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- Dr. Jane Young
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Dr. Jane Young
LB: Everyone I’ve talked to, faculty members mostly have some memories of their days here at USF of mostly humorous things that happened. Do you have any particular one that comes to mind that you could share with us that you were surprised by?
JY: Well, everyday seemed like an adventure, particularly when I went into the administration. Anybody who’s been in administration I think will be able to relate to that notion. You never know what’s going to hit you when you walk through the door. Never. I do remember one time when we had a student who was having difficulty in one program and showed up with her mom and dad, both of whom were teachers. The student had simply not done well in the final internship. And when we went back through her history, she shouldn’t have done at all well in the internship. But for various reasons she had got. I guess you call it social promotion. She’d scraped through is what she’d done, but the final internship was just more than she was prepared to manage. It wasn’t that she was, you know, incompetent, basically incompetent. She was a really quite bright student, but she simply had not done her homework and so we were going to make her repeat internship.
Her mom and dad were not thrilled at all, in fact at one point her dad rose in his chair. I had two men with me from the department who were sitting with me, but I was conducting most of the interview. I said, “Let me take the heat because you have to work with these people.” I also said that “I’ll be leaving next year anyway.” We were joking about that a little bit. And he rose and was shouting down the table. I told him, ”If you don’t sit down and lower your voice, you’re out of this meeting. “You’re here as a courtesy.” He looked at his wife and said, “Could she say that?” His wife said, “I think she can.” The student, of course, was mortified. I think the student thought that with her mom and dad there everything was just going to be clear sailing. But after awhile they could see, what the problems were that we were talking about.
I remember that the father, who had standing up and yelling, at one point said, “You know, don’t you have an obligation to graduate your students when they’ve been all through with the program.” I said, “You’re absolutely right. Our bigger obligation is to the children of Florida and to make sure that they get taught by well-prepared students who graduate from our program. And as of this moment, we cannot say that about your daughter.” We all parted, not necessarily friends, but left the meeting amicably. The student did well in the next internship.
I always remember Dr. Joyce Swartzman saying that an internship is not an equal opportunity situation. And it’s not. A lot depends on the choice of the school, how well the supervising teacher and the student get along together, and how well the student does what her or she is supposed to do as well. It isn’t always clear cut, and I think that’s what the parents were reacting to. You know, how other people could have succeeded at the internship and their daughter did not, even though their daughter was at a pretty good student. That’s not a very funny story, I guess, but it’s one that stood out in my mind. Maybe because one of the men said, “Whoa” audibly and I thought, “Oh, don’t say ‘whoa’ like that when I’m shouted at by somebody.”
LB: I know you had experience with the local school system regarding the physical education majors, but this must have increased tremendously with your position with the internships in particular advising students and so forth.
JY: It did, but at the same time, Dr. Hugh Hoffman and I did a project in Hillsborough and Sarasota Counties where we had a curriculum project going on where the teachers, you know, looked through various curricula for physical education, this is the K-8 program and we were able to decide on a particular curriculum that they were going to really try to implement in their schools. That was fascinating and very interesting experiment. He and I worked closely together on that and really I got a lot out of that. I’m not sure what the teachers got out of it, but I got a lot out of it. I enjoyed that a lot.
My problem with the internship was many times the interaction I had with them was often to solve a problem. The problems were sometimes of the students’ making and sometimes they were of the teachers’ making. Sometimes the chemistry just simply did not work and so in the interest of trying to maintain good relationships with the schools, it was necessary to proceed with caution. We would not have been able to do what we could do in the College of Education without the close cooperation of the school district and the teachers. And taking an intern is not easy. A teacher’s job is hard I think and demanding. And we were always very grateful and so one of my jobs was to make sure that there was no acrimony or as little acrimony as possible at the end of a problem solving situation.
LB: You co-authored a book with Hugh Hoffman and Steve Cleasis.
JY: Right.
LB: And I always felt that it was a terrific book, maybe a few years or more ahead of its time in terms of the awareness, general awareness in physical education, but that’s certainly something to be proud of.
JY: Yes, we enjoyed writing it.
LB: Did you enjoy doing that?
JY: Yes, very much. It was a learning experience. When I look back, you know, they talk about you being a life-long teacher. Well, I think I’ve been a student all my life, as most good teachers ought to be anyway. But yes, I was very lucky to be involved in that, very fortunate.