16 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher
Teaching is different from giving a speech. Good teaching is universal. 16 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher
1. It's not about you; it's about them. The best instructors see themselves as guides.
2. Study your students. You have to know where the person is starting from before you can help him reach the destination.
3. Students take risks when teachers create a safe environment. Students have to acknowledge what they don't know, take risks, and rethink what they thought they knew.
4. Great teachers exude passion as well as purpose. The desire is infectious.
5. Students learn when teachers show them how much they need to learn. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
6. Keep it clear even if you can't keep it simple. The ability to break down complex ideas and make them understandable.
7. Practice vulnerability without sacrificing credibility. Acknowledging what you don't know shows that you're still learning, that the teacher is, in fact, still a student.
8. Teach from the heart. We teach who we are.
9. Repeat the important points. The first time you say something, it's heard, the second time, it's recognized, and the third time, it's learned.
9. Repeat the important points.
10. Good teachers ask good questions. If you want to get to the heart of something, ask "Why?" five times.
11. You're not passing out information. You're teaching people how to think. You want a forceful group of people who know what you want but at the same time feel free enough to make the day-to-day judgments themselves.
12. Stop talking -- and start listening. Effective learning is a two-way street: It's a dialogue, not a monologue.
13. Learn what to listen for. Listen for how the student assembles all of this information, how well she organizes her thoughts.
14. Let your students teach each other. Everybody has a piece of relevant information, making everyone a teacher and a learner.
15. Avoid using the same approach for everyone. Students learn differently. Some are visual. Some grasp the abstract. Some learn best by reading.
16. Never stop teaching. Effective teaching is about the quality of the relationship between the teacher and the student.
