it right on that. And I do that every time… you know oh come on and I look at their faces when they get it back they’re comparing, hey I got a turtle one.

But the one time that I thought to myself, I don’t know, Nick, you know maybe I could just grade them in hand the back, it doesn’t really matter; well I’d tell you it does.

I was teaching at a school at the south of here as a graduate student and it’s a big university. It starts with an F, ends with Lorida. I know I’m not supposed to talk about it in Athens, Georgia but I did go to school down there. There is credibility to this talk, all right. There really is. Let’s get out of here this guy.

So I’m down there at that big university to the south of us and I’m teaching a big class as a PhD student down, there’s a big class; a couple hundred students. And a lot of football players would take this class and they would all sit down in the front down there.

And one day I was handed back assignments in class and I got done doing that went back to my little cubicle as grad student. And I’m sitting there at my cubicle and there’s a knock on the door of the grad student office. And I’m kind of back in a corner of this big office in my cubicle and I look around at the door and there’s one of the football players, a linebacker and he’s literally — looked like a refrigerator, he’s taking up the whole door and he’s standing there and he’s looking at me and he’s got this assignment in his hand. And it looked like a post-it note in his hand, I mean that’s how big the guy is… and he’s standing there and he says Ranger Nick, can I tell… I love they call me Ranger Nick… Ranger Nick, can I talk to you?

Come on in, come on in.

He says: I got a 91 on this and I didn’t get a stamp. And he handed it to me and this guy walked all the way across campus, you know, and I’m looking at it, sure enough I must have forgotten.

So he hands it to me. And I can still see this like it was yesterday. Hands it to me. I reach him to my desk and I had an owl stamp in my desk. I still use today; my students here know this owl stamp, it’s a legitimate owl, it is a good owl. And I took this little owl out and I inked it up and I stamped it on his page and I wrote: Owl Standing Work.

And I handed it back to him and you know, he walked out of there just as proud smiling, but he was going to go show his mom: Ranger Nick, I earned an owl stamp.

And I said to my friends who get on me about, Nick you know you give stamps. I said let me tell you if that big tough football player could walk all the way across campus with that assignment to tell me he didn’t get a stamp weight to give me one, I’m going to do that until I retire from teaching. It matters, it matters, it matters.

Hey guys, relaying feedback, you got to tell people how you feel, man you’re doing a good job and that motivates them, and they can’t wait to do the next assignment. What other stamp will he use? I’ve got a leaf unbelievable work. If you’re having some problems I’ve got a paw positive improvement. These kind of things.

Great teachers relay feedback. I think that great teachers also, and this can be tough: they evaluate themselves. It’s easy to take it personally, it’s easy to look at that as I don’t know I don’t think they like me… you know but you look at what students are telling you and you got to be willing to change what you’re doing if something’s not working.

You got to look around the room at those facial expressions. You got to look around the room at that body language: do I need to change what I’m doing? It’s important.

Evaluating Yourself

Evaluating yourselves in your environment is really key. And I am sure that you’re wondering: what is this black table doing here with this black bag on top? Which by the way I know that you all can’t see it but my wife gets me these bags and it says Ranger Nick on the front of it. It’s kind of nice; she’s here tonight.

So inside of this bag is something that does a really good job at evaluating its environment, and it uses multiple senses to do this, and a multiple pieces of data. So I’m going to reach into this bag and take this thing out and I promise, I promise, it won’t get away from me; okay.

I’m going to hold on to this thing. Okay, it’s inside of a bag because it’s a really good way to transport it, plus nobody knows what’s in here.

So when I’m at work over there at UGA and I’ve got a bag with me in a meeting, and the bag starts moving. Most people don’t know what’s he got going on. So I am going to reach in here, might take, I might introduce it she’s called Snowy, is her name snowy. She is a sweetheart. She’s a sweet girl. She’s all warmed up and ready to go.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and I appreciate that nobody jumped up. You know there’s football players were the first ones to run away when I take a snake out. Tough guys.

I know you’re wondering first thing: is it a poisonous snake? First of all, there are no poisonous snakes. There are only venomous or non-venomous. This is a corn snake, this is totally… they don’t pay me enough to mess around with venomous snakes. So it’s a non-venomous snake.

It’s non-venomous. Snowy is a corn snake. Snowy is a snow corn snake. It’s what she’s called. Beautiful little lady.

Now this begs the question, though: how do you tell if a snake is venomous or not, you know? People ask me, what do you do?

Well if you look it up in some of these textbooks, here’s what they tell you. First thing they say is look at the shape of their head. A non-venomous snake’s head is an oval shape, and a venomous snake’s head is a triangular shape because of the venom glands back there.

You got to get kind of close to a snake to tell what shape of head is that, right? All right, proceed with caution.

The next way and get the laughing about this, right, I get the laughing about this, yeah. The next way they say in the textbooks, the scientists, is this what they say. Look at the shape of their eyes. A non-venomous snake’s pupils are round, and a venomous snake’s pupils are vertical slits like a cat’s eye.

But can you imagine: Bobby get over here, Ranger Nick said, look at the shape of their eyes; is this thing venomous or not? By that time the things bit you on the nose. You know, so I always say when you see something as beautiful as this out in the wild, wave at it, say hey thanks for what you’re doing. Don’t get a shovel, don’t jump up down and scream. Appreciate what you’re doing and walk away from it. They are doing incredible stuff out there to help us here in Georgia and all around the world deal with rodents and things.

Snowy evaluates her environment just like all snakes do. That tongue is flickering in and out, tasting the air, wondering if anybody down in the front row has a mouse or a rat in their pocket; I hope you don’t. She’s about to eat again here soon. She’s tasting the air. Her belly senses vibrations.

So when she’s on the ground she can feel things. She’s got this gland on the roof of her mouth that senses heat because they hunt a lot at night. So all of these senses she puts together to determine her surroundings: where’s food, what’s safe, what’s not.

Same way a great teacher evaluates themselves with multiple points of data to make a decision about how we’re doing. Snowy is really really cool lady, and she lives at home with us in an aquarium; it’s not loose. But she lives at home and those students at ESP know Snowy very well.

When I go to ESP they asked me about Snowy: did you bring Snowy today? She’s a great one. I’m going to ask Miss Becca come back out, snake wrangler, she was a turtle herder, now she’s snake wrangler. Can I give you a snowy? Thank you ladies so much. We’ll give her a round of applause for taking care of that.

Okay, think about what you put in that blank a couple minutes ago. Great teachers… what?

I imagine that not too many of us in this room wrote down that great teachers are the smartest person in the world, or know everything there is to know about their subject.

The four points we talked about to me are really important:

Celebrating mistakes;

Appreciating those differences;

Relaying that feedback; &

Evaluating yourself.

I think the bottom line is really that great teachers just CARE, right. That’s what they do.

And that, I tell you that is the coolest part of my job. I get to act like me just like tonight with these animals which is apparently unheard of for this TED talk stuff to have animals, and this is me, this is Ranger Nick, you know. And to be able to do this stuff and empower and inspire folks with great teaching is incredible.

Ranger Bill, 31 years ago, 45 minutes he spent with me. That set me on a path that I’m standing here tonight talking to you about. I’ve never ever wanted to do anything else in my life but this: tell you about animals and nature and inspire you, by being me. It’s empowering.

I want you to leave tonight and think about the difference that you can make. My title is an educator; you know that’s what I do. I’m an educator.

But even though most of us in here might not be educators, every one of you is a teacher. All right. So the next time you’ve got 45 minutes with somebody or even four minutes with somebody, what are you going to do to show them that you care.

I think that Maya Angelou said it best. She said people will forget what… she said: People are going to forget what you did but they’re not going to forget how you made them feel.

I hope this made you smile tonight. I really appreciate you listening to me.

Resources for Further Reading:

The 5 Principles of Highly Effective Teachers: Pierre Pirard (Transcript)

Azul Terronez: What Makes a Good Teacher Great? at TEDxSantoDomingo (Transcript)

Full Transcript: What Kids Wish Their Teachers Knew by Kyle Schwartz

Reimagining Classrooms: Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders by Kayla Delzer (Transcript)

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