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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Can You REALLY Describe Good Teaching? | Connected Principals

Can You REALLY Describe Good Teaching? | Connected Principals:


Can You REALLY Describe Good Teaching?

Do you have a great teacher in your school?  Several great teachers?   Teachers whose classes students can’t wait to get into?   I think we all have those teachers.  Teachers who get the strongest endorsement that we can give–the “I want my own child to be in his/her class” endorsement.
But now you get asked “What makes Mrs. Smith a great Math teacher?”.  What do you say?
What really makes a ‘great’ teacher?  And at this point, I want to fully acknowledge that the antecedents of the craft of excellent teaching are multivariate and as a result there are many answers to this question.  But if you were asked by a Principal of another school that question–”What makes Mrs. Smith such a great Math teacher?”–words and phrases such as relationships, engagement, interactions, classroom management, flow-