Teaching by Heart: One Professor’s Journey to Inspire
Thomas J. DeLong
Harvard Business Review Press (January 2020)

Challenging others “to be more accepting, more aware, and more committed to be all they can be”

My initial career was in education, teaching English for many years in two New England boarding schools (Kent and then St. Georges); years later, while earning a living as an independent management consultant, I conducted workshops and seminars for corporate executives throughout the U.S. while teaching two early-morning classes (three days a week) for ten years as an adjunct professor at a community college.

I faced several of the same challenges in these three quite different realms of contemporary education while also experiencing essentially the same “mysteries and occasional miracles of teaching” that Thomas DeLong describes so well in his latest book.

In fact, I wish I had been able to read Teaching by Heart before I taught my first class of fourth formers (i.e. tenth graders) at Kent School. From my perspective now, however, it is probable (if not certain) that I would not have read it. I had not as yet realized how much I did not know.

DeLong believes that the best teachers tend to be the best students; that is, those most eager to learn. He also believes that the best teachers tend to be uniquely effective leaders as exemplar and perhaps role model. (He has taught at Harvard Business School for more than twenty years.) As he explains, “By deconstructing teaching, I hope to dig deep into the process and reveal some truths about how and why we teach the way we do.” Also, how and why teachers and their students learn the way they do. He succeeds brilliantly.

What we have here is an extended companionship with DeLong during a segment of what he characterizes as a “journey.” His primary purpose is to facilitate learning — his own as well as his students’ — so that they are challenged “to be more accepting, more aware, and more committed to be all they can be.”

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, Also listed to suggest the scope of DeLong’s coverage:

o Emerging Patterns (Pages 42-43)
o The Worm Deck (47-63)
o Prejudging Students (68-72)
o Classifying Students (72-79)
o How Leaders Create Covenants (83-86)

o Tips and Tactics for Teachers (94-96)
o The Moral to the Session on Difficult Conversations (108-110)
o The Past, The Present, and The Future (!24-130)
o Paying for the Sins of Others (135-138)
o The Tug of War between Reality and the Narrative (147-148)

o What Makes a Mentor (153-154)
o Managing Up: How to Impress (157-159)
o Embrace Clarity and Simplicity to Avoid Ambiguity (164-166)
o The Myth of Seeking Feedback (172-173)
o Mr. Rogers: Improving the Teaching Neighborhood (185-186 and 198-200)

I highly recommend this book to all who are now preparing for a career in teaching (grades 9-12, college, or university) or who have only recently embarked upon one; also to executives who have direct reports entrusted to their care.

Thomas DeLong is to be commended for so generously and so candidly sharing many of his thoughts and feelings about his life and work. He teaches “by heart” because he cares so deeply about the knowledge he shares but also about the process by which he shares it with his students and how they absorb and digest it — as well as what they learn elsewhere — and then apply it when pursuing personal growth and professional development

To those who are about to read this book, welcome to a classroom unlike any other you have ever known. I envy you the “journey” that awaits. Bon voyage!