Teacherscribe's Teaching Thought #1 (in-service week)

Inservice Teaching Thought #1 –

What is good teaching?

Good teaching like ‘good’ just about anything (cooking, decorating, gardening, directing . . .) looks different per teacher.  In fact, I don’t know if I can really tell you what ‘good’ teaching is.  I can certainly explain what bad teaching is, for it’s much like what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said when defining objectionable material: I’m not sure what it is . . . “But I know it when I see it.”  I think this relates to bad teaching, for through much of my time as a student, I was subjected to terrible teaching.  I recall days spent in class where there was nothing comparable to a “lesson plan” much less a “learning target” evident to anyone, perhaps even the teacher.  I recall copious amounts of busywork, lecture (and I’m talking about the type of lecture that is done not to communicate material but to fill the time), and zero engagement.

BUT since I’ve been tasked with defining good teaching, I better give it a shot.

Good teaching doesn’t have one set formula (sorry Madeline Hunter and, worse still, Harry K. Wong). But just like bad teaching, you can tell good teaching when you see it . . . Good teaching is a lot like good coaching.  It offers a lot of formative assessment.  This is certainly not easily done in large classrooms, but technology certainly can assist with that.  Good teaching ‘moves’ a student.  This movement might be from opening activity in which the learning target is shared and explained to the main part of the lesson to the evidence of learning which the students demonstrate for the teacher and themselves.  It certainly moves them along the spectrum of I do, we do, you do.  Even though that always tends to look more like I do, I do, I do, we try, I do yet again, we try another time, we almost do, I do, I do, I do, we try and then we do, we do, and you try, you try, you try, and then you finally do. 

Good teaching is also about connections.  Good teaching involves constantly bringing in connections from the outside world (whether it’s an obscure reference to a Friends episode (or better yet, a Seinfeld episode) or whether it’s a commercial you saw on TV the light before or how someone acted in Sam’s Club or something you read on the Huffington Post) to what is being learned in class.  Good teaching involves connecting a student with a new insight or perspective that they would (likely) have never encountered without the teacher and the materials.  This is done in order to ‘move’ the student from some form of ignorance to some form of greater appreciation, understanding, or enlightenment.  Good teaching using this connection to move the student from what she or he originally thought toward a new understanding or opinion.  At its best good teaching moves students to change their minds.  At its best, good teaching moves the teacher to change his or her mind too.

Ultimately, good teaching is a recursive process.  My best classes are a two-way street.  I learn from them just as they learn from me.  But that’s what good teaching looks like in room 205, not what it might look like room 123, the gym, or the choir room.