Hi Medha. I agree with you about nuance and deference towards students and their different learning styles. It’s great to be accommodating and facilitating student’s learning processes. But on the other hand, my reading of authentic teaching tells me that that educators themselves are entitled feel joy and satisfaction from what they are doing. An that they are best when they know thier own styles. In this sense, the teacher’s needs and preferences are as important as the students’.

This is a really thoughtful blog. I start to think about what role should a class play. Should we really rely on a class to transfer condense contents, or just take a class as a chance to stimulate the interests/passions of the students?

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Thank you for sharing. Ideally, I would like to let have a class that those self-motivated students can get as much as they want, and for students that are not very interested in the class, I will still hope they can learn something from the class.

Hi Remy,

Thank you for sharing your experience. I appreciate you explaining the self-reflection and process of considering your students’ mindset and thinking about how they might feel and how to help them. I think that is something I can learn from. I also appreciate that you want to respect and remain your true self at the same time.

Thanks for sharing your post, Anna. I like the idea that our time is better spent honing our strengths rather than focusing on our weaknesses. To a certain point, I think this is true. We should take the time to identify the things we do well as a teachers and maximize those strengths through our pedagogical approach. However, a part of me still sees merit in developing skills that are not as strong. Good teachers are able to adapt their lessons to fit the learning styles of their students. This requires access to a large toolbox, even if not all of the tools inside are sharp.

Hi Cherice. I’m glad you wrote about being transparent with your pedagogical decisions with your students. Before reading the article by Sarah Deel, I too figured that good teachers crafted their lessons behind the scenes somewhere, manipulating their lessons and assignments just so in order to create eureka moments for their students. While I do think there is some merit to the concept that students’ learning is more genuine if they are able to arrive at their own conclusions through discovery (i.e. not being told the answer), I also think that at this level that method isn’t necessarily as impactful. In college, students are here because they chose to be here. Clueing them in as to why you’re asking them to do certain things will help them buy in to that experience.

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Yes… I think as a woman/younger person/POC/etc., you often think (probably correctly) that you can’t be as informal as you’d like (or as some ‘traditional’ coworkers act) because people won’t take you seriously as an instructor.

I agree that one can have fun in the classroom and even act less formally. I think a helpful tool for balancing being more informal with the fear of students crossing a line or being percieved as unprofessional is 1) not crossing the line yourself and 2) knowing (before it happens) how you would react to people crossing the line or suggesting that a woman’s actions are not professional when there would be no question if a man did so.

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A nicely presented post! For the longest time, I have held a bias against using gadgets in the classroom. In my case, the bias wasn’t so much to do with the distraction that these gadgets would potentially bring, but it was to do with my being stuck in experiences from the formative days of my education when access to such was pretty much non-existent, at least, where I come from 🙂 Overtime, as I have become more and more exposed to these gadgets, I have tended to become more receptive of their use in the classrooms.

Hi Leslie. I enjoyed reading your post. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment of how being authoritarian undermines your authenticity as a teacher. Particularly as a new teacher who is not that much older than my students, I can definitely see how it would be tempting to adopt a controlling teaching style as a means of coping with anxiety and the vulnerability that comes with being inexperienced. As you say though, all this really does is create distance between you and your students. Being honest with your students and with yourself about things you don’t know will lead to a more authentic relationship in the long run.

Awesome post! dont know how I missed this one! The explanations that you have provided why gaming is fun and studying is not do make a lot of sense.