Learning to Teach from Our Teachers: TO TEACH: WHAT I LEARNED FROM​THE PAST

When I started my career teaching psychology in college, I looked back to the successful/positive and unsuccessful/negative approaches of teachers that I’d had as a student. I wanted to incorporate the positives into my teaching and avoid those negatives. I learned by remembering both approaches.

I thought of my history teacher in high school compared to the one I had in college. In high school I’d had to memorize lists of dates and recall them on exams. Unfortunately, I forgot most after the exam. In college, though, the professor presented historical people as real human beings with personalities, hardships, and triumphs. Those individuals from the past became friends of mine, and their traits were an important component to remembering. I still remember many today. For example, I remembered the terrible agony that George Washington must have suffered with those false teeth. Perhaps that is why he did not smile much. He carried on, despite many setbacks and difficulties. Abraham Lincoln suffered many losses in his personal and professional life, but prevailed.


I realized that creating an atmosphere where students feel free to interact and ask questions and not feel intimidated was helpful in learning. One teacher I had in college was brilliant, but he went a “mile-a-minute,” talking the entire three-hour class. I guess he was trying to get as much material as possible into the class, but he lost us. I could not keep up writing notes. One time I got the courage to raise my hand and ask a question about what he just said. I’d thought I must be the only “stupid” one in this class because no one else raised their hand. But guess what? During the break, several of my classmates told me how much they appreciated what I did because they were having the same problem.

From this I learned how one teacher can lose the students’ focus and how another instructor can offer what is needed to honor attention span and cognitive styles. Many students do not learn well from just being lectured to. Visual presentations such as PowerPoint, writing on the board, and well-organized handouts certainly do help students. Bringing objects and/or photos such as a model of the Skinner box to class included tactile ways so that students could learn and see the mechanisms of behavioral psychology. inviting a professional speaker to share their experiences or going on a field trip such as to a homeless shelter or mental hospital makes learning more applicable to students’ lives.
 
Remembering back to elementary school, I recall a teacher who taught a second-third grade combination. She was a former WAC, the female branch of the Army. She was very strict with her students. I was in second grade and my brother was in third. I remember when the teacher admonished my brother for drawing during class. She said out loud that he needed to be studious like his sister. She then tore up the drawing in front of the class. To belittle a student and compare them to another one creates a division that can be irreparable. What she needed to do was to talk privately with the student and not ridicule him in front of the class. I worked to do that in my own career.
 
Some teachers take the rules and schedules for the day too far. For example, one teacher only allowed students to use the restroom during the recess only. Unfortunately, there have been situations when some students did not fit those time frames and wet their pants. How embarrassing for them! Teachers need to be aware of students’ individual differences and allow some flexibility in their schedules.


I have also witnessed a teacher who laughed at a student because she stuttered. What kind of example does she also set for the class but to make fun of someone’s problem? I know that students need to be respected to succeed.
 
When I went back to college in my late twenties, I outlined the chapters of the textbook. This extra work took a lot of time, but I learned how to structure the chapters through physically writing and cognitively organizing them. I later encouraged my students to be notetakers, both during lectures and also as part of reading their assigned articles and books.


Over the years, I learned that my teachers who were enthusiastic and enjoyed teaching created an atmosphere for us students to become more inquisitive. Their energy helped create a desire to learn more about various subjects. I followed that model and also knew that an occasional smile or laugh helps students enjoy the class.


This exercise of thinking about the influences of the past was helpful for me to do. I am fortunate that I did have many good models to recall. I hope those lesson learned were beneficial to my students during my forty-plus years of teaching college.


Submitted by Jo Ann Brannock, PhD
With Greta Nagel, PhD