For this first week of the semester our topic was "What is Teaching and Learning?" and we discussed multiple times the question "What makes a good teacher?" I think this is a topic that a lot of us have thought about or discussed on our own many times because all of us want to be good teachers. All of us have known good teachers or at least have an idea in our heads what we would want a good teacher to be. Our readings focused on the characteristics of effective teachers identified by Rosenshine and Furst, most of which we included in our various discussions of effective teachers this past week. Some of the characteristics that stick out the most to me are clarity, enthusiasm, positive reinforcement, variability and student opportunities to learn.
These characteristics are important because they are ones that I believe have impacted me the most and I hope to utilize them to impact my students. Starting with variability - I think we have all had the teachers/professors whose classroom techniques never change, who sometimes seem just as bored as you are to be in their classroom. One of the simplest ways to incorporate variability into your teaching is to change how you present your information, whether that's power-points, writing on the board, Garton even suggests wearing a shirt relevant to your teaching topic. At first this may seem funny to you, but one of the most memorable lectures I've had was during the first week of my undergraduate environmental conservation course. My professor came into lecture in his suit and tie, just like every other professor; however, halfway through he ripped off his shirt and tie to show his tie-dyed t-shirt and proceeded to lecture (almost rant) about saving the environment and as he said "letting his inner-hippie out."
Now this set up his students to look forward to the variability in his course compared to our other classes, but while he continued to show enthusiasm for his topic throughout the semester that was the peak of variability. I think there are certain characteristics that are easier for agricultural educators to incorporate than other teachers - variability is one of the easiest because of the diverse topics we can cover in agriculture. However, I know that I will have to work on the variability of how I present my lessons, because I am someone who can use power-point as a safety net.
Clarity is extremely important in an agricultural education classroom because of the diversity of our topics. We joke with our peers and agriculture teachers that you (as the teacher) only have to be a day ahead of your students, which I think in simplest terms is true. However, clarity is something I am most afraid of not having when I walk into my classroom in the spring. The majority of the classes I'm teaching are machinery/shop related, topics I have very little background in and I'm sure I'm not the only one in the cohort who is at least a little worried. I think all of us will learn enough over the next couple months to be "one day ahead" of our students, but what happens when we encounter the student(s) who is(are) days ahead of their classmates. This is a fear I've had many people, including Mrs. Dingman, try to alleviate, but it will be the characteristic I will strive for the most no matter what.
The last characteristics I want to touch on are enthusiasm, positive reinforcement, and student opportunities to learn. Enthusiasm is a characteristic I think everyone in our cohort has, though I know for some of us it can be restrained by fear of failure. Positive reinforcement is a characteristic that will not only be important for us to have towards our students in the spring, but also towards each other this year - just like the geese from Dr. Foster's story we have to stick with each other and get ourselves through this stressful time. And finally another characteristic I think that is tailor-made for agricultural educators - providing student opportunities to learn. The first half of the FFA motto is "Learning to Do, Doing to Learn," and we all believe that the greatest strength of agricultural education is its hands-on, real-world applications, both in and out of the classroom.
One of the greatest things I think a teacher can do is to encourage their students to find and develop their own passions, to learn about what makes excited and curious, and to pursue their own learning because they want to. I was lucky in that I had many teachers, mostly at the secondary and post-secondary levels, who did all of the above and everytime they pushed a student to do this, they were providing them chances to learn and grow.
Now to close this first blog I want to include a video I found called "Great Life Lessons from Famous Teachers." I found this video over the weekend and while Mr. Brookfield, in our handout from Friday, stated that many of the famous fictional educators many of us have grown to know and love are bad role models for him, I think that many of them can still teach us great things about the art and science of great teaching.
I also found an interesting video series about real teachers, and one of the videos ties back to how we opened the class last week, discussing growth mindsets versus fixed mindsets. Check out the video "I Heart Teachers: Encouraging Growth Mindset."
