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Effective Teaching Essay

If you can read this essay, thank your teachers! Teaching is one of the most demanding

yet fulfilling jobs. Teachers have to constantly process new information taken from their

environments and check it against their storehouse of knowledge; about teaching, about students,

and about the subject matter they teach - to make sound judgements about what to do next.

They must aim to find the perfect balance between leading a classroom and being a caregiver to

each individual child. Teachers should always give 100% of their efforts in guiding their

students, being inspirational in their actions and striving to make a positive, impactful difference.

They are rewarded by watching their students grow and develop, all through physical, emotional,

and mental changes. Just as with any occupation, it takes a great amount of preparation, skill,

and experience to become a well-prepared, effective teacher.

One of the biggest problems that teachers face is that they are not working to engage their

students with the material, which is crucial. Accomplished teachers connect personally with

their students, organizing the material in a way that makes it interesting and easy for the students

to understand. A great method to teaching is through storytelling because stories are treated

differently in one’s memory than other ideas and concepts. They are easy to understand,

interesting to follow, and simple to remember if the students are paying attention. To a certain

degree, listening to or reading a story is equivalent to solving a puzzle because the listener must

pick up on inferences, connect key events in the plot, and more importantly, remember the

storyline. Memory is not a product of what you want to remember or what you try to remember,

it is the output of what you think about. Thoughts cannot travel into long-term memory unless

that have first been inside the working memory, where students are paying attention. How

students think of certain situations or pieces of knowledge completely determines what will end
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up in their long-term memory. It is helpful and efficient for teachers to create lesson plans based

off of a story outline, not just in history class!

Teachers must constantly encourage their students to be active learners. In the banking

concept of education, teachers open students’ brains and dump information into them, whether

they enjoy learning about the subject or not, almost as if the students are programmed robots.

Nearly the first fifth of a person’s life they will be inside a school, so it is critical for teachers to

work towards captivating students and to make learning exciting. As an active learner, students

need to stop memorizing facts and cramming for tests. Instead, teachers should structure

instruction differently and present information in a way that cannot simply be memorized. They

need to incorporate thoughtful discussion and other ways of interpreting the information,

regardless of what subject it is. Making connections between existing knowledge and new

knowledge is key, and teachers need to understand how their student’s brains are functioning

based off of the age level that they are teaching.

Another necessary idea to understand is that depending on the teacher’s guidance and

ambitions, students will fall into either a fixed or growth mindset in terms of learning. Having a

growth mindset is the goal, in understanding that failure does not mean permanece. Instead,

multiple failures will eventually lead to success and more importantly, understanding the

obstacles. With a fixed mindset, students believe that intelligence is fixed and cannot be

improved which is completely false. Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be

changed through sustained hard work and practice. Teachers need to praise the student’s effort,

not their ability, and remind them that the process in learning is almost more important than the

final answer. Teachers must challenge the students to increase their intelligence, but only to the

amount that their brains can handle. As the teacher, it is your job to know what is too difficult
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for your students and successfully implement obstacles that the students can overcome. Being

confident in oneself when facing a challenge is difficult, but as the teacher, you need to show

students that you have confidence in them and see their potential.

Pedagogical content knowledge is absolutely necessary for understanding both the

knowledge of subject matter and the curriculum used to teach it as well as the knowledge of

students and their learning contexts. Well prepared teachers can diagnose individual learning

needs through observations and interactions and can apply the knowledge of child and adolescent

development to further motivate and engage their students. Communication between the teacher

and pupil must be flawless to transfer knowledge, yet teachers need to be able to convey ideas in

multiple ways if the students do not understand. Furthermore, with a heterogeneous group of

students, there comes a wide variety of learning styles. The most common include visual,

auditory, and kinesthetic, however, students can benefit from all three of these types of learning

methods. With teaching comes the responsibility of being incredibly knowledgeable in your

specific subject matter, but also being fluid in passing the knowledge in a concise way to your

students, and this takes lots of practice.

It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practices.

There is a common misconception that there are naturally born teachers, however, only excellent

teachers are crafted through their own hard work and experience in the classroom. You can

prepare and read as much about how to be the best teacher possible, yet it is not until you enter

the classroom and have twenty pairs of eyes watching and listening to you where you get a true

sense of what it is like to teach. The teacher must be aware of the pace that they are teaching at

and reading the students to see if the information is making sense to them. If the teacher

observes blank stares, he will have to provide another exposure to the content that may not make
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sense to him but may work for the students. It is difficult to teach others the art of teaching

because a large majority of teaching is reflective of your personality. If you try to be someone

you’re not while leading a group of students, you simply won’t be effective. Well prepared

teachers are more likely to remain in teaching and produce higher student achievement. A well

framed teacher education program that would ensure new teachers were prepared to teach would

have opportunities for teachers to collaborate and discuss successes and failures inside and

outside of the classroom. Small groups of teachers could work to collaborate ideas on how to

efficiently teach and they could share insights that they learned. Observing other excellent

teachers teaching is a direct way to see the strategies they use, and how the students are affected.

Teaching is gratifying. We can only teach if we use powerful, emotional, creative, and

communicative outlets; forming unbreakable and trustworthy bonds inside the classroom and

creating safe spaces. It is crucial to realize that all students bring their own personal

backgrounds, identities, and experiences that are critical to share and understand amongst

everyone in the classroom. In the wise words of Freire, “Knowledge emerges only through

invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human

beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” Effective teaching is possible

through passion and persistence, and I hope I will fulfill this goal when I teach.

“I affirm that I have upheld the highest principles of honesty and integrity in my academic work
and have not witnessed a violation of the Honor Code.” – Brooke Maskin