1 Why Trust this Guide?

Brenda had come to teaching by a common path. Early in childhood, Brenda had begun to assume that she would teach, as some of her relatives taught. And so when high school ended, Brenda marched off to a teaching college, where she had soon earned her education degree. The school at which she did her student teaching hired her after graduation, first part time, then full time. Brenda was thus still in her early twenties when she began teaching. Unfortunately, she struggled, more deeply than she’d expected. Brenda even thought that perhaps she had chosen the wrong career. But something deep inside her told her to persist, despite her internal misgivings and apparent inadequacies. Yet the same quiet internal voice told her to seek a wise guide.

Teaching

Teaching can be either a calling or happenstance. Some of us pursue years of education, training, examination, credentialing, and certification in order to teach. We plan and make a career of it. Others of us fall into teaching without preparation or plan. Some of us pursue other careers and only come to teach later in life, out of deep experience in a different field and with broad experience in life. Others of us pursue teaching from the get go, right out of college, with no experience in other fields and with little experience yet in life. No matter the extent of our teaching education and experience, though, teaching will at times mystify us. The literature on teaching and learning is vast and can be difficult to parse and grasp. Sometimes, a teacher just needs a reminder of the goals, forms, customs, structures, and methods of teaching. And sometimes, a teacher needs some clearer strategic teaching advice and insight. Hence this guide, the goal of which is both to provide that basic outline and reminder, while also inspiring toward some deeper and fresher teaching and learning insights.

Gifting

Some of us seem gifted to teach, natural at it and comfortable with it, as if born to practice the craft. Others of us struggle to adopt the forms and practices of teachers, always feeling like fish out of water, awkward and unnatural at the craft. The odd thing is that the naturally gifted teacher and the awkward novice at the craft both face the same external challenge, which is to help students learn. It is not as if the gifted teacher gets the best students and therefore gets a teaching pass. Giftedness at teaching can surely ease and bless a teacher’s path. But both the gifted teacher and awkward novice start each school term with the same uninitiated students who need to learn. The giftedness of a teacher, whether small or large, must still somehow translate into student learning and development. And even gifted teachers struggle with certain students and classes of students. Every class of students brings new challenges, not just for the novice teacher but for masterful teachers, too. No matter your experience and skill level in teaching, and no matter your confidence in your teaching craft, be always on the lookout for another useful insight and reliable guide. 

Purpose

To state the same premise another way, the point of teaching is not in the teacher’s high art or keen craft. You may be a polished and confident instructor. No matter. The point of teaching is always external to the teacher, not internal. The point of teaching always has to do with student learning, not teacher poise, skill, experience, art, and craft. Your teaching really isn’t the point and purpose. Your impact on the student’s learning, whether positive or negative, and greater or less, is the purpose and point to your role as a teacher. Teaching would be a lot easier if teaching only meant feeling good about what you’re doing. Yet good teaching doesn’t mean a teacher’s own confidence at all. Some of the better teachers are the ones who approach every new term with a sense of their own inadequacy to the task and with a stronger sense of needing to learn more about their art, science, and craft. Thus, whether you are just starting out as a teacher or you have reached a significant level of mastery at the craft, keep a humble attitude. The unknowns of teaching always outweigh the knowns, just as is true with every other professional practice. Keep a humble and open stance.

Privilege

Consulting a teaching guide now and then may be a good idea because teaching is both an incredible privilege and incredible challenge. The privilege or gift of teaching is to hold precious in hand the attention, mind, and growth of students, each of whom has immeasurable capacity and worth. If the responsibility of teaching doesn’t from time to time humble you in that sense, then you might want to reconsider having taken on teaching as a role, job, or career. If you don’t at least now and then perceive the worth of your students, the value of their education, and the large responsibility and privilege you hold to teach them, then you might better leave teaching to someone who does. Teaching isn’t like sweeping the driveway or mowing the lawn. One doesn’t teach simply to get it out of the way or just to gussy things up a little bit. One instead teaches to aid students in their learning, growth, and development, when those students can’t replace the missed growth. Development adds onto development. Miss a year, and while you might catch up some, you don’t truly get back everything you missed. Teachers hold a precious responsibility. To make good on that privilege, keep an open mind to a reliable guide.

Challenge

The challenge of teaching is that its goal, student learning and growth, isn’t entirely within the teacher’s control. Teachers cannot force learning by, for instance, lecturing louder, longer, or clearer, presenting better-designed slides, assigning clearer readings, telling more-inspiring stories, or implementing better-designed assessments. At best, teachers can only influence learning and growth with improvement in their own art, science, and craft. Effective teachers construct the conditions for learning but don’t actually accomplish the learning itself. Learning remains within the student’s ultimate control. If the student refuses to learn, rejecting or ignoring the stimuli, activities, and assessments the teacher arranges, the teacher will fail right along with the student. And that’s only the biggest challenge of teaching. Teaching can also bring large doses of impostor syndrome, when one feels ill equipped to spur learning. Student cheating, class disruption, and other misbehaviors can also complicate teaching. So can meeting student and parent expectations, and dealing with schedules and administrative tasks. Teaching can also be physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting, all reasons to welcome the strategic advice and encouragement of this guide. 

Experience

This guide has both a research and experiential base. I taught full time for nearly two decades, after a couple of decades in law practice. My own teaching experience taught me a lot. The experiences of others teaching, though, taught me a lot more. I had the privilege of leading a couple of campuses, while observing, evaluating, supervising, and supporting a good number of faculty members. I observed hour after hour of their instruction over a decade and a half, while reading thousands of student evaluations on those faculty members. I also recruited a team of Ph.D. psychology students out of my university’s organizational-behavior institute, to observe, evaluate, and improve our instructional practices. I learned a lot over the several years of having those students observe and guide my teaching and the teaching of the other faculty members under my supervision. Our teaching practices changed significantly over those years. Our students’ performance on assessments, and our graduates’ performance on licensing exams, also improved markedly over those years, far outperforming their cohorts. This guide draws on that experience.

Research

This guide also draws on the vast literature of teaching and learning. My work supporting my school’s faculty members in their teaching led me to read hundreds of texts on teaching and learning. The behavioral psychology team with which I worked on redesigning my campuses’ instruction recommended some of those texts. The texts they recommended were especially insightful for their empirical studies of teaching and learning. A lot of education scholarship and literature is experience based, describing common practices, models, and theories of education that haven’t had rigorous empirical testing. Behavioral psychologists, by contrast, base their insights on observation and testing. Thus, my research includes science-backed studies, not simply descriptive texts. I have several book and article publications of my own to my credit, naming many of those teaching and learning studies and texts. Others wiser than me co-authored some of my teaching publications, including the psychologist director of the institute with which I teamed. For brevity’s sake, this guide doesn’t cite technical sources, although I base many of its recommendations on those sources. 

Recognition

My experience also includes presenting at teaching and learning conferences nationally, on some of the insights we gleaned from investigating and refining our own teaching practices. In the course of my doing so, I met and got to work with a special community of talented educators whose teaching credentials far exceed my own. They did, however, include me among a couple of dozen other educators in a Harvard University press publication on what the best educators in my field do. I’ve earned other teaching and practice awards, to the point that my school assigned me the role of enhancing instruction across its five campuses, among its one-hundred or so faculty members. I believe, in short, that my recognition indicates that this guide’s insights have faced reasonable testing and gained reasonable acceptance among responsible educators. Yet don’t judge this guide’s recommendations on any assertion of credentials. Instead, read them for the sense they make and insights they produce, enhancing your own instruction.  

Roadmap

The chapter and paragraph headings should make the guide’s structure reasonably apparent. The first few chapters lay some important groundwork about teaching, including what it is, who governs it, and why to pursue it. The next few chapters address how schools position teaching within a curriculum and courses aligned to meet standards, as assessments measure against defined performance objectives. The following chapters explore teaching practices from start to finish, beginning with syllabus and course design through readings, presentations, activities, review, examination, and grading. The last few chapters address technology use, inspiring as a teacher, obstacles to success, and thriving as a teacher. Each chapter begins with an illustrating story and ends with a reflection section and bullet-point summary of the chapter’s main points. 

Use

You may, of course, read the guide start to finish. Even if you don’t feel like you need to read some of the early chapters addressing teaching basics, you might at least scan them as a refresher for what you feel you already know and do. You might find a fresh view of a subject that has grown stale for you by its long use or by general inattention. You may alternatively choose and read only the chapters that address your greatest current need. If you do so, consider reading the bullet-point summaries for the chapters you skip. Whether you read a chapter closely or not, also consider reviewing the reflection questions at the chapter’s end. You may find that the questions trigger in you greater interest in the content of a chapter you skipped, so that you’ll go back and read it. You may also find that the questions help you discern whether you have truly grasped the chapter’s content, enough to know whether you are already putting its recommendations into practice. Don’t hesitate, too, to ask a respected colleague about any of the recommendations that you feel may have potential value. Your willingness to explore your teaching not only on your own but with colleagues can lend great value to your students and institution. 

Obstacles

Admittedly, it’s hard for any professional to take fresh stock of their own practices. Once we get some professional practice reasonably well down, we tend to want to rely on it, whether we could improve it or not. Your natural resistance toward evaluating your own teaching practices frankly is your greatest obstacle to enhancing your instruction. Studies of teachers tend to show that we consistently hold our skill and practices in higher regard than that of our colleagues, when to the contrary we can’t all be above average. Humility comes first. Don’t think you know it all. Indeed, the more that you learn about teaching, the less you may believe that you actually know. And that’s the beauty of learning, in that it unfolds the unknown only incompletely, showing with each unfolding that the unknown is vastly greater than the known. Your future teaching success may well lay in that great unknown more so than in what you currently know. 

Reflection

On a scale from one to ten, how masterful of a teacher would you say that you already are? Do you believe that you have more that you could learn about teaching, that might enhance your instructional practices and benefit your students? Who has been your best guide or inspiration for teaching? What did you learn from them? On whom do you presently rely for teaching advice when facing challenges? Could you build a better team around you for your teaching support? Do you continue to read teaching literature to see what more you could discern and deploy in your teaching? Do you write and publish about teaching, as a way to build your teaching knowledge and skill? Do you have a strong sense that teaching is a privilege? How much of a challenge do you find teaching to be, from only a minor or modest challenge, to a periodic sense of teaching overwhelming you? How do you respond when feeling overwhelmed as a teacher? 

Key Points

• Teachers benefit from guides, just like other professionals benefit.

• Whether you are a gifted or novice teacher, value strategic insight.

• This guide’s purpose is to help you help students learn more effectively.

• Teaching is an incredible privilege, given student capacity and worth.

• Teaching can also be an incredible challenge, coaxing learning.

• The author based this guide on substantial teaching experience.

• The author also based this guide on substantial teaching research.

• This guide’s strategic insight and advice has substantial recognition.

• This guide covers teaching from start to finish with other inspiration.

• Read the full guide, or choose the chapters addressing your issue.

• Beware your feeling of knowing everything that you need to know.

Read Chapter 2.