Interview with Dr. Fredericks

Interview with Dr. Fredericks

Dr. Anthony Fredericks is a professor in the Department of Education at York College of Pennsylvania and the author of numerous books for adults and children. His full bio is available here.

You have been teaching for 42 years and have written several books on teaching to help other teachers. How did you discover teaching?

I’m not really sure I discovered teaching. I think teaching discovered me. In college, I sort of majored in changing majors. I was a sociology major, a biology major, a history major, but one year I joined the group called Camp Wild Cat when I was an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. We worked to provide a camping experience for less privileged children in the downtown area. And just working with those kids for a two-week summer camp sort of turned me on to teaching, and I sort of never ever looked back since. I’ve been involved with kids, high school students, middle school students, and elementary students ever since. And I’ve loved every minutes of it.

In what ways do students influence you?

They’ve influenced me because their fresh outlook on the world; their innocent outlook on the world is the kind of outlook I enjoy. Kids by nature are happy. Kids are engaged. Kids look at things with new eyes, and even though I’m sixty-five, I like to look at things with new eyes. I like to have the same kind of imagination kids have, and the same kind of creativity that just comes natural to kids. So they keep me, grounded if you will, in terms of being a teacher, an educator. Kids are constantly teaching me what is really important in being a good teacher.

What unique skills did you learn in the classroom that you try to teach education majors?

Well, here comes one surprise for you, and that is hands-on, minds-on. Not only giving kids information but giving them creative opportunities to play around with that information. To manipulate that information, to create something with that information, to design something with that information, I think takes teaching to a whole new level. It’s very easy to give information to people; But having them do something with that information and using their own unique sense of creativity with their own special learning styles, I think that’s a real education.

Good education has to come from within. It’s not something that we do to students but something we do with them. By encouraging them ultimately to become their own teachers, their own educators. As teachers, we’re just here as facilitators. The best kind of education is not external but internal.

The strongest method you teach students with is a hands-on, minds-on approach that encourages students of all ages to make discoveries with the five senses. Was this a part of the teaching philosophy you gained while teaching grade school?

This was something I gained, probably, as a reading specialist. I worked as a reading specialist for about eleven years, and I primarily worked with kids at the elementary level who were struggling with reading. And I discovered, again, that just telling them the information really was not getting through to them. I needed to give them some opportunities to see: how is this information relative to their lives? How could they use this in their day-to-day activities outside of what we were doing in the classroom? I sort of fell into this hands-on, minds-on philosophy that suggested to me that kids really learn when they are actively involved and actively engaged in the dynamics of learning. And what better way to do this than by creating a mobile or designing a project of some kind? Or going out and applying some of that information that we’ve taught in some community activity, the whole hands-on, minds-on philosophy — I wish I could say that it was my original idea — it isn’t. Kids actually taught me that and showed me why it was so important in their own lives.

What were some classroom experiences that strongly influenced you as a writer?

Opportunities to do a lot of reading. One of the questions I often get as a visiting author is “Where do you get your ideas?” And one of the things I always suggest, whether they’re kids who are asking the question or the adults, is good writers are also good readers. The more you read, the more ideas you pack inside your head. The more ideas you have inside your head, the more ideas you have to draw from as a writer. So I would say, probably the thing that influenced me most is the fact I’m an inveterate reader. I probably read two to three books a week. And I love to read all different kinds of things. I think the more I read, the better I have become as a writer. So I try to carry this same kind of philosophy that I preach to my students; if you want to be good in a specific subject area, you have to read more about that. Well, I want to become as good as a writer. I have to do a lot more reading as well.

What helped you develop your writing?

Making writing a regular part of my daily activities, for me, writing is similar to brushing my teeth or tying my shoes. It’s something I have to do every day. I get up at five, five-thirty in the morning, and I’m usually writing a minimum of two to three hours every single day. Good writers become good writers because they practice a lot. We become good bicycle riders because we ride bicycles a lot. We become good soccer players because we practice soccer a lot. The only way I know I can become a better writer is to write a lot, and I want to make that a regular habit. I go through withdrawal if I don’t have any writing to do in forty-eight hours. It’s something you have to do regularly.

People will sometimes approach me and say, “What is the key to success to becoming a good writer?”And I say, “It’s just the same as the key to success to being in Carnegie Hall.” It’s practice, practice, practice. The more you practice, the more you work at it, I think the better you become. Can I become a better writer? Absolutely. I don’t think I’ll ever reach that stage where I’m fully one-hundred percent satisfied with where I am. I always think there’s room to grow, room to expand.

How has your writing style shifted over the years?

I used different writing styles when I’m writing adult nonfiction obviously, than compared to a children’s book. For me, that’s again, stretching my writing muscles. I think it’s good for a writer to explore different genres, to explore different avenues of expressing herself or himself. Again, I don’t want to become stuck as a, for lack of a better term, one-note writer. I want to keep expanding, keep learning. I want to keep pushing the envelope, so to speak. So yes, my writing style has shifted from genre to genre, and I hope it continues to shift. I think that for me, that’s the only way I can grow as a writer.

How has being a York College instructor changed your philosophy?

I have the unique opportunity and distinct honor and pleasure of working with the next generation of teachers, and I want to be able to convey my enthusiasm, my energy, my passion for teaching and learning to the next generation of teachers. York College is unique in the fact that our classes are small. We get to know our students personally. We get to interact with them on a face-to-face, name-to-name basis. And I can therefore share with them, impart some of my experience over the last four plus decades of teaching, and work with them very closely, something I may not have an opportunity to do if I had a class of three hundred students; where I would just, you know, come in twice a week into a class. Opportunities to work with students, not only in the classroom, but also in various projects outside the classroom in the local community give me some unique opportunities to share that passion and that energy.