Chapter 3: Why do students remember everything that's on television and forget everything I say? (Part 2)

Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

What makes a good teacher?

You may find this section either reassuring or maybe infuriating, if only because it is a rather short section without a lot of detail or supporting evidence. Willingham takes all the variables about good teaching that show up in surveys, end-of-year-evaluations, student comments, etc., and boils it all down to a couple of simple ideas:

1. Do I connect with my students on a personal level? That is, do my students have the sense that I am a nice person?
2. Is my instruction well-organized from the students' perspective? Am I taking the complex, intricate details of my content and organizing it in such a way that the students feel they can make sense of it?
   

That's it. If I answered yes to both those questions, honestly, then I am probably an effective teacher. If I answered no to even one of them, then I am not likely an effective teacher, or not as effective as I could be. Notice in both questions the emphasis is on the students' perspective. It doesn't matter how organized I think my instruction is if the students are utterly baffled by it. Similarly, from the students' view "tough love" may come across as all tough and no love, or attempts to be "friends" with students may come across as phony or lead to role confusion and feelings of betrayal when report cards come out. I do think Willingham's treatment of the issue is a little oversimplified and I suspect there's a better word than "nice" that would have been more helpful, but I do agree that the interpersonal relationships between students and teachers (or teachers and administrators, for that matter!) make a world of difference.

On the other hand, if Willingham is correct, then the good news is that there are many paths to take that will get us to the goal of connecting with students on a personal level. Many teachers are able to project a caring and likeable persona in a variety of ways. Willingham gives some examples from his observations - the "comedian" who uses humor, the "mother figure" who dotes on her students, the storyteller who has a personal anecdote for everything, the showman who would set off fireworks if it were allowed. If you think back to teachers who really had an impact on your life I'm sure you can come up with other examples and I would love to hear about them in the comments section.

The key is that they all use their own personalities to forge a style that connects with their students. This element of good teaching cannot be "taught" or prescribed. It must come naturally and organically from yourself, but you may have to work at developing habits that demonstrate to students that you care about them on a personal level - it's not enough to say in words that you care, they have to perceive that you care.

Being a wonderfully warm and likeable person won't matter, though, if you don't master the second requirement of good teaching. Unlike your personality, organization doesn't necessarily come naturally, may take a lot of work to develop, and in fact encompasses a whole lot of assumptions about the preparedness of the teacher. For example, organizing content so that students will be able to make sense of it obviously demands that the teacher understand content well enough to distill the essential elements from the details and be able to make connections appropriate for the grade level and abilities of the students. The following sections of the chapter, and indeed much of the book, are devoted to this second element of good teaching.

In the next section Willingham discusses a strategy for organizing instruction around stories.