Parental Involvement in Education: A Catalyst for Student Achievement

 best books on teaching

It is not uncommon for college professors to find themselves in conversation about how to best teach and learn their courses in the classroom. Most colleges and universities have some type of a curriculum or syllabus in place that outlines the general structure of the course. This may be done for the convenience of the professor who has a general overview of the course and is therefore able to teach it more efficiently and effectively. It is also done for those who are planning their semester curriculum in advance. Other professors have a syllabus, or a lecture outline, that they use, but feel that the course may be improved by having a course outline that they can adapt to meet the needs of the class at any given time.Teaching in a classroom is, generally speaking, a learned process. Each professor will have his or her own teaching style that will depend upon several factors: Whether he or she is a “preacher” who wants to teach from the pulpit and wants to get the most from each student or “learner” in the class; The kind of teacher that the professor is—one who needs to constantly be prepared with the material and has an enthusiasm about the subject;The kind of class that is in front of the professor—a lecture course or a discussion course; The type of class the professor wants to teach—will it be a seminar or a lecture? How important is the class to the students? Is it a senior-level class or a freshman-level class?The professor’s own background and interest in the subject matter.The professor’s time and energy—how much of it is available to teach a class and how much time is there to learn?The class size—how many students are there in the class? Will there be an open door policy or not?These questions are important to ask yourself before you even begin to think about teaching. Some professors find that teaching in their area of expertise is easy while teaching in another subject is difficult. Others prefer one type of class over another and some find themselves better at one or the other. This is your choice to make but your personal choice in how to best prepare to teach.The book Teaching for Excellence (www.teaching-for-excellence.com) and How to Teach (www.howtoteach.org) offer a comprehensive collection of courses of thought that can be helpful to the beginning or seasoned teacher.Other books that are often consulted are:How to Start a Seminar (Sternberg; 1986)How to Start a Discussion (Kearney; 1989 A First-Year Seminar (Zipes; 1989)I will give you some tips from my own teaching experience and try to include one for each question you have about teaching your own course.1. Think through how you will teach the course.In some cases, a teacher needs to decide how she will teach a course before she is even assigned it. Many courses that professors find themselves teaching are courses that the professor is not familiar with. Some courses will be lecture courses while others will be seminar-based. Some courses are more hands-on than others while others require more written work. Some courses will be taught in the traditional lecture format and others will be taught in some sort of discussion format. Some courses will be taught in the traditional format while others will require a certain amount of time to talk through the reading material with the students.What do you know about the course you are assigned?Are there any topics or skills that you find challenging?How much time can you give to teaching a course?2. Get familiar with your course.If you don’t know the course well, you will be unprepared to teach it.The first thing that you should do when you are given a course to teach is to be familiar with the overall structure of the course and the major topics that are included in the course. This can be done by visiting the website of the course (www.doe.ucla.edu/~cc/ccs) or by visiting the syllabus of the course or taking a quick review of the course notes before class.Is the course open-ended or will it have specific learning outcomes?Are there any prerequisites that you have to do in order to take the course?Is the course worth taking? Will the students benefit from it?Can you assign the homework that is outlined in the course?If the course is a graduate course, how much time does the student spend in taking the course?You should take a look at the course syllabus to see how long the course will be and how many hours per week

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