Chinua Achebe, winner of the 2007 Man Booker International Prize~~~
Beginning to think about and plan for my fall courses, I returned the other day to Ken Bain's study of outstanding college and university teachers, What the Best College Teachers Do, published by Harvard University Press. In a nutshell, the best teachers maintain an intellectual interest in their subjects and convey that interest to their students, inviting them to join a professional conversation. They plan their courses based upon what student outcomes they want to produce, so in a sense they begin at the imagined end of the course. Whatever method they use in teaching (lecture, discussion, workshop, etc.), they establish a "natural critical learning environment", urging students to continuously ask questions and construct meaning for themselves, rather than being handed knowledge on a platter to be digested and forgotten. Good teachers assess student mental models and preconceptions and attempt to improve on those models, making them more accurate. They convey facts, but always in relation to problems, issues, larger concerns. They engender instrinsic motivation for learning, not extrinsic. They observe and think carefully about student learning types/modes and try to accomodate to those. Finally, they maintain high, though not unreasonable, expectations for students. Much of this is good common sense, but it's easy to lose track of these principles.Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Claudia, former newspaperwoman and now an English/journalism teacher at a local college. I gave her a copy of Bain's book--a meager repayment for all the review copies of books she's given me over the years.
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