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Teaching

The Best Advice I’ve Ever Read on Teaching

Background

I’ve decided to do some writing on teaching. Over the years, I’ve been the benefactor of some great advice and some superior role models in this profession. At this point in my career, it seems important to me to share some of what I’ve learned. Even if this is not read by anyone, the process of writing it will reinforce these principles in my own daily practices. I will be posting to this category about once a week, maybe more often here at the beginning, as I seem to have a lot of things bouncing around in my head.

Over the past ten years, I’ve seen a much higher turnover rate in teaching. There are certainly many contributing factors to this phenomenon, but there is no doubt in my mind that the continuously cloistered nature of our classrooms and our practices is a factor.

A Couple of Pages

At the beginning of my career, I was a regular subscriber to the Journal of Chemical Education. Much of the content of the Journal is directed toward research. I read a lot of technical journals early in my career, partly because I thought I might go back for a more advanced degree, and partly because I have always considered it important for teachers to remain “current” in the subject matter that they teach.

In the July, 1993 edition of the Journal, I came across an editorial (“Provocative Opinion”) written by Rubin Battino of Wayne State University. The article was titled “On the Importance of Being Polite“. It was a 1 1/2 page treatise on the importance of a teacher’s attitude toward students and teaching. I consider it the very best thing that I have ever read in a long teaching career. Consider that in 27 years, I’ve read many dozens of books on education. I’ve attended countless hours of inservice and other forms of professional development, and received hundreds of emailed links to insights and inspiration regarding this profession. Yet, even after all of that, this article is the single finest piece of advice I can share. That is the reason that I decided to start my “brain dump” with Dr. Battino’s writing.  I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve given this article to new teachers, veteran teachers, and administrators.

If you’ve stumbled onto this page, do yourself a favor and click the link. It won’t take long to read.

By Andy Allan

I am the owner-developer of Sciencegeek.net and a science teacher at El Diamante High School in Visalia, CA.

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