What The Best College Teachers Do

What Is The Greatest Strength Of A Teacher

What makes a good teacher great? | Azul Terronez | TEDxSantoDomingo

In my professional life, my communication skills and empathy for the emotional needs of children, especially those in primary school, have proven to be among my best assets. I do not have a difficult time gaining the trust of my pupils because I understand how they feel in different situations and am able to utilize the appropriate language in my classes.

They Have A Healthy Outlook On Failure

This one might be my favourite. A lot of people in academiaare uncomfortable with failure. And so we tend to not talk about it as often aswe should.

But people are recognizing the importance of failure! What used to be almost taboo is now a trendy talking point in all sorts of conversations about success, wellness, and life in general.

We do our best to set up our students for success, but the fact is that sometimes, like all human beings, they fail. Our students need to know how to deal with the aftermath of failure.

The best profs teach students about failure, and even talk about their own past failures and bouncebacks

They Are Guided By Empathy

Part of what makes your favourite teachers so great is thatthey have a human side to them: they understand that life can be unpredictableand they are willing to cut you some slack if they can.

One example is due dates. How important is it really thatstudents hand in their assignment by 5:00pm? Sure, there are a few deadlinesthat need to be met , but most of the deadlines youset in your course are probably somewhat arbitrary.

Dont get me wrong students do need to learn how to manage their time and meet expectations. But sometimes people face hurdles that turns their life on their head, and these hurdles are not always officially recognized by the school for accommodations.

Considering students situations through an empathetic lens is what the best college teachers do. You can use these empathetic course policies to help frame yourself as an understanding prof and join the rank of amazing profs!

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What Do They Do When They Teach

Create challenging yet supportive conditions in which learners feel a sense of control over their education

Have learners work collaboratively with others

Students believe that their work will be considered fairly and honestly

Students can try, fail, and receive feedback from expert learners in advance and separate from any summative judgment

How Would You Describe A College Professor

The most crucial characteristics of a good lecturer are their expertise, kindness, cooperation, and openness to new ideas! The subject is something that you are passionate about. The ability to understand the subject. Respect for the individual and potential of all pupils, without regard for race or ethnicity.

What Do Best Lecturers Do

Good instructors accomplish two things really well: first, they establish a favorable learning atmosphere in which students may take pleasure in their studies. Second, they aid and empower students to reach their learning objectives during the course of the learning process. However, it is not as straightforward as that. This position necessitates the possession of a number of crucial abilities and characteristics.

The Common Philosophy Of The Heart

Superior teachers have a strong sense of commitment to the academic community and not just to personal success in the classroom. They see their own efforts as a small part of a larger educational enterprise rather than as an opportunity to display personal prowess. In their minds, they are mere contributors to a learning environment that demands attention from a fellowship of scholars. They frequently work on major curriculum initiatives and join public conversations about how to improve teaching in the institution. Many of them talk about how the success of their own teaching hinges on something students learn in other classes. Consequently, they maintain vigorous exchanges with colleagues about how best to educate students, and often cite something they learn from working with others. Fundamentally, they are learners, constantly trying to improve their own efforts to foster student’s development, and never completely satisfied with what they had already achieved.

Center for Teaching Excellence

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What Do The Best College Teachers Do Bain’s Six Habits

1. Intellectual engagement: It probably goes without saying, but all the teachers in Bains study are deeply engaged with the subjects they teach. They are not necessarily highly-respected researchers in their field indeed, the best researchers often fail to be the best teachers but they do care about their subjects. In particular, they tend to have a good understanding of the controversies that shaped the history of their subject , and an ability to think about their subjects at a metacognitive level. That is to say, they can identify potential stumbling blocks to understanding and they can carefully guide students around these stumbling blocks.

2. Student-focused: The teachers studied by Bain tended to prepare for teaching by focusing first on what the students should get out of the subject not on what they themselves needed to do. This may sound obvious but many teachers struggle with it. They focus on the material they need to cover and how they need to present themselves, not on what the students should achieve. I think shifting perspective in this way is helpful: I know from my own experience that there is a tendency to obsess over what you yourself are doing and how you appear, not on what the pedagogical goal is. Self-obsession is probably my worst vice and one I have to work hard to overcome.

They Teach The Essentials

The One Thing All Great Teachers Do | Nick Fuhrman | TEDxUGA

Students have finite resources. Completing assignments thatdont prepare them for larger exams, course learning outcomes, or the workforcewastes their time, energy, and motivation.

The best teachers are lean, green, teaching machines, and itshows in their curriculum. Every class activity and assessment has a clearpurpose.

Whats more, the students are aware of this logic. They understand how each assignment prepares them for their career, which helps students take the course more seriously.

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What The Best College Students Do Chapter 4 Summary

Learning How to Embrace Failure reminds us that we may gain a great deal from our failures and blunders. This assists us in developing the growth mentality necessary to think that one individual can make a difference in the world if he or she works hard enough. When you learn from experience, it is through reflection on that experience that you gain knowledge .

They Think About Equity

Our classrooms are full of students with all sorts of backgrounds with diversity across gender, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ability, language, and countless others. The most outstanding teachers realize that students experience the same lesson differently depending on their identity, and they work to teach in a way that doesnt favour/disfavour any group in particular.

This is a tricky topic, because most people never try to exclude a particular group, but sometimes it happens by accident. And when it does, we need to approach the situation gracefully and learn from our mistakes.

Although nobody will ever be perfectly equitable, we should still work to become more conscientious. And the best place for this kind of learning is in person with your local human rights and advocacy groups.

Look for events with titles like anti-oppression workshop,safe space training, intercultural competency training, and be prepared tobe uncomfortable. But also get ready tosee your classroom in a new light, and explore ways to make your classroom moresocially equitable!

Reflection is paramount to equitable teaching. Some of thequestions you might ask yourself include:

Who is not included / at a disadvantage if Iteach this lesson this way?
Whose work is featured in my lessons?
What culture am I promoting with this content?Is there room for other cultural perspectives?

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Their Actions Are Learner

Teaching is not about you, its about your students. Thebest teachers know this and focus their efforts on supporting students as theydevelop.

Good teachers dont baby their students: they help learnersidentify their weaknesses and improve. They are like personal trainers theydont do the work for the client, rather they offer professional advice andguidance to help the client improve.

Students get results when they are challenged effectively by their professor, which requires you to keep the student in mind when teaching. Connecting actions and lessons back to the learner is what the best college teachers do every class.

What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain isn’t really about what the “best” college teachers do. Instead, it mostly describes their attitude about their course and their students . So a more accurate title, in my opinion, would be How the Best College Teachers Feel.

In the same vein, it’s not very prescriptive either. Instead of saying “you should do X, not Y,” it says things like “the best professors do X while the worst professors do Y.” And most of the X’s and Y’s in this book are fairly obvious, or so vague that everyone would agree with them. For example, the best professors speak clearly and care about their students. The worst professors, as you’ve probably guessed, do not.

The definition of “best” is somewhat subjective, and the book goes to great lengths to describe how these “best” teachers were chosen. Basically, the teachers studied for this book inspired their students to continue learning, and the material they taught is “worthy” of learning. The book admits that these criteria, especially the latter one, are still somewhat subjective. But this didn’t really bother me, because I think “measuring” the quality of teachers is inherently a subjective task.

It does makes me wonder though if I’ve ever had a teacher that this book would consider among the best. No offense to my teachers, of course.

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They See Students As Partners

Your students are your future colleagues and leaders. Letthat one sink in.

Although they are still learning they will go on to have some really important responsibilities in theirlives. One day, they will be making big decisions that affect the sector.

But today they are in your class. Most have a lot of the traits, skills, and knowledge that you use every day. And those who dont need an opportunity to develop.

Amazing profs make space in their classroom for students to grow into their professional selves!

People tend to act the way you treat them. Profs whocomplain that their students are immature and childish probably treat them assuch.

If you want to work with educated adults, view your students as who they literally are: educated adults. Given the right environment, they can probably meet and surpass the high expectations you set for them.

This shift in thinking radically changes the way students feel in your class and is a marker of an excellent teacher.

What The Best College Students Do Summary

The book is What the Best College Students Do, written by Ken Bain, and it is a compilation of original interviews and existing research about what makes students successful in college, supplemented by stories about creatively engaged post-college individuals who add value through their work and to their communitiesand what they did in college to achieve success.

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