Last semester I had to evaluate the teaching of a new instructor. When I saw how she organized her class, it became clear that I was supposed to give her a very bad evaluation. The instructor was doing the exact opposite of what we all do and what the official teaching method adopted by our department mandates: her class was completely teacher-centered, she sat facing the class the entire time, there were no group activities, a lot of translation was used, etc.
Still, I gave her a stellar evaluation for one simple reason: whatever she was doing really worked. The students obviously loved her, loved the class, and were wildly enthusiastic about learning Spanish. We should all be so lucky as to summon this level of student engagement as effortlessly as this instructor did.
A teacher’s main tool is that teacher’s personality. We teach not so much with what we know but with who we are. I can forget to bring a textbook, my handouts or my lecture notes (if I had them which I never do), but as long as I bring myself and my way of being within Hispanic language and culture, the students will learn.
This is precisely why teaching methods are not transferable. Activities that work for my colleague are useless to me and vice versa. We can share experience and give suggestions to each other but, more often than not, these suggestions don’t work. For instance, a colleague at my penultimate university was shocked to see that my students never just barged into my office and, instead, formed a neat, quiet line outside of my office even though I never asked them to do that. Somehow, the students knew that this was the correct way to relate to me. And the same thing happened when I was teaching at-risk kids many of whom had a history of arrests and gang affiliations. Their school teacher complained that she could barely manage to keep them from turning every class hour into a huge brawl. I, on the other hand, got them to listen and talk about the Spanish Baroque without feeling like I was making an effort. Of course, I come from a long line of female teachers who taught much more problematic students effortlessly and successfully.
I now have to go teach but when I come back I will offer a list of personal characteristics that help one be a good teacher.
Clarissa's Blog 
Teaching methods are absolutely transferable. Every successful thing I do is built off of something I’ve copied or adapted off someone else. Measuring one’s success in the classroom by student adoration rather than learning is dangerous, particularly in sequential classes like language ones. I’ve never seen the latter without the former but the reverse is unfortunately quite common.
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If the students don’t adore the teacher of a language, they will never love the culture this teacher represents. They see the language teacher as the emissary of the culture and if the teacher is not somebody they can admire, they will reject the language as well.
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Did you not read my comment? Again, while I have never seen students learning in a classroom where they did not adore the teacher, I have seen students adore the teacher and learn nothing many times, especially in language classes. So, yes, you need to like the teacher, but adoration is not enough by itself.
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Maybe the need to ‘adore’ the teacher is more common in language-type classes? I have had many teachers who I didn’t particularly like but who were effective teachers, either because I had already learnt to love the subject from earlier classes (e.g. Latin, which I loved for its elegance and economy, and only saw that because of a great early teacher) or for my own reasons (e.g. I was passionate about learning Spanish in order to talk to my Spanish-speaking friends, to travel to Spain and maybe one day to learn flamenco, so I came to the class with motivation in place, and learnt whether the teacher was bad or good) or because I knew I needed to learn the material and they delivered it in a digestable way (e.g. Nasty slimy German teacher at school who gave me the shivers but had well-designed lessons which helped me pass the exam I needed to take). I’ve also adored teachers most students really disliked and who looking back were poor teachers because I already loved their subject. [I use language examples because I was following up the ‘is it discipline specific’ line of thought, but I am nothing of a linguist, having only basic competency despite multiple classes in multiple languages. Typical monoglot Englishperson].
It might be that in YOUR context students have had no contact with the language before the intro class with this teacher so you could argue that they arrive as a blank slate, but it’s not universalisable – anyone who teaches a discipline required in school, for example, faces a class which already has layered emotional and personal responses to the subject. Some may already love it, some will ‘adore’ the teacher DESPITE the subject (I have heard students say of a particularly charismatic colleague ‘I’d even sit through a stats class to listen to him talk’) and continue to dislike the subject despite the adoration of the teacher…
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“I have had many teachers who I didn’t particularly like but who were effective teachers, either because I had already learnt to love the subject from earlier classes (e.g. Latin, which I loved for its elegance and economy, and only saw that because of a great early teacher) or for my own reasons (e.g. I was passionate about learning Spanish in order to talk to my Spanish-speaking friends, to travel to Spain and maybe one day to learn flamenco”
– I think you are special and I could only wish more students were like you.
“It might be that in YOUR context students have had no contact with the language before the intro class with this teacher so you could argue that they arrive as a blank slate”
– True blank slate beginners did exist when I was starting to teach Spanish about 15 years ago, but now I can’t find a single one even in such a remote area as this one! And this is really great news!
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I actually think Teacher Education programs can be really helpful. As I mentioned in the commentary before, I got my teaching credential before I went back to school for my PhD in lit. And when I started teaching at the college level (as a grad student), I was considerably ahead of my peers who started teaching with no training at all : (ahead in terms of understanding how to plan a lesson, in terms of classroom management, in terms of understanding how to layer lessons etc etc.) Now a lot of this is because I had been teaching in some form or another since I was about 17. So being in front of the classroom was quite comfortable to me. But still, I learned a great deal of tips and techniques in my teacher training program. Some of it was useless of course but I appreciated a great deal of it.
Also: I have a question about how you measure successful teaching? Is it just enthusiastic students? I ask because at my institution the most popular Spanish instructor is also the one who speaks the most English to students. He gets glowing evaluations from students who praise him for using English while the Spanish prof. who speaks almost exclusively in Spanish often gets criticized in evaluations. (Although students who are serious about learning Spanning often seek him out.) So what do you use as a measure for effective teaching? If students loves a teacher who only uses multiple choice tests (and I know a few of those also) is that teacher good?
And I just want to say that I firmly believe in teacher autonomy. I personally disagree with the prof who speaks to his students in English but I would never dream of asking him to change his technique. Same thing goes for the professors who are addicted to multiple choice exams. Their classroom, their technique.
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“So what do you use as a measure for effective teaching?”
– The number of students who want to do a major or at least a minor in the language as a result of the language courses. If nobody wants to continue, that’s an indication there is a problem.
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“The number of students who want to do a major or at least a minor in the language as a result of the language courses. If nobody wants to continue, that’s an indication there is a problem.”
That is a good measure I agree. But that’s more global. For instance, you can have a program with one terrible teacher but students will still major in the subject because the other teachers are good. How about on an individual level? How do you decide if a teacher is good?
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“How about on an individual level? How do you decide if a teacher is good?”
– For me, the measure is how excited the students are about the language. If they love the teacher for speaking English, that means they don’t like Spanish a whole lot. Students who are excited about the language simply don’t let you switch to English. They look at you with reproach and continue speaking in Spanish. Also, there is this lovely moment when they leave the classroom and you hear them in the hallway still speaking in Spanish. Or when they meet you in town and still address you in Spanish. These are my favorite moments. 🙂
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Clarissa, very ASTUTE point that teacher’s pesonality and traits are the key to really communicating and being effective. Knowledge is cheap, easy, and generally freely available (wikipedia, blogs, and even text books or scholarly books are cheap)… However, what makes teachers valuable is really connecting with students and helping them be more motivated to learn, and get them past the initial “hump” of resistance…
In that, I think teachers are some of the most valuable people in the world. However, what i disagree with is your puzzling conclusion that teaching methods are not transferrable. While CANNED, formulaic methods don’t work, what seemingly would work is sharing the personality and emotional connection techniques that you use, that the teacher you evaluated used, and that my most effective teachers used. Can’t wait to hear your post on what makes you effective!
More broadly I feel there is so much common ground between academics and “education reformers” (that I think you generally find out of touch and not positive for education based on your previous posts, but if i am mischaracterizing your opinion let me know). Where many academics/teachers are right is that you can’t “script” teaching methodologies (which was your first point), but then you CAN teach and help expose teachers to your personality tratits and way of running a classroom (mentor might be a better term.. because it will take time.. and certainly not every teacher will be good. Which to be fair is one thing education reformers get right. If 20%-40% (or whatever percentage you want to assign) of teachers don’t learn what you and other teachers do effectively, then shouldn’t they be fired? Not after a year, but after 3 or 5 years of teaching if you can’t get through to the kids then you should move on.
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” Knowledge is cheap, easy, and generally freely available (wikipedia, blogs, and even text books or scholarly books are cheap)… However, what makes teachers valuable is really connecting with students and helping them be more motivated to learn, and get them past the initial “hump” of resistance…”
– Exactly. This is an answer to the question why buying Rosetta Stone is really not the same as being in an actual classroom.
“Not after a year, but after 3 or 5 years of teaching if you can’t get through to the kids then you should move on.”
– The problem is that brilliant scholars might easily turn out to be sucky teachers. I’ve seen this happen too many times. A person who makes an enormous contribution to the field and writes brilliant scholarly volumes is incapable of saying two sentences without putting everybody to sleep. There seems to be no solution for this problem.
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– The problem is that brilliant scholars might easily turn out to be sucky teachers(Clarissa)
This idea is very common in sports too. Very few great athletes turn out to be great coaches.
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// I now have to go teach but when I come back I will offer a list of personal characteristics that help one be a good teacher.
And what can one do, if those personal characteristics aren’t already in big quantities. Surely, something can be done, people can change if they really want to?
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I’d totally completely and utterly love to be an opera singer. But I don’t have a voice. I’m probably the worst singer humanity has known. 🙂 I don’t think that any amount of training can substitute for natural inclination and talent.
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But self-confidence is different from having a voice. I thought that analysis could help one feel more confident, but not get a singing ability. Can’t some people have some needed qualities to be a fine teacher, but need some work on others? F.e. you (not You!) have the natural inclination of loving to explain material and can do well one on one, but bigger groups look frightening in the beginning.
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The thing is, there are painfully shy people who are phenomenal teachers and ultra-confident people who suck as teachers. The only way I can describe it is that a sort of a switch is flipped once one walks into a classroom. And it turns one into a completely different person. And then the switch flips back off once one leaves the classroom.
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If teaching is like opera singing, do you need to be good enough to be a professional solo opera singer e.g. combine large innate talent in singing, huge dedication to classes in singing/acting/languages etc., etc., or is it enough that you love it, care about it, and have studied enough to be a competent member of the chorus with your local amateur musical society that puts on light operettas sometimes? Because whilst I understand that some people couldn’t do either, I think many dedicated people could LEARN to do the latter as part of a suite of activities, whilst the former really does require natural talent.
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For example, weren’t you a bit afraid of the students in the beginning, that they won’t listen? How can a new teacher become less nervous?
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I agree with you completely–and that is why “statements of teaching philosophy” are so infuriating to write. I think that if you have mild or moderate gifts, you can learn through trial by fire to become great–but through trial by fire *only*, and with improvements that only work for you–but if you’re a bad teacher, you can only learn to be mediocre. Whereas if you are a gifted teacher, you just sort of *are*, Schiller naive-and-sentimental-poetry style. I have certainly had some days that went better than others, but on the whole my “teaching philosophy” is 1. engage with work I love 2. walk into class 3. be me. But how much of an a-hole do I look like to search committees if I say, “Oh, well, my teaching philo is to just walk in there and DO IT and it always works out, except for the one time it really mattered at a teaching demo where it was a school full of entitled rich kids who were used to Their Frau and didn’t know I was coming and…oh never mind. Sniff.” (Job marketers: feel free to use that paragraph in your dossier. It. Is. Gold.)
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Oh, the teaching philosophy, the bane of my existence. How I hated having to squeeze it out of myself.
“Whereas if you are a gifted teacher, you just sort of *are*, Schiller naive-and-sentimental-poetry style. I have certainly had some days that went better than others, but on the whole my “teaching philosophy” is 1. engage with work I love 2. walk into class 3. be me. But how much of an a-hole do I look like to search committees if I say, “Oh, well, my teaching philo is to just walk in there and DO IT and it always works out, except for the one time it really mattered at a teaching demo where it was a school full of entitled rich kids who were used to Their Frau and didn’t know I was coming and…oh never mind. Sniff.””
– Exactly. 🙂 🙂 And you always know which of the students could teach. Once they start giving presentations, there is always one or two who have the gift. I tell them, and sometimes this is a complete revelation.
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