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- Dr. Jane Young
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Jane Young
LB: What did you experience with the students in regards to their deciding to become a K-8 or 6-12 physical education teacher?
JY: Well, the hard part for the students was to make the choice. We didn’t make them make a choice as I recall until after the first semester because first of all of their background experience has been at the secondary level, or nearly all and they were meaningful to them. Since most of them came from the sports background they either couldn’t remember their elementary physical education program or they didn’t have much regard for it, you know. They may not have had a physical education teacher and the classroom teacher took them out and that depended on the commitment on the classroom teacher to provide a good program which could have been hit and miss. We could not expect them when they first came in to make that decision right on the first day. We wouldn’t have probably had anybody in the elementary or K-8, I should say. But after the first semester when we were able to sort of expose them to elementary education. That’s why we put them all out at the elementary school to begin with. They knew what went on in high schools, but very few of them had any clue what physical education at the elementary school could be like.
We were lucky. We had some extraordinarily good physical education teachers in the area, in Hillsborough County, who acted as mentors and role models. The teachers cooperated at that time and that really helped us a lot. It meant that the end of the first semester they were able to make a more reasonable decision and as I recall, I may be making this up, I can’t remember, but as I recall the first year the K-8 contingent was much smaller than the high school and that may have continued all the way through, but as the years went by the K-8 contingent got much bigger and was more easily sustainable from the point of view productivity for the faculty. Then they gave me the chair’s job, which was yours at the time, as I recall trying to make all the numbers meet in terms of the load and that kind of thing.
LB: Students should have realized that there were many more elementary school positions at the time.
JY: That’s true.
LB: With program growth also taking place in middle schools.
JY: That’s right.
LB: But not many in the high schools.
JY: No, and I think also that went along with the growing awareness at the state level. There were some really different abilities and knowledge needed to do a good job at the elementary school and so I think the state put some pressure on the districts to hire people that really had been through a K-8 program, a good K-8 program, and I think as I recall none of students ever went looking for jobs, didn’t get a job. They were all offered jobs, sometimes during the last semester that they were in the program. I think it worked out very well that way.
LB: Now after awhile you went off for a year?
JY: Yes.
LB: To complete your doctorate?
JY: Right.
LB: At FSU.
JY: That’s right.
LB: Instructional design, right?
JY: Yes, that’s right. That was a good experience, too. Part of it was because I was able to see what went on at FSU in terms of their program, how different it was in some ways and how alike it was in other ways. And at the time, I think I can’t remember when Manny had gone to Florida State, I think it was at Florida State, at that time and he was teaching a program. One of the courses at FSU was in movement education, as I recall. That was kind of fun to see how that was really beginning to blossom, you know, all over the state.
LB: And later you got a call from the College of Education to begin your second career in educational administration in the College. I know that was a tough decision. We always felt that we never really lost you from the program that you were still there in spirit.
JY: That’s right.
LB: And we called on you many times for advice and assistance. You took over the undergraduate and graduate advising area, right?
JY: Right. It was at that time called Student Personnel Services and the director was in charge of making sure that the both the graduate and undergraduate advising was, you know, was done properly. We admitted students who were qualified and that kind of thing, and sometimes we obviously had to make some very difficult decisions. So that was a new area for me even though in our program we had always advised our own students a lot with the help of one of the people over in student personnel. I knew some of those people over there, but most of them didn’t know me from Adam and wondered why on Earth I was hired, I’m sure. But we got through the first year and I had really enjoyed that job a lot. I got to meet a lot of different students in different programs. I also got to work with the faculty of the programs too and help them understand, you know, the difference between procedures, the state’s and the University’s rules, and when one can bend the rules and when one absolutely could not. Sometimes those are hard lessons for some of the faculty to learn. Some faculty would ask, “Can’t we let this great student in? But she’s so wonderful.” I would say, “I know, but her SAT scores are so pathetic.’