February 13th, 2012 | Cassie Duprey
4 Strategies that Improved my Teaching Practice (and one to avoid)
Observe other teachers.
Good or bad, in your content area or out, at your grade level or not, observing other teachers is the single best way I invigorate my teaching practice. After a particularly disastrous transition from rural Mississippi to Oakland, California, I dedicated my prep period once a week to observing strong teachers around the city. Someone, somewhere, was teaching my students successfully, and I was determined to find them and learn what worked. These observations helped fine-tune my practice by showing me ways to use time effectively, give regular student feedback, and improve my classroom management. Sometimes my only take-away was “Well, I’m definitely not going to…”
Read a book.
Not an education book, though. A book about leadership or psychology or time management. Teachers are leaders and we should investigate [at least some of the] literature available about motivation. From Carol Dweck’s Mindset and Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers to Stephen R. Covey’s The 8th Habit and Robert K. Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel when trying to motivate ourselves and our students to achieve excellence.