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Community Voice: What’s the best teaching advice you’ve received?

Stephanie CarmichaelDecember 5, 2016

Being a teacher is hard. That’s why personal learning communities and professional development are so important, whether you’re been teaching for one year or ten.

We asked our community for the best pieces of teaching advice they’ve received across their careers:

Twitter

Paul Cancellieri, @mrscienceteach

“Teach for 30 years, but don’t teach the same year 30 times. Constantly evaluate what you can do better and strive for better student learning whenever possible.”

Luke Henke, @MathHenke

“… was to be consistent.”

Amy Tucker, @aldtucker

“… Laugh. Relax. Play. Have fun.”

Charles Sharma Naidu, @CharlesEverlast

“… be who you are to the students, and don’t try to be anyone else!”

Laura Trauth, @laura_trauth

“Be myself—don’t try to create an artificial personality you can’t sustain in the classroom.

Be fair—use grading rubrics (still often seen as evil at the college level), don’t play favorites, don’t make students ‘read your mind’ about policies, grading, anything.

Treat your students as your partners in education. They can teach you things—about the content, about grit, about perseverance, and about treating others as human beings, not as numbers in a gradebook.

Keep tissues in your office. Sooner or later, you’ll need them.”

Toh Wee Teck, @tohweeteck

“We may have taught, but does it necessarily mean that our students have learned?

Teaching (including lesson design) is both an art and a science. Don’t lose sight of why you CHOSE to teach in the first place.”

Tracy Cornelius, @th33tracy

“Don’t be afraid to teach outside the box.

Don’t be afraid to fail. It’s from those failures that we learn and are able to pass on our wisdom to others.

Teach with humor. Always strive to learn more. Sometimes, it’s not us teaching the students, but the students teaching us!”

Share your thoughts: What’s the best teaching advice you’ve been given?

Photo credit: Guillermo del Olmo / Shutterstock.com

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