Ten Tips for Teachers
Lessons to help make the most of learning experiences
Whether I’m teaching young kids or adults, these ten tips tend to make my experience easier, more enjoyable, and more effective. I wish I had learned them sooner.
Let students teach.
Teaching is the highest form of understanding, according to Aristotle. There is power in organizing concepts coherently enough to explain them to someone else.
Set up activities to give your learners opportunities to achieve that. Break down concepts into manageable parts and model what good teaching looks like. Learners can teach one another in pairs or larger groups. As long as you are there as a backstop, students usually prefer learning from peers, too.
Give them time to struggle in class.
Teachers are filled with compassion. That’s why you do what you do. So it hurts to see students fail, even in small doses. Learning science teaches us, however, that the struggle is highly beneficial. “Desirable difficulties” allow brains to gear up for better understanding and retention.
You can let silence do the work or you can give them problems to work on with classmates. As they think and struggle, either alone or with peers, they will make progress. Don’t…
