NYT: Building a better teacher...

[dkf]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Absolutely fascinating article on what makes an effective teacher.

[MineralMan]

1. That is a very interesting article, and it started me thinking

about teachers I had. I believe it's correct. I can remember the techniques some of the good and bad ones used, and the article seems to make a lot of sense.

My own teaching experience has been with college freshmen and adults. It took me an entire quarter to work out how to get and hold the attention of a class of 30 college freshmen in an English 101 class. I finally figured it out, and it involves some of the techniques mentioned in that excellent article. Key to the entire thing was keeping the class just a little off balance and not able to know when I might ask one of them to respond to a question. By keeping them off balance and actively working the room, I could maintain attention on what I was trying to teach. The other thing I figured out was that with 18-19 year olds, my first task was to make them understand why my class was so important to the rest of their college career and farther down the road. I finally came up with a Day One lecture that clarified it in their minds and set the tone for the rest of the quarter. It worked, and worked well. Keeping their attention and involving them individually in the lectures worked well. For the most part, they all made reasonably good progress in writing skills and in taking the essential information from material they were reading. For some, the progress was dramatic. For others, it was at least progress.

Later, when I was teaching full-scale adults computer skills and classes in BASIC programming techniques, the same things held true. The lesson plans were less important than capturing and holding attention. Without that, the lesson plans were useless. With it, learning took place.

[dkf]

2. Hmm. Lots of food for thought here.

Kind of makes you wonder why we haven't seen more on this subject after quite a bit of discussion.

Thanks for helping to illuminate things.