The year was 1999 and I was a junior in the Technology Education program at SUNY Oswego. I was in my second semester at that college and was one of the last students to register for classes. My options were slim. Although it really didn’t matter – by the time registration opened up I really didn’t know anyone at the school and had no clue what professors were good or bad – so I was taking whatever I could get into.

John Belt*

There were empty spots in a class simply called “Design”. It was taught by Professor John Belt who, until that moment in my life, I had never heard of before. He was located in the building adjacent to most of the technology classes – tucked away in the uppermost corner of an almost-deserted building. Design. Couldn’t be that bad, right? I mean heck, I’d always wanted to be an architect or mechanical engineer… design was my thing!

Yeah. First day of class we walked into a dark room. Lights were off, either candles or very dim bulbs were placed around the room… just enough for everyone to come in and find a seat. I was thinking “good grief, I hope he doesn’t pull out any drugs or anything”… it was an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. And he spoke to us – in the dark – for an hour. He didn’t give us a course description, a syllabus, or anything like that. He didn’t tell us the rules or where the fire escapes were. But he talked to us… about who we were, what we wanted, and what we were passionate about. Passionate? I wanted to simply say the name of a girl or something to be a wiseguy (which a few of the guys did try) – but by passionate he meant something different. What did we care about? What was it that made us tick?

Bamboo. That’s what he said he was passionate about. We all got a laugh out of that – but he was dead serious. He loves bamboo, builds things out of it, loves how it looks, etc. The guy is passionate about a dead piece of wood – that’s all I took out of there on the first day. And as we were walking out he said “Since this is a college course, I expect you to bring a copy of the Design Process with you on Thursday for homework”.

Walked in on Thursday and, true to my nature, had no design process with me. I’d never heard of it before and figured that I’d wait for someone else to answer the question. I’d then write it in my notebook and call it my learning for the day. Ha! Yeah right! He called us all out and asked us to take our design process and hold it up in the air. There were six of us who didn’t have anything and we were promptly thrown out of class… we could come back on Monday so long as we didn’t ever come unprepared again.

Now you’re wondering where this story is going, right? Don’t worry… I do have a plan

Anyhow, I hated the class – he didn’t teach! All that he did was talk to us. Showed us videos and pictures and objects made by others – but he never once stood in front of the class and lectured. I remember feeling helpless sitting there. Was I passing? Failing? I didn’t dare ask! So I sat directly next to him (where he had a harder time making eye contact) and figured I’d do what I could, but was resigned to probably repeating the course later. It was going to kill my GPA, and that’s all I kept thinking about.

But then one day he introduced the final project. And to be honest, I’m not sure what the final project even was… except for everyone in the class had to design, draw, and make a model of something. I decided to choose a triangular stainless steel sterno food heater. It was to be a huge project taking weeks to complete – and there were no formal formative assessments. We just needed to have it all done by the end of the semester.

To this point in the story I hadn’t learned anything. Design was stupid and I couldn’t stand the teacher; that’s all I knew. In fact as I designed this sterno heater I was still pretty confused as to what the point was. Why was this a required class again?

Maybe two weeks into my final project, though, I had the most satisfying “aha” moment – the whole class was about thinking and problem solving. Not about “design”, not about “doing things right” – but about figuring things out for ourselves. He wanted us to ask questions and present opposing views. He wanted us to be unconventional. He had turned the lights off during class not because his eyes were sensitive or he was hungover, but because it allowed us to relax and let our minds wander. Maybe the guy wasn’t crazy after all…

I ended up with an amazing final project from that class. Not because I was a genius, but because I started asking questions. I began asking other people for their opinions – which, until that point in my life, I had never done. I asked for help when I had to do something I wasn’t sure of. I redesigned my original idea multiple times. I started hanging out in his lab at random times – thus dubbing me a “Beltoid” – so that I could be around other people who enjoyed design. Once I understood the course, it quickly became the most influential class I’d ever taken.  I was able to see things from a different perspective – and yes, it really did happen “all of a sudden”.

I learned to think. I learned to teach. I started realizing that learning isn’t something you can always script out, and results could vary from person to person. That particular class also taught me that you can never judge a book by its cover; unconventional doesn’t always equal crazy.

The people who never understood JB? They still make fun of me and ask how I could like a man who taught the stupidest class at Oswego.  I still talk about the class with quite a few of my friends (my first PLN!) who used to hang out in the design lab. I haven’t talked to John very much since I graduated, but the things I learned in his class pretty much single-handedly wrote my Educational Philosophy statement.

*Photo of John used with written permission of the owner via Flickr
*Photo of bamboo taken by Joi Ito