Well, that's unfortunate but I would prefer we not derail my thread into complaining about unethical teachers. I am looking for teaching strategies that worked.
Well, that's unfortunate but I would prefer we not derail my thread into complaining about unethical teachers. I am looking for teaching strategies that worked.
Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t.
Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die.
Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.
Blog of Fiction for You to Consume
Other Links
Spoiler:
While I do not have any teaching strategies that work, in my opinion there is no magic bullet strategy that works for everyone. Some people learn well from reading books directly, some people when their is group actives, others learn with group discussion and so forth.Originally Posted by Prix of Heroes
It is the teachers job to vary their teaching methods enough from day to day and minute to minute so that each of their students will be able to key into one of the methods and learn something. The reason why homeschooling or a private tutor can work amazing well is that the teacher can focus on their one student's learning method and issues and tailor their program to perfectly match them. The peg fits into the hole easily in that case. In classrooms, this can not be done so teachers have to use different tactics to reach the most students. The only way to fit the different pegs shapes and sizes that are the students is for the teacher to drill different size and shape holes by varying their teaching methods.
However, its important to note that one can not teach someone, if one they do not want to learn or two have so many problems outside the classroom that they are unable to focus. A child from a poor family that is not getting proper food at their home can not even begin to learn due to malnutrition is the fundamental reason why so many public schools have reduced or free meals for low income students.
That you are looking for teaching strategies that work is a sign to me that you are on the path of becoming a good educator.
Last edited by Skull Leader; May 21st, 2016 at 08:50 PM.
What subject would you be aiming to teach prix? Teaching maths is a very different ball game to teaching english for example. While yes you can teach english in a formulaic way, I find it more fun to allow people to express themselves in more creative ways. It was really funny because through years 7-9 (11-14) we where always told to use PEE paragraphs which stand for point, evidence, explanation. Then as soon as we get into year 10 and start the GCSE, our teacher basically says fuck PEE and then goes onto tell us to write sophisticated and interesting essays. While my english teacher probably isn't the best, she goes through the content in an interesting way, prompting class discussion on themes ect while also focusing on the exam and what we can say about language, imagery, form, structure, context ect. Basically her strategies work with set 1s XD.
My Ex.phil philosophy professor did use powerpoint presentations to sum up key points, but basically mostly he just talked, and we listened, and then constantly he would ask everyone questions about what we thought about this or that aspect of what we were discussing, what our opinions were. And then we would all talk about these things. He made us think a lot, and it wasn't just a one-way dialogue, but a discussion a lot of the time. He was really good at it too, and was really engaging, and covered everything so well that if you wrote down everything he said, and read on that before the exam, you would be set. No need for the schoolbooks for the subject. This is what I did (I had 30 pages of notes with condensed text), and I got an A. I remember thinking this guy was awesome.
In contrast I had this English grammar teacher who would rush through tons of powerpoint presentations without giving us nearly enough time to write them down, while she would also be talking non-stop without asking us anything or giving us any chance to come with any inputs. And of course since we were so busy writing for our lives because we were trying to get down as much in our notes as possible before she moved on to the next sheet, we also couldn't properly pay attention to what she was saying. Of course she was talking too fast and going through stuff too fast in that regard as well, so it wouldn't have mattered. God, she was really terrible at her job...
My English Linguistics (more specifically, "The Cultural History of the English Language - From Saxons to Shakespeare", as our teacher called the subject. ;-) ) teacher for the semester when I was studying in England had kind of like a comprehensive hybrid approach, which worked pretty well I seem to recall. She would spend some time during each lesson talking and going through points in powerpoint presentations, but at a comfortable pace. And she would take questions, and ask questions, along the way, prompting discussion. Then, after that, she would hand out leaflets of info and assignments to us that we could work on for the rest of the lesson, and she would walk around trying to help each of us as we were working on them. Then after the lesson we were allowed to finish what we had left of the assignments at home, and then next time we met we would all go through them together, before starting on the new subject for the day. In addition to this, she was very funny (constantly making jokes about how Brummies (people from Birmingham who speak the Birmingham dialect) like her would get the short end of the stick in England for being a Brummie.), and had a chill but still professional attitude. So she was thorough, funny, and helpful. A very good teacher. The fact that she was so likeable probably also only made it easier for everyone to pay attention and engage in the subject, and perform better.
Feel free to skip reading this part, it's more an anecdote/sidestory: Leaving aside all the other bad teachers I've had, since those won't be helpful to you, I also had some pretty strange but awesome (British and American English) literature professors (who happened to be a married couple both working in the exact same department of our University, and teaching the exact same subjects to boot), who did some pretty eccentric/strange things as part of their teachings a few times (though most of what they did was pretty normal fare), but I don't think those stories are really gonna be useful or helpful for you, and I've gone on long enough, so I won't go into detail about a lot of those. Let's just say they involved things like everyone in the class trying a drink each of absinth (in class, at school!) while learning about F.Scott Fitzgerald novels, because characters in his stories, and he and everyone else in real life back in his time, drank the stuff.
Last edited by Rokudaime; May 22nd, 2016 at 01:42 AM.
"The world is just another word for the things you value around you, right? That's something I've had since I was born. If you tell me to rule such a world, I already rule it."
Not gonna hit quote because I'm exhausted and just finished the assignment this was about, but to respond:
@Skull Leader: I was asking for an assignment, but I am also genuinely interested in opinions about this. I thought it would be nice to hear students' and former students' opinions, rather than just opinions from the other side of things. I am also really interested in helping students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, because yeah that kind of thing is really important on just a human level and can also be a barrier to education if it isn't addressed. I also experienced home-schooling for a time, so I agree that it can be very beneficial. I'm glad to have known but home-schooling and public school, because I think it shows me things about the pros and cons of public education I might have otherwise never noticed. Thank you!
@b1b: I'm going to be teaching English, hopefully, if I make it through this. The really abrupt change of instructional tactic sounds like something that could be better-addressed. I have no idea what a set 1 is since I'm not from the UK. Everything else I knew from Skins...
@Rokudaime: The discussion method in which the teacher is teaching through questioning is often referred to as the Socratic Method. It works really well for a lot of people, and I had it a lot, especially in my philosophy courses. I also think that while maybe most teachers shouldn't bring absinthe to class that making things real in very vivid, engaging ways like that can be important. ... You know, just usually not involving alcohol.
Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t.
Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die.
Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.
Blog of Fiction for You to Consume
Other Links
Spoiler:
Oh, and even though I'm finished with this assignment, if you happen upon this thread anytime and have something to say about a strategy a teacher used that really worked for you, please share. I'm sure I can benefit from it, whether it helps me with an assignment or not.
Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t.
Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die.
Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.
Blog of Fiction for You to Consume
Other Links
Spoiler:
Well yes, obviously. That was the most extreme example though, and it was a one-time thing.
"The world is just another word for the things you value around you, right? That's something I've had since I was born. If you tell me to rule such a world, I already rule it."
My best teacher was during my second year of high school.
I was a super lazy student, and math was always my worst subject until this year. And because of that I was expected to take a lab math. This teacher in the lab math would tell everyone to do their homework generally the whole period as we got hw everyday.
Well, a lot of the people would usually just sleep in these periods. And that's what I tried doing. But then this teacher started grading the HWs during the class and nagged you the entire class so you couldn't sleep and would turn your life into a living hell if you tried doing anything but work on math (or if you completed the hw on time properly and are only there because you wanted to have something that wasn't a study hall you got to play games with her and other students like you). And that's what happened to me, until I can only say I got fed up and started doing all the work. Don't get me wrong this teacher made me so angry but actually made me do the work and I proceeded to get 90s in Math until fucking Calculus in college.
Though this only really applied to math! My other classes I still tended to be lazy in. I just had scars due to that math teacher... Admittedly scars that I learned from! But those scars didn't apply to everything >_>.
Last edited by Cruor; May 22nd, 2016 at 07:07 PM.
The Hall of Selected Cruor Praise
When I was in second grade, they made us do Language Arts sheets. I liked some of them, but the alphabetization ones I hated. I would cry and the only thing that kept me from absolute refusal to do them was a nearly pathological fear of disappointing my teachers. They seriously pissed me off, though. My teacher wouldn't let me give up. I remember numerous times sitting right by her and finishing them, even though she wouldn't give me much help and made me do it mostly on my own, just giving me supportive questions rather than answers. By the end, I knew how to alphabetize, and while I don't use that skill very much, I think it was the beginning of removing a barrier that might have prevented me from loving language, literature, and writing as much as I do. It also made me a pretty good organizer if given a chance. I still wasn't any good at using a dictionary until my mom started making me do it when I was home-schooled, and again I think that being forced to work through something I found difficult (though dictionary.com makes it pretty easy these days) helped me to embrace the things I did like about writing, grammar, literature, and language.
Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t.
Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die.
Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.
Blog of Fiction for You to Consume
Other Links
Spoiler:
My Kantian teacher mostly talked about his summer house.
I got an eight in the end, because he liked my rather descriptive essay on perpetual peace.
The most positive things about teaching I know actually come from my mother. She teaches history and does a number of themes, especially recent history, through project works. For example, history of the country she partly teaches by asking the students to research family history and present the findings in the classroom, with class lectures providing the context. It works really well, because 1) it actually makes students interested in history; 2) it shows how varied historical memory can be for people of different ethnicities, classes and regions etc.; 3) it allows students to better understand several current political realities in and outside of the country.
Last edited by Marmadillo; May 25th, 2016 at 07:25 AM.
I don't mind a preaching teacher as long as he is preaching something interesting. Actually, I don't care about the teaching style at all. Even if the teacher is so bad, if the course materials are interesting I would still enjoy the class. I rarely had any class with a teacher who employed modern teaching methods, but I recall that I love discussions so much. A class where you can kind of choose your report topic is also nice, because it requires you to look into whatever is the contemporary issues, so you are more conscious of the real world (ie.outside the uni). I also believe that students should be able to access teacher's feedback for their assignments or the examinations; if we don't know what we did wrong then how can we possibly improve?
Personally, I would like to try studying in a flipped-classroom once. So envy the students these days with all the new teaching equipments and techniques!
If you don't mind, I would like to share my teaching experience with you (although living in different countries probably means that our students would be quite different as well). I'm teaching in a university and even after 5 years of teaching I am still struggling to work out how to best deal with the students. First of all, there is something...so many things wrong with the education system of this country. We have many first-year students who cannot properly communicate in their native tongue, who think that India is located in Africa and Sydney a capital city of France, and cannot do two-digits calculations. They would take almost half an hour to read a very short passage, and still won't be able to tell what they had been reading about. It is like---they just went straight from kinder garten to university...It is a very depressing situation but there's nothing we can do except trying to do our part.
The point is to accept the students the way they were. Most students in my uni are here just to get the degree, which means that they just want a passing grade and have little interest in learning. On the other hand, many lecturers here graduated from abroad, so they were very eager to give their Harvard-level lectures to our disinterested students. But of course that's just like a punch straight to the students' stomachs; they will just reject everything you try to give them. They will also hate you with passion for frying their brains, and we all know that everything just goes downhill when the students reject you. Here we are trying to take things slowly, bits by bits we are teaching them how to think, how to read, how to write...heck we even have to teach them how to eat properly in order not to get sick! But that's the point, instead of being too enthusiastic, it is better to accept the sad reality that you cannot expect a thing from these freshmen...but little by little you can change them into decent learners!
In addition, I think we also have to be carefully about choosing the what to teach and what not to. We the academic people tend to be overly romantic in the pursue of knowledge. We love learning for the sake of learning and keep wanting more! However, most people aren't like this; they only want to know what they think is important for their lives. Teachers who used to love learning when they were students are prone to make this mistake--"Oh, I know that this concept is very complicated and it wouldn't help in your future jobs, but hey! it's a fascinating concept you know! I fell in love with it immediately when I first learned of it. That's why we will be studying this because I-am-sure-you-will-love-it-too." This soooooo doesn't work. It is either you choose to teach what is practical for their lives, or try to convince them that those complicated stuffs will be proven useful to their jobs later. Personally I am bent on the former. In the case I have to teach something complex, I will provide the students with the real-life examples of how the knowledge can be applied to their future jobs to convince that a small suffering right now will be useful eventually. I need to remind myself all the time that if any student wants to know more they can always see me after class. They also have the option of going to the Grad school if they want to learn more in depth.
As for the teaching methods, we have tried several teaching styles like the flipping classroom and project-based learning. The outcome varied, depending on the 'quality' of the students. And, well, since our students are very childish when it comes to studying, we have them play games...lots of games, and drawing pictures too. Quiz Show Bingo! They love it when you shoot them a quick question and give them candies when they get it right. They are not very good at discussions, mainly because they lacks the critical thinking skills so if you ask them "what do you think about~" they will go O[]O pokannn, and looking at you expectantly to get the answer outright from you. Therefore we try to take things slowly, starting by choosing a topic that the students will feel related and is easy to discuss, and also give them plenty of background info (they don't know how to research, that's another thing we are working on). When it seems like they have started to get a hang of it, we would start having the debate activities. Incentives also work like a charm. Want them to read something to prepare for the next class? Tell them that there will be a quiz on the reading, in which they can earn extra points from it.
I have typed too long already but that got a lot of steam off me (was furious at some students for their ugly plagiarism...might as well go buy a book and slap their names on the cover, wouldn't make differences.) Good luck on your study!
My school district is pretty bad so I can't say anything really good about most teachers.
I found that the teachers tho who actually were really good with teaching with most of their students having moderate success in learning and getting good grades while doing many of things already discussed here like being casual or enthusiastic about the subject their teaching was my Biology Teacher during my Freshman year and most of the teachers who were actually mainly sports coaches around my high school campus. I found this strange until I learned that some of the doubled as Teachers at the community college I was attending as well with great reviews online from their students.
The aforementioned Biology teacher even somehow got me to skip all my classes for one day to assist him since he recently procured SPORE (which had recently come out) after I mentioned it to him to have a little fun for his classes before some reviewing.
Last edited by ZidanReign; May 30th, 2016 at 10:30 PM.
Dunno if anyone brought this up yet but I really liked the inverted classroom teaching style, especially for comp sci.
Lectures online, class time for homework help and questions
Code:[07:55:59] <Spinach> Take off your clothes Kirby [07:56:07] <Kirby> I'm in class [20:37:34] <Lian|phone> there is a such thing as lingerie for guys? [20:37:54] <Kyokushi> yea [20:37:57] <Kyokushi> they're called jockstraps [20:38:02] <Lian|phone> :o [20:38:07] * Lian|phone googles [20:38:10] <Kyokushi> NO [20:38:11] <Kyokushi> DON'T [20:40:07] <Lian|phone> okay [20:40:16] <Lian|phone> I don't think I should have googled that [12:59:30] <Spinach> call me onii-chan, bitch [13:00:12] <kroyo> imma fuck ur shit up onii-fam
I also like this.
There's some value in having live lectures if students participate, but they mostly don't, in my experience. Less of an issue with higher level courses where people are more likely to care about the subjects they're committed to taking.
If you have the motivation to learn you will study and listen to lectures, so I like making classroom time as productive as possible and this is one way to do it.
On the other hand, the revolution in online distance learning that people have anticipated for years never happened. We thought that online classes would help people who had trouble attending or focusing on f2f classes due to personal life reasons, now they can structure their schedule in the way that makes the best use of their time, right?
The statistics have largely shown that the people who do well in online classes are the same people who do well in traditional classes.
It's still convenient to access course resources anywhere/anytime, though.
Last edited by mewarmo990; June 3rd, 2016 at 10:24 PM.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
