Crowdsourcing Good Teaching (5)

For the student who wrote this, the balance of caring and content is clearly important to good teaching.  For her, and for most students, a "good teacher" is adept at establishing a relationship based on mutual respect and making the subject interesting and accessible to all students.

A Good Teacher: 

A good teacher is balanced in kindness and strictness.  A good teacher is polite yet stern in a subtle way.  The pupils should respect the teacher as a person.  Some teachers are rude to their students, who give them problems in return.

A good teacher makes learning fun and delivers it in an exciting way.  An average teacher is boring and relays information like a robot - assigning homework and naming the day of a quiz.

I feel teachers should teach with several different approaches so as to interest all the different learning patterns teens have. Humor is key - there should be lightness yet formality to a class.

-Tamara

Relationships, relevance and rigor.  These 3 R's are the back to basics of good teaching.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feedback for learning (from students)

I have learned more from my students about being a teacher, and how to be a better teacher, than I have ever learned from an administrator’s observation. Formal and informal feedback is as critical to me as a learner as it is to them. I have started to go through some of the feedback students shared on the last day this year, now that I have a couple weeks distance. The other day I jotted down a note to the effect that in teaching, we cultivate the tone of the class from the very first day. That’s why I gave up the first day standards of going over the course overview and covering the rules and regulations. The movie Dead Poets Society came out in the beginning of my teaching career (so maybe I should have realized this sooner). I remember being so taken with the scene of the students’ first day with Mr. Keating (Robin Williams). They walk away from that class thinking he is weird, and they’re not quite sure what to make of the class, but they are engaged. I try to achieve so...
Read more

My summer note-writing project

As the days of June roll into July, and I have had a minute to breathe after the close of school, I sit down and write a short note to each of my graduated seniors. It’s something I started a bunch of years ago, then stopped for some reason I don’t remember (most likely laziness) But I resurrected the practice about 8 or 10 years ago. I try to finish my note-writing project by the middle of July - time to have a bit of perspective on the school year, but before they leave for college. I congratulate them on their graduation, and I thank them for all of the hard work they put into AP English, and all the contributions they made to our learning community throughout our time together. I include something memorable that they leave as a legacy to the spirit of our classroom. And I remind them that they have a fine set of tools to help them make their way in the world. Basically, I want them to know that their voice has been valued, and their presence has mattered. I hope that they have...
Read more

Happy School Year to All - Great Adventures In Store!

Tis the last of the summer, a bright sunny day With the kick off of school just a few hours away You would think, having done this 30-some times before That there’d be no excitement, that it could be a bore The paper is hung and the tables are clean, I’ve picked out lots of texts we’ll ask “What does this mean?” Writing tasks have been crafted to find out what you think And each 45 minutes will go by in a blink We’ll do research and blogging, journal all through the year, But the big question, always, is Why are we here? There’s the AP exam that we tackle in May There’s the SAT, ACT, PARCC with no play Maybe grades, or the challenge, or because your mom said, But none of these get to the why in my head I do not teach English for my love of the books Or the way when we write that our handwriting looks I am here because words and the baggage they bring Tell us how to be human - do the humanest things Like to love and be brave and show up in your life, ...
Read more