Sixteen Dimensions of Effective Teaching

There's been a great deal of discussion lately about "the effective teacher" and whether it's possible to measure teaching effectiveness. Obviously, great teaching can take many different forms. There is not one mold. If there were such a thing, schools would have great teachers coming out of their windows, which they definitely don't. Our schools are blessed with a high percentage of DEVOTED teachers, but devotion and effectiveness don't necessarily go hand in hand. A teacher can work hard but not possess the know-how to provide students a stimulating, inspiring, growth-inducing environment. But while all great teachers are not identical, they all resemble each other in a number of ways. I propose the following list and respectfully suggest that teachers evaluate their classroom practices against it. Probably no teacher employs all these best practices, but all great teachers employ the majority of them most of the time. So here are what I'll call:

                                  The Sixteen Dimensions of Effective Teaching

1. The Effective Teacher is a leader of a team (not an adversary or a judge)

2. The Effective Teacher plays with the rules (not by the rules, which were not written to facilitate learning)

3. The Effective Teacher compels with energy, enthusiasm and competence (not with threat or as a given of the position)

4. The Effective Teacher focuses on learning (not on grades or deadlines or obedience)

5. The Effective Teacher keeps students active (not passive or in their place)

6. The Effective Teacher demands a lot and grades on effort (not on level of achievement)

7. The Effective Teacher maintains multiple open roads to success and definitions thereof (not one)

8. The Effective Teacher designs lessons that are within reach of all and challenge all (not ones that target a single [low, middle or high] level)

9. The Effective Teacher uses the book in multiples ways (not one)

10. The Effective Teacher engages student participation in the teaching process (not just the learning process)

11. The Effective Teacher is open and positive (not always right or in control)

12. The Effective Teacher loves teaching and the subject and designs lessons that lure the students into a love of it (as opposed to those who are teaching simply because they were good at the subject in school or who like summers off and getting home by 4 pm)

13. The Effective Teacher covers material many times always connecting the current material to that which has been learned in previous lessons (rather than focusing exclusively on the new material)

14. The Effective Teacher asks students to think (not to memorize)

15. The Effective Teacher’s classroom is playful and energizing (not grave or alienating)

16. The Effective Teacher models the behavior desired of students (not “Do as I say, not as I do”)

The Disappearing Male Student

Among the less discussed reasons for men graduating in fewer numbers than women is the unfavorable treatment received by boys in primary and secondary schools in the United States. Boys tend to need to learn actively, by playing and creating and trying things out. Boys learn through energetic engagement. Much to their misfortune, misbehavior is defined in the educational context as just that: energetic engagement. Now there are exceptions of course; some lucky boys possess the constitution required in most of our classrooms -- immobility and receptivity being the two prized modes of behavior -- and, ironically, it is the presence in the classroom of these few exceptional boys -- the inevitable teachers' favorites -- which provides the justification for demanding such an attitude from all boys. If those two exceptionally mature and intellectually precocious boys up there in the front row are prospering in my classroom, then there is something wrong with the other 12 boys (as well as the 3 hopeless Chatty-Kathys) The preponderance of primary and secondary teachers are of course female, and this explains part of the issue. These women teach in a manner to which they responded positively when they were the age of their students. In addition, the development of one's gender identity advances to some degree as a process of reaction, of creating in oneself a contrasting set of behaviors and attitudes to that of the opposite gender. In the case of boys, they are identifying with the father figure and male figures in general while individuating from the mother and setting up distinctions between themselves and the female of the species, among whom their teachers. Indeed, male teachers tend to distinguish themselves from their female counterparts in that it is the male teachers who find a way to liberate male energy by offering the option of producing a video, growing a garden, allowing the class to redesign the classroom, to work in groups, to visit local institutions, to display mastery of material through skits, to chatter and laugh; in other words, to learn through activity rather than through sitting obediently in one place for hours.

Patriotism

The less educated you are, the less you have mingled with people different from yourself and the less you read, the more likely it is that you will think your birthplace is the number one place of all to be from. If, in addition, you yourself have been humiliated in your youth, then you will easily accept that masculinity means intimidating the vulnerable and the more you will believe that visiting violence upon the those different from yourself will resolve your feelings of helpless rage.