I think that the key to successful teaching is to”know what you know”, be honest about it, and be yourself… I think that you have done a great job in implementing these practices and it’s incredible that it came so naturally to you! Students understand and feel most of of our emotions when we are teaching, and for this reason honesty goes a long way…

I think that the key to successful teaching is to”know what you know”, be honest about it, and be yourself… I think that you have done a great job in implementing these practices and it’s incredible that it came so naturally to you! Students understand and feel most of of our emotions when we are teaching, and for this reason honesty goes a long way…

Wow! This is incredible! Coding was/is always such a brutal experience for me! I am sure that I would have learned a lot more if I tried to develop a code that is as fun as this! One other take away from this exercise is to let the learners design what they care for and if we have to assign a certain project to all students then try to embed all the important take ways of the project in fun activities…

Great insights! I am definitely with you on that… The balance is very much important! I believe that the more time children spend outdoors and engage in social activities, the more their imagination is triggered… Yes connected learning is important… However I think that connected learning can also happen without digital learning in the real world with real interactions. Of course it’s always good to facilitate the learning process in different ways so digital learning should not be neglected but it should also not be the at all be the main tool for triggering the imagination of learners. Being 26 I have experienced both digital and non-digital learning at a very young age and I can say that some all of the experiences that triggered my imagination happened outside the digital world.

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Great points! One thing that I want to add to posing questions is balancing the amount of questions. I have been in courses where the instructor confuses the students by asking too many questions and answering a questions with another question! I think that defeats the purpose of asking questions… Since by asking questions we are teaching students to be critical thinkers and trying to guide them to the right path… However too many questions will just confuse the learns.

I had a similar experience when I tried to tutor fellow students in math in high school…I thought, “well I’m good at math, this means I’ll be great at teaching it!.” This turned out to be wrong (if anything, math coming easily to me might have hindered me from being able to teach it to others?). University students are fortunate to be able to learn from leading scholars and researchers, but I agree that professors should also know something about how (as opposed to what) to teach. I’ve always thought it’s interesting that, for example, elementary school teachers generally need a degree in education in order to get a job, but university professors don’t necessarily need a degree, class, or certificate in education or even teaching experience to secure a position (although, additional teaching efforts such as these do make you more likely to get a job, perhaps). Thanks for the post!

We must have been on the same wavelength! (the title of my post is “Be yourself” and I wrote about something similar). One of the links I posted in my blog is to an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education called “Desperate to Be Liked.” The author laments not being the “hip” professor and comes to terms with being herself. I thought the piece was humorous and thought I’d share the reference to a fellow be-yourself-er. Thanks for the post!

I definitely want to clarify that I DO NOT believe that teaching is a form of entertainment. I believe that acting and teaching uses the same skill set which takes hard work, dedication, and practice to master. Teaching can certainly be entertaining at times, but I don’t think it is a form of entertainment. The distinction here being the role of an audience is very different than the role of the student.

Nice post! I enjoyed how you related teaching to acting/performance but also stopped short of suggesting that instructors should be entertainers (a pressure I sometimes feel). I also like that you emphasize how it takes dedicated practice to become a good teacher (or actor), which goes against the common T.A. or new assistant professor model of “Here’s the syllabus from last year; you’ll figure it out!.”