Teaching Tip #130

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #130

Another great podcast I came across was from Dale Partridge.  Again, he is from the world of business, but his ideas on quality apply just as well to teaching.

One of my favorite things that Partridge focuses on is quality.

And we all want quality - whether it’s in our products (think Craftsman tools, Tiffany jewelry, or apple computers) or customer service (think Menards, Chick Fil A, Carmax, or Hardware Hank).

Partridge looks at the four aspects of quality -

1.  Physical quality.  In the world of business, customers are influenced by the physical organization of the store or the design of the website (pretty much every single school website fails at this and the classic example is Reddit.  I can’t make any damn sense of all the clutter on Reddit.  If they redesigned it, I have no doubt I’d be addicted) or the ease with which you can use an app (I am reminded of this every damn time apple updates iTunes.  They do it every time I just become fluent with the old version of iTunes so that I have to learn it all over again, though I have to say that they finally got it right with the newest incantation of iTunes, which allows me to search my library much, much easier).

So how does this apply to teachers?

I would suggest looking at our rooms.  Like it or not, I think your room has to be engaging.  If it’s plain and boring - regardless of how energetic and great your teaching might be - it will impact the students.  If your room is a totally disaster, what does that say to the students?   That’s one thing I hate about both Wal-mart and Kmart.  They always have crap jammed in the aisles.  Not the case with Target.  Of course, that is one reason we can’t walk into Target without spending less than $300.