GROWING A GREAT TEACHER
Q&A with Ellen Peffley, winner of Chancellor’s Council Outstanding Teacher award for 2005.
Written by Sally Logue Post
If life was a box of chocolates for Forrest Gump, it’s more like a basket of fresh vegetables for Ellen Peffley—crisp, brightly hued and full of things that are good for you. Her outlook is obviously a reason for her success as a teacher.
Peffley is a professor of horticulture in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. She won the 2005 Chancellor’s Council Award for Distinguished Teaching from Texas Tech University.
“I love my job” was her first comment upon accepting the award last December, and her passion is evident when she addresses her three favorite subjects: her students, research and life. But her horticultural interests didn’t bloom until her first two class choices—bricklaying and carpentry—were unavailable.
How did you make the jump from bricklaying or carpentry to horticulture? I was a single mom with two sons and had moved to Albuquerque to go back to school. I thought I would become either a carpenter or a bricklayer because I had done some woodworking and I could lay bricks. When those classes were full, I saw a brochure about horticulture. I had never even heard the word before, but the brochure talked about growing plants and I thought ‘that’s what I want to do.’ So I ended up at New Mexico State University working on a horticulture degree. Is there a lesson from your undergraduate career that you teach students today?Yes, that it is okay to ask any question. The first class that I took at NMSU was a senior-level vegetable production class. I had taken music education at the University of New Mexico. But here I was, with no background in horticulture, in class with all these seniors from rural backgrounds. The teacher was talking about taking the tractor into the field and I sat there wondering how you take a tractor in the field without ruining all the plants. I was envisioning a car and not a tractor. So I raised my hand and of course everybody roared with laughter. I have since learned what tractors are. That experience taught me that if students ask questions in good faith, they should get honest answers. That’s how they learn. Why do you love your job?I get to do so many different things. You make of your job what you want it to be. If you’re bored, that’s your own fault. I am really blessed because I love to teach, I love getting kids inspired—to have them come in with that deer-in-the-headlights look and say, “I can’t do it,” and then have them say at the end that even though the class was hard, it was their favorite. I get to do research. I like working with graduate students. If I’m bored in the office, I can go out in the field. I can go out and hoe or I can go into the greenhouse and work. I can work as long as I want. I can come in early, I can leave late— no one says you have to work 8–5. Is there a key to success for students?One key is to just show up. I’ll write a letter to the kids who begin missing a lot of classes and call them into my office. I ask them what they think would happen if they didn’t show up 30 percent of the time at work. I get them to tell me they would be fired. I tell them that they have a choice: They’ve spent the money for the tuition, now they need to decide what they want to do. Most of the time the kids will start coming back to class. Why do you work so hard to keep them in class?I do that because I was given a second chance. My first time in college, I wasn’t a very good student. One teacher gave me a second chance and that has stuck with me.
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What is success to you? Success is taking students beyond where they thought they could go. It’s wonderful when a student comes to me and says, “I don’t think I can do this,” and they end up getting a B or maybe even a C when they thought they would fail. Sometimes getting a C in something you think you couldn’t do translates into a big success. Is there a professor who inspired you?Three. Joe Corgan, Don Cotter and Roy Nakayama at New Mexico State. Don taught me not to respond with a no when a student asks a question. If a student responds to your questions with a wrong answer, don’t say that’s wrong. He taught me to coach students so that they end up giving you the correct answer. You have to give them enough pieces so they can give you the correct answer. Then you can say, “Yes, that’s right.” With undergrads, you don’t want them to be afraid of responding to questions. Roy Nakayama taught me how to hoe. He came out into the field one day and asked what I was doing. I said that I was hoeing. He said no you’re not, you’re pruning. I learned quickly that I was a city girl who didn’t know how to hoe. He is the one who introduced me to vegetables. When I came back to work on masters and doctoral degrees, Joe took me under his wing. I want to be able to give back. And donating a part of the money from this teaching award to scholarships in Joe and Don’s names is one way that I could give back to them for teaching me. (A $10,000 cash award is presented to the Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching and Research Award winners.) You also do some special courses that are your way of paying back past experiences, right?Yes, I began teaching study-abroad courses so that I could return to my college the experiences that the college allowed me to have. I’ve had a fellowship in the Netherlands and a sabbatical in the United Kingdom. I wanted my students to be able to experience international travel. I bring in lots of slides from places I have been and encourage students to travel and experience other countries. You are also an outstanding researcher. Can a good researcher be a good teacher?Gosh, I hope so! A good researcher is going to inspire students to get into science—if they are also a good teacher. I think it’s difficult to be a good teacher if you are not active in your field and learning something new all the time. Otherwise you get stale. Even when I’m in the field with graduate students, I’m teaching them breeding principals, ethics and integrity. What do you do outside the office?I’m in the Lubbock Chorale. I garden—I love my garden. I love to read, I like Robin Cook, who writes mystery novels, and Ken Follette. I play the piano for Sunday school. I also collect “The Shadow,” a ’30s and ’40s radio program about a crime fighter. I have books and pulp magazines and tapes of the old radio broadcasts. I’m a member of the The Shadow Club. What will you do when you retire?I want to start my own business. I want to have subscribers and I’ll take them a big basket of fresh vegetables and fruits monthly, whatever is in season, and recipes. But first I need (husband) Dennis to build a greenhouse for me. Would you have done anything else besides what you ended up doing?Bricklayer or a carpenter?
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