Podcast #10: Eight Habits of Highly Effective Teachers

In this episode, we reflect back to identify eight habits which almost all of our guests have used to teach effectively. If you’re new to the podcast, this is a great place to start since it’s filled with our favorite quotes from earlier episodes.

Habit 1: Understand that the goal is to help students learn.

Habit 2: Never stop trying to improve.

Don’t rest on your teaching laurels.

Habit 3: Focus on the learner as an active agent.

Highly effective college teachers frame their disciplinary knowledge in terms of doing, not being, and problems to solve, not piles of facts and concepts.

Habit 4: Tell a compelling story about the value of your discipline.

Habit 5: Use disciplinary skills in your teaching.

Students don’t just hear about the discipline: they experience it in their actual experience of learning, the way the course is conducted.

Habit 6: See teaching as performing learning.

Highly effective teachers model the learning process and that often includes failure.

Habit 7: Sweat the details.

Habit 8: See teaching as a service.

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Show Notes

0:00 ⏯ Intro–What are the 8 habits of highly effective teachers?

3:17 ⏯ David Bromwich: progress at first is “glacially slow.”

5:51 ⏯ Jennifer Frederick gets feedback from a student.

8:20 ⏯ Larry Samuelson tries to avoid “the endless algebra hunt.”

13:39 ⏯ Bo Hopkins turns students into agents in the subject matter being studied.

17:31 ⏯ Lori Santos has her students conduct research.

19:55 ⏯ Donald Kagan on why history is important.

25:54 ⏯ David Bromwich on how imagination and experience come together in the humanities.

25:04 ⏯ Jennifer Frederick on the life-or-death significance of chemistry.

26:25 ⏯ Larry Samuelson on “the unifying vision” of economics.

27:57 ⏯ Lori Santos on human nature as a fundamental problem.

29:14 ⏯ Larry Samuelson on how an economist’s skills dovetail with teaching.

30:43 ⏯ Vida Miralani quantifies how many papers her students write.

32:37 ⏯ Lori Santos uses psychology to teach psychology.

34:25 ⏯ Donald Kagan on the the search for truth: “it’s not about winning.”

36:04 ⏯ Jim Rolf on earning “failure points.”

37:13 ⏯ Vida Miralani normalizes failure in the classroom.

38:22 ⏯ Lori Santos apologizes to the horseshoe crab and the British royal family.

42:37 ⏯ Jim Rolf sees learning as a form of service.

43:20 ⏯ Larry Samuelson: “care or act like you care.”