Gratitude is one of the significant qualities of the inspiring professors (“BLTs”) my co-authors, Gerry Hess (Gonzaga) and Sophie Sparrow (New Hampshire) and I studied for What the Best Law Teachers Do. The BLT’s gratitude takes many forms. Most significantly, they manifest their gratitude to their students for what they learn from them. The best law teachers treat a course as a shared journey in which both the teachers and the students grow. Consequently, when a student offers a distinctive insight or asks a hard question for which the professor does not have an easy answer, the professor expresses delight and celebrates, to all the students, the fact that the student has asked an excellent question or offered a great insight. Many then use a technique, called a cognitive think-aloud, to walk students through the professor’s thought process in responding to the question, and, often, they return to the question in the next class with more of their thoughts. In a similar vein, if one of Heather Gerken’s (Yale) students asks such a question or offers a unique and impressive insight, she often invites the student to co-author a paper about the topic with her. 

Many of the BLTs express their gratitude for the privilege that comes with being a law professor. (I once heard that law professors were the happiest workers in the United States. I have no idea if that is true, but I cannot imagine a better job.)

Nearly all the BLTs end each course with a heartfelt expression of gratitude. Some make end-of-semester speeches about their gratitude to their students. Others bring snacks and beverages to celebrate the end of the course with their students. Rory Bahadur (Washburn), who is a competitive barbecue artist, grills 70 pounds of meat for his class and serves his resulting culinary masterpieces as part of his final exam review.I will therefore honor the BLTs by concluding this post with my own expressions of gratitude: A special thanks to the BLTs whose work as teachers made me a better teacher and to Sophie and Gerry for their brilliant contributions to our book and for what I learned about teaching from you. Thank you also to all the law students I have taught, to my dedicated and inspiring faculty colleagues at McGeorge, UALR, Washburn, Charleston, and Western State, and to the AALS for the opportunity to contribute to this blog.  

(I will save my expressions of gratitude to my loved ones for later today.