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You can't just learn how to be an effective teacher. One must be able to interact understand a new way to see the world. Teachers who are effective, adjust their teaching style for their own students outcomes, and much more!

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The skills needed for effective teaching involve more than just expertise in an academic field. You must be able to interact with people and help them understand a new way of looking at the world. This is not an easy job! Although there are many different ways to teach effectively, good instructors have several qualities in common. They are prepared, set clear and fair expectations, have a positive attitude, are patient with students, and assess their teaching on a regular basis. They are able to adjust their teaching strategies to fit both the students and the material, recognizing that different students learn in different ways. As a teacher, you are a role model who sets the tone for the class. If you are able to show enthusiasm and commitment, your students are more likely to reciprocate. Conversely, when you are negative, unprepared, or impatient, these qualities will be reflected in the attitudes of your students. Undergraduate students at Georgetown have high expectations of their instructors, and they also have many competing interests beyond the course you are teaching. Give them a reason to remember your class as an important part of their college experience!

Keep your students engaged with a positive attitude. Teaching is most effective when students are motivated by the desire to learn, rather than by grades or degree requirements. Many first-time TAs are confused by the new authority of being a teaching assistant, and mistake intimidation for respect. Think of your students as teammates, not adversaries. Learning and teaching are challenging, but that doesn't mean that you can't have fun in the classroom. Stay focused, but don't be afraid to be creative and innovative. Allow yourself to be enthusiastic and find ways to let students see what is interesting about your subject.

You should know the course material. If students are required to attend lectures and read assignments, then it seems reasonable that you would do the same. Most faculty expect graduate TAs to attend lectures, especially if they have never taken or taught the course. Review key concepts and ideas if you are unclear about them, particularly if it has been a while since you have worked with the topics you will be teaching. Think about how the material can be most effectively demonstrated and design a strategy. Write an outline or take notes to follow during a lecture, and prepare your overheads, diagrams, handouts and other aids well in advance. Don't wait until the morning of the class!

Have a plan for what you want to teach. Your job is to illustrate key points and essential context, to help students integrate all of their work (reading, labs, exams, papers, lectures, etc.) for the course. Given that there is never time to teach everything, choose the most important concepts and show how they are related. Explain ideas so students are able to build on material they have already mastered, whether from your course or previous classes. Don't just focus on what you happen to be teaching today. Show students how what they are learning now is connected to material covered later in the course. Keep your long term goals in mind, pace yourself so that you don't run out of time at the end, and try to end every class with a conclusion.

Effective teachers can explain complex ideas in simple ways. As you develop expertise in an academic field, it is easy to forget that students may have no prior knowledge of fundamental concepts that you take for granted. Help students understand and use new terminology, so they can become fluent in the language of your discipline. Many concepts can be more effectively demonstrated with visual aids such as diagrams, drawings, charts, slides, etc. Make sure that they are large enough to see, neat enough to read, and don't stand in the way! Think about the role body language can play. Having your teaching observed by someone else (or even better, having it videotaped) can reveal habits that you would never notice on your own.

Keep your students thinking. Unless they are actively using the concepts you are teaching, most students will remember only a small fraction of what you teach. A lecture is an efficient way to deliver information to large numbers of people, but it is an inefficient way to provide students with lasting knowledge and skills. Consider using at least some classroom time for activities other than traditional lectures, discussions or question and answer sessions. Problem solving exercises in small groups can take no more than a few minutes, yet allow students to engage with the material being covered.

Remember what it is like to learn something for the first time. Give students time to process information and answer questions. Know that it is fine for students to make mistakes if they can learn from them. Realize that learning can be hard work, even for the most motivated students. Rather than blaming students when things don't go right, consider ways you could change your approach to reach them more effectively. Concepts, background information or conclusions that seem obvious to you may not be so clear to someone who is new to the subject. Be patient with yourself, too. Teaching can be difficult and frustrating at times. Give yourself the same opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them.

Consider what it would be like to be one of your students. Chances are you would want an instructor who set clear expectations, applied them consistently and could admit when they were wrong. Whether you mark off points on an exam question, give a low grade on a paper, or penalize someone for a late assignment, you should be able to explain why you did it. Of course it helps if you have already outlined clear policies, both for the entire course and for each assignment. Once you have set standards, it is very important to apply them equally and consistently, otherwise you will lose credibility. On the other hand, if you make a mistake or don't know the answer to a question, it is much better to acknowledge rather than ignore it.

TECHNOLOGY TIP

Since it is often hard to remember what it is like to encounter your discipline's material at an early stage, peer instruction offers an alternative to the "sage on stage" model. Peer instruction, which usually happens in small group activities or paper response assignments, allows students to get feedback at their own level of discourse and understanding. This provides a helpful complement (not replacement) to instructor feedback. Technology such as the discussion tool in Blackboard helps peer groups stay in contact over long distances and over different periods of time.

WHAT IS YOUR LEARNING STYLE?

CNDLS has several ways of helping you discover the learning styles you tend to favor. Being more aware of your own tendencies will help you recognize similar or different preferences in your students and react accordingly. Besides the more well-known Myers-Briggs test and visual, auditory, and tactile differences, there are also documented differences in how people problem solve. For instance, you might prefer identifying problems, evaluating solutions, or testing solutions. This might affect what assignments you give, what you focus on in a lecture or discussion, and how you weight grades. Visit us to find out more, either in our suite, Car Barn 314, or online at the CNDLS website.

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E-mail is an excellent and perfectly acceptable way to give feedback to your students. In fact, several professors ask their students to turn in assignments over e-mail. By having a digital copy of students' work, faculty can make comments using the editing tools in Word, have access to the papers wherever there is an internet connection, and keep up with less paper-work, not to mention having a date and time record of when the student turned in the work.
Top Qualities of an Effective Teacher
Teaching as a Process
Starting Out
Leading Discussions & Laboratory Sections
Assignments, Papers, Exams
Assessment: Knowing How Students Learn
Technology and Teaching
Issues and Ethics
Pluralism
More Resources

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The skills needed for effective teaching involve more than just expertise in an academic field. You must be able to interact with people and help them understand a new way of looking at the world. This is not an easy job! Although there are many different ways to teach effectively, good instructors have several qualities in common.

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Great, concrete examples from theory teacher effectiveness that can be implemented in the classroom.

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Teacher Effectiveness: 5 Characteristics of Quality Teaching

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Here are some characteristics that make an effective teacher. "We can all strive to embody the qualities these students responded so well to".

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12 Characteristics of an Effective Teacher

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One professor asked his students what they considered to be the most effective characteristics of their former teachers. Here’s what they said.

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Heart, Hands, and Head all go together.

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Not every student is going to be the easiest. Acknowledging and understanding them for who they are is essential.

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Inspirational Video- Be a Mr. Jensen- MUST WATCH!!

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If student's understand the concept of time management, they are likely to succeed in the class.

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With a better understanding of time, students are able to plan and prioritize their work in ways that support academic success.

John Holcroft / Ikon Images

Successful students are able to use their time effectively to get their work done. Teachers often encourage their students to use their time wisely and be efficient in their work habits without explicitly telling them how to do so. Providing explicit lessons on understanding time can be particularly challenging for new teachers, but there are several simple ways to teach students what time feels like. These lessons will make it much easier for students to independently self-monitor and better organize their time.

5 Ways to Teach Time

1. Encourage estimation. Before students begin an assignment, have them estimate how long they think it will take. After they complete the assignment, have them write down how long the assignment actually took and reflect on the estimation. Often students anticipate an assignment taking a shorter amount of time than it actually does. As a result, they may not set aside an adequate amount of time to complete the given assignment. Conversely, had they known the assignment would be completed quickly, the student may have prioritized work differently.

As students progress through school, we want them to become better at organizing their schedules and prioritizing tasks. When students estimate and then reflect, they can be more aware of how long a given task will take and will anticipate accordingly. Initially it's best to practice within class assignments. Once students have had practice, it can be incorporated into homework.

2. Use a visual. Use a timer that gives students a visual of the passing of time. This helps students stay on task and gives them a way to organize their time effectively. For example, if students have 10 minutes to finish four short written responses, when the timer hits 5 minutes, students should be reminded that they should be about halfway done. If this becomes a routine in a classroom, students can start to organize and prioritize the work they are completing independently.

3. Set a minimum. Teachers often give students a limit on the time they can use-for example, "You have 30 minutes to complete this assignment." Instead, try setting a minimum rather than a maximum. By letting students know that the task should take at least 20 minutes, you are prompting them to slow down and monitor. Students might confuse speed for success. They are eager to announce, "I'm done," but have rushed through the process.

Additionally, teachers can build in other systems that help students focus on the process rather than the product. For example, teachers can add in checklists or rubrics that students must refer to as they work on their assignment. This builds in natural moments of reflection.

4. Incorporate silent time. Time, or the feeling of being timed, can cause anxiety to rise. As stress increases, one's ability to utilize their executive functioning skills decreases.

At the beginning of a task or assessment, set a timer for a small amount of silent time, such as 5 minutes. During this time, students are not allowed to ask questions. You might find that when the 5 minutes are over, students have filtered their questions and either have gotten started or have identified their confusion. The use of silent time encourages students to implement a plan independently and initiate the task.

5. Try half timed and half not. When giving a task like recalling math facts, have students write their answers in pen for the first minute. Then, allow students to continue working untimed in pencil. This allows them to differentiate between automaticity and ability. Often the stress from being timed can negatively impact a student's ability to showcase their knowledge. The use of a pencil and pen also allows students to reflect on how time restraints impact their learning.

Students need to learn how to organize time to be effective and productive. Fifteen minutes of playtime or screen time feels different than 15 minutes of writing. When teachers are explicit and teach students how to use time and give them a significant amount of practice, students will begin to internalize time and be able to independently plan and prioritize a given task.

As students progress through school, they must eventually not only plan and prioritize a task but plan and prioritize many assignments over several weeks. In order to be successful, students must learn ways to organize their time efficiently and use their time effectively. If students can practice organizing their time when working on one task and experience success doing so, they can begin to generalize this skill and carry it out in their independent assignments.

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With a better understanding of time, students are able to plan and prioritize their work in ways that support academic success.

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Goal Setting Ideas for Teachers for the New School Year

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Grow as an educator and narrow your focus on the areas you want to improve on next school year with these goal setting ideas for teachers.

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Tips and Strategies: It is important to keep in touch with new education research.

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A collection of curriculum-planning tips, guidance, and other resources to help new teachers plan effective activities, lessons, and units.

Countdown to Your First Year: Making Planning Manageable: Need help figuring out where to start when planning for your first year of teaching? Discover answers to general questions, and find a few go-to resources. (Teaching Channel, 2014)

Backwards Planning Takes Thinking Ahead: Review five steps to backwards-plan your lessons-it's like preparing for a vacation. (Edutopia, 2012)

Understanding by Design Overview: Bookmark this step-by-step overview of the book Understanding by Design to better understand this approach to designing courses. (Vanderbilt University)

3 Ways to Plan for Diverse Learners: What Teachers Do: Focus on content, process, and product during lesson planning to give students opportunities to grow and shine as individuals. For more on differentiating instruction, the other posts in this series are great resources-also visit Edutopia's Differentiated Instruction page. (Edutopia, 2014)

Designing Learning That Matters: Explore four ideas for bringing the characteristics of deep learning to classrooms and school learning. (Edutopia, 2015)

To Teach Students First: Meet diverse learners' needs through a range of classroom strategies: lecture, discussion, experiential learning, games, student presentations, technology integration, and free response writing. (Edutopia, 2015)

Crafting Unit and Lesson Plans

Planning the Best Curriculum Unit Ever: Focus on the granular aspects of planning ahead for the new school year. Be sure to download the printable checklist associated with this post. (Edutopia, 2014)

9 Ways to Plan Transformational Lessons: Craft transformational lessons through planning, mindfulness, and a commitment to shift away from educational approaches of the past. Includes a printable tip list for easy reference. (Edutopia, 2014)

Aligning Instruction to Standards

Finding Open Resources

Free Is Good: An argument for why you should use open educational resources (OER) and information on where to find them. Includes a link to a Google Sheets compilation put together by the writer that lists more than 100 repositories of OER (Edutopia, 2017)

Academic Sponge Activities: Find examples of activities to soak up precious time that would otherwise be lost. Hint: They should be fun as well as educational. (Edutopia, 2014)

Implementing Project-Based Learning

Getting Started With Project-Based Learning: Hoping to pilot project-based learning (PBL) this year? Explore Edutopia's curated compilation of online resources for understanding and beginning to implement PBL. (Edutopia, updated 2016)

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New Teachers: Lesson and Curriculum Planning

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A collection of curriculum-planning tips, guidance, and other resources to help new teachers plan effective activities, lessons, and units.