Effective Teaching in Action

Throughout my education the teachers that I really enjoyed were the ones that where dedicated, caring, respected me as a person, stayed after class to help me, and do extra activities that went beyond their job as a teacher, such as planning field trips for us. My grade 5 teacher was Mr. Long. I think he was a very effective teacher. He taught us in a way that was fun and in a way the class understood the class material, which showed he mastered the content. For example in grade 5 we had a medieval times unit and instead of just giving notes about it and watching a video about the medieval times we turned our classroom into a mini medieval times era and gave our school and other schools in our community little tours through “the medieval times”. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it and I also learned a lot. Mr. Long took extra time to plan this. Some of my friends and I went on a Saturday with him to paint some of the set. Here are 2 pictures of some of my grade 5 classmates and our medieval times set and our costumes:



The teachers that I thought were an effective teacher in high school were the ones that helped me learn the material, as it sometimes took me longer to understand the material. The teachers that would stay after school or during lunch hour to help me were seen as a great teacher to me. The ones that stayed after school or during lunch hour seemed to care about my grades and my success, as I was one of those students that had to work hard to do well, but I wanted to succeed. A teacher that respected their students, but also accepted respect in return is a great teacher in my eyes too. The 7 professional skills to be an effective teacher that were discussed in class were: instructional strategies, goal setting and instructional planning/lesson design, classroom management, motivational skills, communication skills, working effectively with students with culturally diverse backgrounds and technological skills. These 7 professional skills make sense to me how a person that does all of these would be a great teacher. However I think different students are going to identify with one teacher more than another, because of their personality types or what that student needs and what that teacher is willing to do and what they can do for that student. For instance, Mr. Long could be viewed as not a very good teacher to someone as he may have not done what that student needed to succeed.