Are you a teacher? What methods do you use to teach a class? How successful is your current method for allowing students to achieve learning?
Try reading Learner-Centered Teaching by Maryellen Weimer. The information and hints in this book can be applied to classrooms of all ages, from preschool to college. The author is a college professor so much of her experience and advice is geared towards teaching college classes; however, many of her tips can be applied to teaching younger age groups as well.
She explains how to “use” content not “cover” it. She talks about how “we use content to promote self awareness of learning” (page 51). “A good teacher does not teach all that he knows. He teaches all that the learner needs to know at the time, and all that the learners can accountably learn in the time given.”
In learner-centered models of teaching, the teachers are instructors who guide and facilitate learning. They are the ones who prepare the way for the students to learn. Weimer gives a great example of the teacher’s role being like a gardener—one who prepares the ground, tills, and cultivates, but whose plants do the growing…The real accomplishment belongs to the plants (page 75).
I have always liked the phrase: Success is a journey not a destination. Now I have another phrase to add to that favorite: “Good teaching is a journey rather than a destination” (page 201). Teaching is not like a subway stop where, once you are there, you can cease moving forward — we must resist the urge to keep doing things the way we’ve done them for years. There’s always a poor teacher in us waiting to emerge. We have to resist the temptation to stay as we are, to rest at the bus stop (page 201).
Purchase a copy of this book and work your way to being a better teacher and work in cooperation with your students to lead and guide them along the road to successful learning.
