第1个回答 2013-12-06
I have been teaching for the last ten years. During that time, I have workedin public schools, universities, extracurricular programs for K-12, adult basic literacy, and adult enrichment classes. My youngest student was a 6 year-old budding actress in a town-sponsored arts enrichment program for elementary students; my oldest, a Jamaican immigrant, a grandmother beginning at the age of 63 to learn how to read. I've taught honors students in a college humanities program, and severely handicapped youth in a public high school.
The breadth of my experience has enriched my teaching life, but left me without a luxury some of my colleagues enjoy-the sense, as I walk into a new class, for a new term, that I know what my students will need, and how best to share it with them. This is not to say that I've been tossed blind into the classroom. In most cases, I've had enough prep time to gather what seem like appropriate materials, and find out something about the students I'll be working with. What I have not had is the critical mass of sameness that accrues to the teacher who stays in the same setting, at the same level, for many years in a row. I cannot assume that what worked last semester will work this time.
As a result of my ever-changing context, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the craft and practice of teaching, as separate from course content, age of students, size of class, or institutional setting. Everywhere I go, I meet exemplary teachers, and I've been interested in figuring out what makes them so good. What I've discovered is the inherent sameness of good teachers, regardless of the substantial differences between them in terms of style, personality, goals, and pattern of interaction with students. I would go so far as to say that good teachers, in all settings and at all levels, have more in common with each other than any of them may have with their colleagues in comparable positions