Elizabeth Green's New York Times article, "Building a Better Teacher" has been receiving a lot of press as of late. It's true. I was never trained to be a teacher. I have a master's degree in education and jumped all the hoops to get my licensure, and I was absolutely never trained in the practical everyday-ness of being a teacher. When I taught in private schools, I struggled somewhat, but it was never debilitating. But my lack of skills has made me completely incompetent to do my job now.
What tips did I pick up from the article:
- Stand still when giving directions. Don't walk around or be doing anything else at the same time.
- Be very specific with directions and model.
- Point out and thank the kids who are doing that behavior.
- Correction needs to come with a smile and a reason. "Sweetie, we don't do that because it distracts our classmates."
- Ask the question, and then call a random student.
- Give students nicknames.
- Play learning games.
- Establish norms and routines for classroom discourse.
You have to not only know the subject matter intimately, but you have to be able to think the way the students think. You have to think of at least 30 ways another brain might be interacting with this information. The teachers that are the most successful at that get higher test scores. They've made an M.K.T. (Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching) test that can test this ability for math teachers.
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