101 Teaching Tips, Half-Truths, And Random Musings
- It’s okay to close your door sometimes.
- If the students aren’t responding, do something different.
- Resist generalizations, e.g., “they’re just not getting it,” or “they’re doing great.” There is no “they”—they are 25 unique students and unique levels of performance.
- Do not focus on standards. Focus on the thinking habits of your students.
- Students will remember little of what you taught them, but will never forget the way you make them feel.
- Curiosity and questioning are the roots of all learning.
- You are a professional. Strive to project that image at all times, even when you think no one is looking.
- Be reachable to students after they leave your classroom. (Start a facebook teacher page, Google+ community, twitter account, etc.)
- Doggedly pursue uncovering what students actually understand through unique assessment forms, rather than focusing on their performance on “the” assessment.
- Pick three or four students per class as general “signposts,” and use them to guide your teaching.
- Worry less about teacher actions, more about learner actions.
- Help your students publish.
- Differentiation is not about learning styles, but about different learning experiences for different students with different needs.
- It’s okay to teach differently than the teacher down the hall.
- Smile because of what you do, not how your day is going.
- There is a degree of showmanship to teaching.
- Eat lunch with students, and sit (or stand) with them at rallies.
- Strive for diversity in everything–instructional strategies, digital platforms, media forms, grouping strategies, etc.
- Don’t try to change too many things at one time.
- No matter their appearance, actions, or behavior, talk to parents as equitable partners in the learning of their children.
- Know that it’s okay to be a crazy teacher.
- In all but the most obvious situations, resist trying to change a team, department, grade level, or other pocket of school culture. Lead by example, not words or directly challenging.
- Learn to listen to others—really listen instead of thinking of whether or not you agree, or waiting for your turn to talk.
- Thank others constantly. You never know what they’re going through. Also, no matter how bad it gets, someone somewhere would do anything for your job. Be humble and gracious.
- Find a mentor.
- You’re never as good as you think you are; you’re never as bad as you think you are either.
- Value team-building activities.
- Don’t stereotype 21st century learners. They’re nothing as a group, only revealing themselves as individuals.
- Know your own biases.
- Help students see their own potential.
- Realize that students are growing up in a world decidedly different from the one you were educated in.
- Visualize the way a lesson or activity will go before teaching it.
- Wait for quiet before you begin speaking. Have a simple, polite and consistent method of gathering students’ attention before speaking—something other than counting backwards from 5.
- If you’re planning formal learning sequences, use backwards planning.
- If you’re planning formal learning sequences, become fluent in curriculum mapping, scope-and-sequencing, etc.
- Learn your students’ names as quickly as possible, and then make sure you’re calling them what they want to be called.
- Don’t take behavior problems personally no matter their appearance. They never are.
- It’s not about you. Don’t force your way.
- You are not there to teach, you are there so that students may learn. This is an important paradigm shift, but doesn’t mean you’re not accountable when they’re not learning.
- Don’t be afraid to switch content areas, grade levels, schools, or districts.
- Teaching a content area that you don’t consider yourself super knowledgeable about can better help you understand teaching itself.
- Focus on reading and writing no matter what you teach.
- Be early to meetings. Everyone is as busy as you are.
- Learn how to compliment without sounding patronizing.
- What students go through at home is light years more important to them than today’s lesson. And that’s okay.
- Teach tolerance by modeling it.
- Intentionally brand your classroom.
- Focus as much on learning spaces as you do on processes.
- Know the difference between declarative and procedural knowledge.
- Use Bloom’s Taxonomy, 6 Facets of Understanding, or our own Understanding Taxonomy to measure understanding.
- Each day you have a finite amount of emotional energy. Use it wisely.
- Never raise your voice.
- Everyone is charismatic somehow. Know how you are and use it.
- Use “wait time” creatively.
- If you use sarcasm, be careful.
- Don’t compete with other teachers.
- Actively participate in staff meetings no matter your mood or personal feelings.
- Try blended learning, but start small.
- Use analogies—or better yet, have students create analogies.
- Concept maps are your friends—for assessment, struggling writers, pre-writing, tracking narrative structures, or simple navigating complex ideas.
- Use technology to make the classroom walls transparent.
- Use a wide variety of physical and digital media.
- Believe in yourself and your students equally.
- It’s hard for students to learn from teachers they don’t like no matter how much you’d think this shouldn’t be true.
- Have a great classroom library—especially in math, science, social studies, etc.
- Be vulnerable.
- Teach in the moment. When you leave school each day, that day is gone. Don’t constantly teach for some nebulous future or foreboding exam. Live and learn in the now.
- Create reference sheets of commonly-used practices, formulas, graphic organizers, terms, etc., and have students keep those in their binders, or digitally.
- Use write-arounds across all content areas to allow students to quietly build on one another’s thinking.
- Assume the best.
- Do all that you can to not take work home. (It’s possible.)
- Be aware of how you look to others—students, staff, parents, etc.
- Help your students outgrow you.
- Focus on learning habits and Habits of Mind.
- Become a master at asking questions. Then help your students become even better.
- Focus on macro thinking patterns—cause-effect, compare-contrast, analogous situations, patterns, systems, etc., so that you can help students do the same.
- Pay attention if students never, ever seem to want to be around you.
- If your ideas on teaching and learning aren’t evolving over time, something may be missing from your workflow.
- Use the walls of your classroom to reach out to students with words and images that resonate, and then change it more than once a year. It’s their learning space, not yours.
- Have multiple, go-to methods of grouping students based on different needs—reading level, readiness, interest, etc.
- Make sure your students are working harder than you do. If they aren’t, change that immediately.
- Change lessons and units annually.
- Allow the students to know you as a person.
- Create and use a YouTube channel for something. It’s an incredible distribution tool.
- Use twitter, blogging, or some other persistent method of staying in touch with teachers outside your building.
- Take chances in professional development.
- Learn to tell stories, jokes, and riddles. Also use puzzles, paradoxes, moving music, and startling images.
- You often have to reach students emotionally before you do intellectually.
- Model making mistakes.
- Help students learn to play with content and ideas.
- Get learner’s attention early—early in the year, in a lesson, in a unit.
- Model not knowing.
- Use positive presuppositions without patronizing.
- Prove to students that you believe in them.
- The most basic teaching pattern of all is show me, help me, let me. Consider using it.
- Have students curate their own digital portfolios.
- Anticipate misunderstandings.
- Have multiple, easy-to-access data sources from inside and beyond your classroom.
- Don’t grade everything.
- If you’re not using some form of project-based learning, have a good reason.
- Blend the physical and the digital; offline and online spaces.
