• James Gibbons is receiving a Lifetimes of Achievement award on May 20. Read about the all the 2018 honorees.
James Gibbons was the dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University when he walked into the Santa Clara Juvenile Hall in hopes of setting up a computer lab and teaching a computer literacy course.
He wanted to provide inmates with practical skills for when they left juvenile hall.
The response he received to his proposal from the director, however, was not what he expected: She challenged him to teach youth something far more essential than running computers, and as a result Gibbons has significantly impacted the social well-being of students across the United States.
Already in his career in the semiconductor industry, Gibbons was known internationally. In his younger years, he spent time in-and-out of William Shockley’s famed lab — where the semiconductor transistor was developed — while working to create the first-ever laboratory for doctoral students to build silicon devices during their research.
A self-proclaimed “video-guy,” he developed the forerunner to what has evolved into today’s internet courses: He provided education via television to thousands of engineers at local companies through Stanford Instructional Television Network and figured out a way to teach computer literacy to children of migrant farmers long before the first internet course was ever offered.
At Juvenile Hall, Gibbons had been focused on teaching tech skills when the director said to him, “Tell me how you’re going to solve the following problem: Here’s a kid sitting (at a computer) doing his homework. Another kid walks up and says, ‘It’s my turn.’ Now, the kid sitting there says, ‘Well you’re going to have to push me off.’ Anything that can lead to a fight, will.”
She told Gibbons that unless he could teach the kids not to fight, he couldn’t teach them anything, including basic computer lessons. A few months later, in response, he devised the Skills for Managing Anger course with his colleagues at SERA Learning.
The video-format course is a preventative program that helps minors identify areas where conflicts and anger begin before they escalate. The video shows various exemplary situations, and students identify “hot buttons” and “anger signals” and ways to resolve anger with their facilitators.
The results of the course at the Juvenile Hall were notable. Guards, who historically had a highly disciplinary relationship with the kids, became their tutors for managing emotions. Suicide rates went down.
“It’s not the theory of managing anger, it’s not the philosophy of managing anger, it’s skills for managing anger,” Gibbons said. “And skills, if you’re practicing correctly, the more practice you do, the better you get.”
When the course was implemented in the 49ers Academy, an East Palo Alto school for middle and high school students, “the culture of the school changed,” Gibbons said.
His course was subsequently used in middle schools after the Columbine shooting and in 13 school districts in New York City when students were devastated and tense after they returned to the classroom following 9/11.
Although he had become a master of creating videos for educational purposes, or what he called “tutored video instruction,” the anger management course was one of particular importance to him, and he believes it’s “not trivial” to get it into school systems.
“We still have lots of shootings; we still have a lot of suicides,” he said, mentioning the suicides of Palo Alto students. He said having guards at the Palo Alto rail crossings is one response to the situation, but what’s more important is getting to the root of the “troubling emotions” and building internal strength so that emotions don’t lead to violence or worse outcomes.
He said the most important thing for anyone is to have a goal that helps them make everyday decisions.
Gibbons — who has served on the boards of more than 13 organizations in Silicon Valley, including Cisco, Raychem, SRI, Lockheed Martin and PARC — has been at the forefront of modern semiconductor industries in Silicon Valley. But his passion for education, in addition to his advocacy for social equality, influenced his career trajectory as an engineer and motivated many of his endeavors.
Gibbons humbly said it was his wife’s devotion to teaching that truly changed his life and inspired him to serve those in need.
“I liked teaching. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make a career of it,” he said. “But my wife … her devotion to teaching was the central thing.”