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One of the Family: Tom Walton --
He Helps His "Players" Perform
(Posted: October 14, 2002) (Printable Version)
What Tom Walton has assimilated over the years on the ball field and basketball court serves him well in still another location, his classroom at UA Fort Smith where he teaches speech students about communication skills.
Walton spends a number of his off-campus hours as a coach or sports official, a “hobby” many of his fellow faculty members also follow. Now, he is in the midst of youth softball umpiring.
Slow pitch is April through October, and fast pitch is March and April and again in September and October. From November through March, he can be found refereeing basketball games. He also coaches youth basketball for Girls Incorporated. His athletic activities take up two or three evenings a week and all day on Saturdays.
“When I was in high school and college, I was involved in youth athletics as part of our service learning project,” Walton said. “Then I got back into it as an adult when my kids were involved in youth sports.”
He and his wife, Sherilyn, have two children — Jeff, 19, who is a student at UA Fort Smith, and Sarah, a ninth grader at Lavaca. Sherilyn teaches English at Lavaca Middle School, as well as senior high speech.
“Being involved in youth sports is a great way to connect with both youth and adults,” the 50-year-old Walton said. “The most rewarding aspect of it is seeing the lifelong friends that kids are making with other kids and with adults.”
Walton, who has been on the faculty at UA Fort Smith since 1977, has been teaching speech exclusively since 1991. Prior to that, he sponsored the student newspaper and yearbook and taught journalism and theatre. He calls his teaching style “interactive.”
“I’m more of a coach and mentor,” he said. “You provide materials, criteria and opportunities, and the students perform and get assessed on their improvement over the course of a class. I’m much more interested in students being able to do all they can do, rather than simply acquiring the same knowledge I have.
“The goal of some teachers is for students to know what the teacher knows. I’m not interested in just what students know, but what they can do with what they know.”
He compares teaching to coaching:
“In coaching, you’re trying to take what you know and what you do to help the players be able to perform on their own. That’s kind of what a speech teacher does. Each speech is like a ball game. You practice, and you perform.”
Walton gets excited about the confidence level he sees rise in his students from the beginning of a semester until its end. He molds the student until that student has the confidence to display leadership skills.
“Whenever I have former students tell me that I made a difference to them, I just tell them to go out and make a difference to someone else.”
Over the years, Walton says students usually have faced their time in college speech classes differently, depending on whether the student is just out of high school or has been out of school for some time and is returning to college.
“Those already in the work force realize the importance of good communication skills and know they need them to improve themselves,” he said. “Sometimes the traditional, younger students don’t understand the long-term benefits they are reaping from developing communication skills. They sometimes don’t see beyond the ‘I have to give speeches in my other classes’ attitude. They don’t realize what communication skills are going to do, day-to-day, for the next 50 years.”
Yet, Walton has recently seen a shift in students’ attitudes toward their time on campus. He’s finding students to be more task oriented and more focused in their goals.
“For a lot of years, it seemed like students really didn’t know why they were here,” he said. “They just knew they had to be here. In recent years, I’ve noticed that students realize that college is a means to an end. They seem to value it a little bit more.
“Twenty years ago, you had to sell that you needed communication skills. In today’s world, everyone knows it coming in. That’s why it’s so exciting being a teacher and coach. You’re involved every day with the people who are choosing to be the leaders of tomorrow.”
Walton’s own leadership skills have been evident on the UA Fort Smith campus and beyond. He most recently finished serving as chair of the Faculty Council and is on a communications committee for general education. He is a member of the National Communication Association, where he serves on a task force for assessment and basic core curriculum and on textbook review committees. He is also the author of his own student workbook, used as a supplement to the speech textbook.
For his athletic efforts, he is a member of the River Valley Softball Umpires Association, which is ASA (American Softball Association) sanctioned, and the Arkansas Valley Softball Umpires Association, which is Arkansas Activities Association (AAA) sanctioned.
He uses his leadership skills daily, coaching his “team” in class.
“I just tell them that speech class is like being a member of a sports team,” he said. “You’ve got to be willing to make that individual contribution and to help your other team members reach their potential as well.”
He said every player has his role, and that what he does best, as the teacher, is to get the timid student to trust in the atmosphere of the class, to let it work to the student’s advantage.
“I’m good at creating an environment where people aren’t afraid to take risks,” he said. “The theme of the course is like the Nike commercial — ‘just do it.’ I tell my students, ‘Don’t be afraid to be afraid. Turn that fear into an opportunity to perform.’
“At the end of the class, I want the student to walk out of here with the feeling that when the ‘game’ is on the line, that student will say, “Put me in, coach. I can handle it!’”
(One of the Family is a series featuring students, staff and alumni on the UA Fort Smith news Web site. To see other stories in the series, go to www.uafortsmith.edu and click on “News” in the top right corner. Current stories are shown there, and others can be found in the news archives, available through a search feature at the end of the list of top news stories.)
| Article by: Sondra LaMar, Director of Public Relations | |
| Photo(s) by: Sondra LaMar and Jamie Mitchell of Jamie Mitchell Photography |
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