If you haven't read my earlier suggestions, please read my earlier posts. (Note: Since putting my suggestions on Facebook initially, I have not revised or edited them. So...enjoy!)
9. Know the general skill level and general background of your students. (Parts i and ii.) i. What does this entail? Well, teachers should take a lesson from the British teacher from *The King and I*: teachers should start "getting to know you [aka, their students]" better. Their students' names, interests, passions. (Understandingly, in giant lecture hall-style classrooms, where 40+ students attend, teachers may not be able to know a lot about all their students' backgrounds. But I digress.) Teachers are NOT teaching the quadratic equation or the significance of 19th century Russian literature to automatons, but rather to human beings, who, just like the teachers themselves, come to class with varying skill levels and backgrounds. (The former is especially true in introductory courses.) By getting to know their students, teachers find it easier to create a nexus between the lessons and the students' personal lives. Because, let's face it, human beings are selfish creatures. So to appeal to that, teachers should behave selflessly enough to make their lessons more compatible with the ways their students learn. ii. When talking to or listening to their students, teachers should maintain eye contact and speak with an engaging voice (that is, no monotone). This one sounds awfully straightforward. But it isn't. I once had a professor who rarely looked me in the eye whenever I participated, and she always addressed me with a monotone voice. She would, however, almost always smile at and speak with a friendly lilt to the students she personally liked better. (Do certain teachers behave differently, if not poorly, around certain students, even the kind ones? One word: YES!) Whenever my teacher treated me like that (the teacher was kind in her own way, just to be clear), I felt "less-than" and sometimes felt disengaged from the classroom discussions, as if my opinion didn't matter. In short, through oral and verbal communication, teachers should make everyone feel important. Body language sometimes expresses a lot more than words alone. 10. Give students opportunities to revise and resubmit assignments. If teachers want students to become reflective thinkers, teachers might designate some essay assignments as "graded re-dos"; that is, graded essays that students could revise and resubmit to get better grades. First, students would read their teachers' critiques (filled-out rubrics); then they would move on to revise and resubmit the assignment(s). Moreover, graded re-dos could replace simple extra credit assignments. 11. Use a variety of teaching methods, consistently. Direct instruction, with short videos and visually engaging PowerPoints (to learn more about how to create better PowerPoints, refer to <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo>). The Socratic method, with a profusion of questions and detailed explanations from the teacher and students. Jigsaw classrooms, with students teaching other students. And so forth.
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