Scarlet Masque Theatre Journal New Beginnings and Fond Farewells Vol. 1 | Page 131

Muha:​ So, you said, in a conversation with former Dean McKinney about teaching like you
direct, changed the way you thought about teaching, and allowed you the opportunity to think
more completely about your work as a teacher. ​ So, how do you think of yourself as a teacher?
Watson:​ Well, if I could own just a little of what Dean Paul McKinney lived and was, I’d be
very happy about that. He was a chemist that had a great passion and love for the arts. So, when
he told me that when I was a young faculty, that I should teach the way I direct.
Initially, I wasn't quite sure what he meant by that. I probably was working to separate things and
keep things in order, and juggling multiple tasks and classroom performance, committee work.
All these things were presumably in my mind at the time different. And I think he helped me see
that these are walls that separate these ideas, and you need to find some energy, some closure to
a classroom that you do to a production. I thought it was good advice.
I’m not sure I answered your question there Nathan, but I think it's probably fair to say that most
of us as professors are not trained as teachers. Our educations were focused on a discipline, and a
deep dive into that discipline. It's not necessarily the methods and practice the art of teaching that
we are doing at a graduate school. So, much of what happens is experimental with professors
,particularly early on and throughout we are trying to figure out how best to introduce this
material to a new generation. But not necessarily schooled and educated in methods. Again I
can't speak for all but I would imagine that most of us come in our classroom as a deep
commitment to the study itself, and then figure out ways to share it.