{"id":270,"date":"2020-02-17T11:05:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/?p=270"},"modified":"2023-08-29T10:27:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T14:27:07","slug":"award-winning-teachers-offer-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/2020\/02\/17\/award-winning-teachers-offer-wisdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Award-Winning Teachers Offer Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Gooblar<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"CAT<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was at the end of a fascinating hour, an hour in which some of Temple University\u2019s finest professors shared some of what made them such great teachers, that Stephanie Fiore<\/a>, the Assistant Vice Provost of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, asked one final question. \u201cWhat words of wisdom would you offer to other professors who want to improve their teaching?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The occasion was the Center for the Advancement of Teaching\u2019s annual luncheon to celebrate Temple\u2019s award-winning teachers. The guests of honor were the 2018-19 recipients of the Great Teacher Award<\/a> and of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Awards for Distinguished Teaching<\/a>. Also present were a number of Temple faculty and staff eager to hear what these excellent teachers had to say about their approach to helping students learn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The responses to that last question were instructive in their variety, underlining that there are a number of ways to become a great teacher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Matt Wray<\/a>, Associate Professor of Sociology, there\u2019s an important distinction between teaching content and teaching students. \u201cAs graduate students, most of us were trained to teach content\u2014theories, concepts, terminology, research methods and findings, and so on.\u201d But just because a professor knows all of the content does not mean that students will learn it all. To focus on students \u201ctakes more time and patience and understanding. Above all, it takes sustained dialogue with students and active listening on our part to hear what it is students know, what they don\u2019t know, what they want to know, and how they know that they know it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawrence Kaplan<\/a>, Professor of Medicine and an Associate Dean for Inter-Professional Education at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, also counseled a focus on students. But Kaplan was careful to note that he guarded against assuming that all students wanted to follow the same paths that he followed. \u201cMy responsibility in medical education is to help students become the best physician that they want to be\u2014not to turn them into me.\u201d He aims to \u201chelp each student\u2019s individual self-discovery,\u201d and admitted that he loved to see \u201cthe light bulb moment when they see how the details of what they are studying is applied in the care of patients.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But chasing such moments can lead professors to try to do too much, warned Nancy Morris<\/a>, Professor of Media Studies and Production. Morris reminded professors that sometimes wanting students to know everything can come at the expense of depth. \u201cI think in general we all want our students to grasp the full breadth of class themes, to be well-versed in all class topics, and to engage with a range of readings that provide different approaches to class topics. But attempts at breadth can be counter-productive.\u201d The solution, Morris said, was often to take material out, \u201cin order to make class time not feel rushed, to not have to sacrifice exploration for superficial \u2018coverage,\u2019 and to encourage students to delve into readings rather than (at best) skimming them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For David Schuff<\/a>, Professor of Management Information Systems, the question made him think of how he conceives of a course\u2019s full progression. \u201cI try to think of a class as having a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. That helps me focus on the content that is essential to the \u2018story\u2019 and eliminate the rest.\u201d He\u2019s found that thinking of a semester as a story\u2014with a narrative pay-off\u2014helps students stay engaged for the whole course. \u201cStudents can see how each piece of content in the class serves the end goal (i.e., what I want them to be able to do when they finish the course).\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a lot of nodding, both in the audience and on the dais, as these professors gave their answers. Judith Litvin Daniels<\/a>, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Education for Anatomy and Cell Biology, noted that such effective approaches to teaching weren\u2019t magic bullets. \u201cBecoming a good educator takes time,\u201d Daniels reminded us. It takes years of trial and error, of paying attention to teaching as a discipline, to reach the heights of these award-winning professors. \u201cIf one has the passion and devotion to imparting knowledge, and if one is self-aware, then in time one grows into an accomplished educator.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s one thing everyone at the event agreed upon, it\u2019s that such commitment is worth it. As Wray noted, \u201cit\u2019s not an easy path, but the rewards are pretty great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Gooblar is the Associate Director for Temple University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and author of <\/em>The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching (Harvard University Press 2019).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Gooblar It was at the end of a fascinating hour, an hour in which some of Temple University\u2019s finest professors shared some of what made them such great teachers, that Stephanie Fiore, the Assistant Vice Provost of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, asked one final question. \u201cWhat words of wisdom would you offer … Continue reading Award-Winning Teachers Offer Wisdom<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event-coverage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}