At the University of California over 150 faculty in forty-eight departments have been honored with Distinguished Teacher award. Essays by the award winners were prepared independently over several years. There are striking similarities about what good teachers say about teaching.
- Good teachers are rarely satisfied with their teaching.
1. The teacher’s main task is to guide students through the learning process, not to dispense information.
2. The goal of teaching is to help students read, speak, write, and think critically— and to expect students to do these things.
3. Good research and good teaching go hand in hand.
4. The best teachers genuinely respect students and their intellectual capabilities.
5. Good teachers are rarely satisfied with their teaching. They constantly evaluate and modify what they do.
6. Good teachers do not see teaching as separate from other activities; rather, they see their lives as remarkably integrated.
treating 20 year olds like adults all the time instead of treating them like 5 year olds when convenient and like adults the other times helps