A Few Reflections on Teaching Public Relations

It has been my good fortunate to teach public relations for over ten years now. While those teaching experiences have not always been at the same college, I must say with each passing semester I cherish the opportunity more and more. Generally, I have found students to be caring, bright, fun and genuine about wanting to do well in class. As a teacher, I do not look for perfection from the students as much as I do attitude and effort. Students, after all, are no different than the rest of us in they are works in progress who respond favorably to fair treatment, sincere assessment, respect, and encouragement.

As an instructor, one of my constant challenges is keeping the students engaged by generating class discussions that are stimulating, devising challenging projects, and connecting with them in ways to which they most relate. Perhaps like many other instructors, some days I do better at this than others. Certainly in my case, I consider myself to be like the students in that I, too, am learning and trying to do better than I did the day before.

The fact I am teaching public relations makes this reality even more pronounced because as a part of the field of communication, it is a social science that is always shifting, ever-changing. The same, I might add, can be said of the students themselves. These student, no matter their major, will become active citizens of the world. As a result, the communication skills they learn in school have the potential to bring benefit to us all. In many ways, it is too bad the fundamentals of communication are not part of every student's academic program simply because it is so vital to how well one does in life.