Is there an essence of good teaching? A fundamental verity that
transcends discipline, era and personal style? Some secret beyond George Nesbitt's doors-and-windows maxim? Well, yes and no. Teachers resist a one-size-fits-all formula, but as they do, the same terms surface with remarkable frequency: passion, care, creativity, a commitment to both students and one's discipline. For McCormick, "The one quality that would inspire or drive good teachers would be that they care about teaching well and they care about their students." For Cryer, it's "pure and simple, communication." For Ambrose, "What good teaching ought to produce is wonder in the minds of students."
Buchman speaks of "the importance of presence, learning to truly pay attention — students need to do that, but so do teachers." Guttman, too, speaks of the need across disciplines "to be a good listener and to teach students to observe closely — to read closely, to write with care and attention, to consider the details of an argument. Really, what we all teach is attention to detail and methods of interpreting what we observe." McKee believes that "a good teacher has to be passionate about the material, but also understand that students learn in different ways, and so be creative in presenting that material."
Coaches echo some of those same themes in describing their own standards and ideals. "Athletes have to know you care," says Phil Grady, professor of physical education who recently retired as hockey coach. "They have to have confidence in your knowledge. They have to know that you're going to challenge them to grow and improve. And as a coach, you're going to devote yourself to developing character, to building the total person, not just the athlete."
Cockburn, former head coach of the women's squash team and now an assistant coach, says that while her teaching of mathematics and her coaching are different in many ways, they can also inform each other. Her relationships with her players tend to be deeper and more personal, she says: "I know them on a different level." But she also believes her coaching style is altered by the fact that "I'm a professor and I expect a lot of self-motivation on the part of students.When I assign homework, for example, I don't expect to have to stand over a student's shoulder and yell, 'OK, do problem 20. Go down and give me five push-ups if you get it wrong.' I don't really coach or teach that way."
Like Cockburn, many teachers prefer to talk about what works specifically for them. "There are very good teachers who are wonderful explainers, so perhaps I'm justifying my own disability here," Briggs says. "But I get nervous when I'm explaining something and students are simply writing it down so that they can study it for the final.What I want is to engage them sufficiently so that they start explaining it to themselves. I want to excite their imaginations. I want to transfer their interest in what I'm saying to the text at hand. I don't come into class wanting to explain."
And for Videras, "My principle is to avoid pedagogical routine. It is a modest principle, but it goes a long, long way…. I simply refuse to be bored teaching." Videras, in fact, believes a key to good teaching is a sense of serendipity — the ability to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities in the classroom. He recalls a recent class in which, "out of the blue," a student mentioned that the band Radiohead was allowing fans to download an album from the Web for any amount of money they wanted to pay — or for free if they wished. It inspired a semester-long exercise in "truly collaborative learning," a discussion about the relationship between economics and human behavior:What were the band's motives?Why did many people pay even when they could have the music for free?Why were people in the United States willing to pay more than people in Europe?
"The best moments are usually unplanned,"Videras says. "Of course, this is true about the worst moments as well."
