{"id":1132,"date":"2018-09-12T23:58:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T03:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/edt431-531\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2018-09-12T23:58:15","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T03:58:15","slug":"the-exemplary-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/exemplary-science-teaching\/2018\/09\/the-exemplary-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"The Exemplary Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

What makes a teacher good?<\/p>\n

I want the answer to be black and white. I want to think of teaching like I think of math problems. There is a right and wrong. There should be a manual\u2014Do\u2019s and Don\u2019ts of teaching, and it should include all rights and wrongs. That manual doesn\u2019t exist. If someone claims to write such a guide, someone else can dispute it. I want the answer to my question to be digital, but it is instead analog.<\/p>\n

So, what teachers from my high school were exemplary?<\/p>\n

Easy: the fun ones. I can\u2019t remember a time where I thought my monotone and overly direct physics teacher had an \u201cexemplary\u201d lesson. No, there\u2019s no \u201cideal\u201d way to say \u201c-9.8 m\/s2\u201d that will keep the whole class involved. Instead, what I saw in high school was that those teachers who could keep students engaged during the downtime or could give them a reason to invest into the classroom were the ones who were able to get their lessons across.<\/p>\n

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My exemplary teachers were the ones who talked to us like human beings, asked us about our lives, and tried to incorporate those fun little random facts into the lesson. The teachers who joked were the teachers who cared.<\/p>\n

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\nThe classes I cared about were the ones where I was involved. Being engaged and discovering for myself kept me interested in the course material, and anything I was able to teach someone else never felt like a waste of time.<\/p>\n

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In the 6th grade, we were shown this pyramid for knowledge retention. To this day, I remind myself of it, and I keep in mind the fact that anything I can teach someone else will be knowledge that won\u2019t leave me. In order for the lesson to stick with students, an exemplary teacher will have students teach each other.<\/p>\n

Because of my experiences, I believe lesson planning should follow several main principles in order to be meaningful and useful to the students.\u00a0 These include:<\/p>\n