#DrFerrell March 27

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For March 2024 several of us will be participating in the “30-Day Shout-Out Coach4aday Challenge”. Today the recipient is DR HENRY FERRELL

Last week I heard a speaker talk about the lifelong impact that coaches, teachers, and parents can have on each of us. For me one of those leaders was a history professor I had my freshman year at East Carolina University by the name of Dr. Henry C Ferrell.

Dr Ferrell arrived at East Carolina in 1960 and taught there for 46 years. After retirement he became the University Historian. He died on August 21, 2020, from complications resulting from COVID.

Rules of the Challenge

Organizing and participating in the 30-Day Shout Coach4aday Challenge is very simple. Below are the steps.

Here is how to participate.

1. Identify who gets the daily Shout-Out and make sure they know you are recognizing them.
2. Describe why you giving them a Shout-Out-what are they doing that is notable?
3. Do this daily for 30 Days posting on social media with the hashtag #Coach4adayChallenge

If you need ideas on how to give someone a daily shout-out here is a link on LinkedIn with some ideas that are good for the workplace.

March 27th-Henry Ferrell

Back in 2014 I wrote a letter to Dr Ferrell thanking him for the lifelong lessons he mirrored for me. I was able to get in contact with him thanks to Chris Locklear who was serving as ECU Chief of Staff. His response back to me a gracious thank-you.

That letter described one of my first classes during my first quarter in college. The course was a general education history class taught in the Brewster Building. In that first class he asked each of us to stand and briefly share something about ourselves. I rose told the class I was from NJ and wanted to be a teacher/coach. He insisted we keep the same seats for the first two weeks of the course.

In that first class he was quick to review his expectations and made an assignment for the next class. He reminded us of a teaching philosophy he had. The highest form of motivation is constant inspection. He would be checking.

My Letter and Life Lesson

In my correspondence, I recounted the events of Day 2 and Day 3 of his course. On the second day, he initiated our class with a quiz based on assigned material, which regrettably, I had not studied. On the following class, he distributed the quiz results, and as anticipated, I knew my performance wasn’t satisfactory.

However, what followed caught me off guard. He singled me out, asking me to stand and publicly questioned whether my shortcomings were due to laziness or lack of intelligence. Feeling embarrassed, I admitted to Dr. Ferrell that I hadn’t read the material, to which he hastily concluded that my negligence indicated laziness. As he proceeded to undermine another student’s confidence, his message was clear—I needed to come better prepared.

To Dr. Ferrell’s credit three weeks later on a major test in that history class he asked me to stand again as he passed out the test results. He stated, “Apparently out of state students from New Jersey are not lazy-well done Mr. Kenney you had the highest grade in the class”.

The insights I gained from Dr. Ferrell underscore the importance of establishing clear expectations and assessing them regularly, addressing behaviors that fall short of these standards, and acknowledging positive changes with reinforcement. Dr. Ferrell exemplified these principles in his approach, which included daily quizzes to test understanding—a method that became integral to both my personal coaching style and a bedrock of completing daily challenges.