A Process Option for Speech Pedagogy

Abstract

I have always been responsive to a student-centered approach to teaching. One of my earliest college experiences occurred in 1961 at Clinton Community College where I was a part-time student. I had a speech teacher named Dean Travis whom I instinctively admired. After an entire semester of "learning" to give speeches before the class with minimal direction from him, he explained his philosophy of teaching: "When I was starting out as a teacher, I tried to get up in front of the room and 'teach' speech. I tried that for six years and finally decided it couldn't be done. After that, I settled for 'setting up conditions under which students could learn to speak.'" I'm not sure if Dean Travis had read Carl Rogers or if the idea of non-directive teaching occurred to him by direct revelation, but, at that moment, what I had sensed intuitively about my learning style was communicated to me directly. What Stanley Gunn, who began to "set up conditions" for me to begin to learn piano at age four and Robert Drake, who presided non-directively every morning at 8:30 in the typing room at De Soto Union Free High School of De Soto, Wisconsin, showed me about learning had now been explained to me by a speech teacher.

Journal Title

Iowa Journal of Speech Communication

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Recommended Citation

Arenz, Donald (1985) "A Process Option for Speech Pedagogy," Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 17: No. 2, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol17/iss2/5

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