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- Dr. Jane Young
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Jane Young
LB: Today is January 31, 2006. I am Lou Bowers and I am interviewing Dr. Jane Young, a retired faculty member of the School of Physical Education, Wellness, and Sports Studies, and a former College of Education administrator as well. Jane, thank you for coming in today and sharing with us your memories, experiences and here at USF. Before we get to USF, let me ask you about your life and some of your professional experiences that you had prior to learning about USF and coming here as a faculty member.
JY: Well, I was raised in England and that was where I got my first professional education degree. Then my husband and I immigrated to Canada. He and I lived and worked in Canada, in Toronto, for 12 years. When I was up there, I taught for five years at a private school for girls. I taught physical education and dance. The last six years or so, I worked at a Settlement House, which is sort of like a Boys & Girls Club except it includes adults and it usually is primarily based in a low income district and has a very wide range of activities. I worked with the athletic director. Eventually, I became the athletic director, but when I first went there I worked with him and the thing that probably contributed so much to my education was working with six social workers where I had the opportunity to see counseling skills demonstrated and learned some counseling skills which I did not have before. I worked with a great range of people. I taught everything from preschool swimming to old age persons moving to music and keeping fit, that kind of thing. It was a wonderful experience. It really was.
LB: As I recall, one of the gentlemen you worked with, Frank Hayden, who later worked with the Special Olympics here in the United States.
JY: Yes, he did.
LB: I still have these books on fitness for mentally retarded individuals that he wrote.
JY: Yes, okay.
LB: Now you also were involved in teaching via television before you joined us here at USF. That came out of Miami University of Ohio or Wisconsin?
JY: Out of Wisconsin. That’s right. I was very fortunate. We moved from Toronto down to Oxford, Ohio, near Cincinnati. I was teaching movement education in an elementary school. Movement education at that time, which was in the mid-‘60s, was still relatively new in this country. The supervisor for physical education in Ohio came down saw me teach and had me do some workshops for the other physical education teachers in the district. I’m not too sure they were thrilled about that an English woman with this accent from some foreign country was coming to tell them how to do their job, but they were very gracious. And as a result of that, I got some exposure at a national convention. I think it was at that point my friend, Dr. Pat Tanner, who was at Ohio State University at the time, and I worked together and put on the demonstration at the AAHPERD National Convention. I used to commute to Madison, Wisconsin for 20 weeks of the year. I taught children in the schools there in Madison. Then on Saturday mornings we would do the video taping which was primarily to be used as a teaching tool for teachers who wanted to see movement education teaching demonstrated with young children. It was a wonderful experience. I learned so much. Part of it was quite horrifying when you see yourself on video tape. You think, “Do I really sound like that? Oh, my goodness. Does my face really look like that?” Yes, it was a good experience.
LB: I read somewhere that broadcast was sent from Madison to an airplane over the Midwest and that the signal was downloaded from there to the schools. You may have done the first satellite television program although it was an airplane and not a satellite.
JY: I was not aware of that.
LB: You weren’t? How did you hear about USF? Was it through Pat Tanner?
JY: Yes. She obtained a position as an assistant professor. Or associate professor, I guess it was. I can’t remember. I think it was as an associate professor, and she was so excited about the program at USF. She said, “Oh Jane, you’ve got to come down and see what they’re doing here.” She said, “You’d be amazed.” She had been here one semester and my husband and I came down to visit her and got a chance to see the program, which was truly very exciting, very innovative, as it could be at that time. I don’t know of another university in the country that was doing what they were doing here at USF in the physical education and teacher education program. Then I was lucky enough to obtain a position here the following September. I’ve been here ever since. I’ve loved every minute of it.
LB: We were lucky to get you, believe me. That program, again, you said was very unique. What were some of the features of the program that you think made it work? Was it the philosophy or the consistency among the faculty or…?
JY: It would be a culmination of both those things. The consistency just about grew out of the philosophy and we had a very well defined and well articulated philosophy of what the faculty thought it took to develop teachers of physical education who were going to make a difference to children’s lives. The faculty stressed that graduates would have the academic and integrative knowledge not just of physical education, but how physical education fit into whole realm of student’s lives. At that time it was a K-12 program, which I believe now is a K-8 and 6-12 program. The program focused on how important it was to have not just movement but the understanding of movement, a love of movement and a love of fitness. It was very inclusive. Physical education in those days, meaning the ‘50s, ‘60s, and even early ‘70s, was often exclusive, you know. Children who were talented, who could move well and who were good in sports did very well in physical education. Those that were not so obviously talented or didn’t move well were not encouraged then. They had a much harder time. The whole program worked on was the notion of maximum participation through out the entire physical education program, which unbelievably…or seems unbelievable at this point, but was a very novel concept in those days…very novel.