Saturday, May 1, 2010

How to improve teaching?

I just watched a video called Teached that touched on how important good teaching is in a public education system. In particular, teaching quality has a huge effect on underprivileged students.

The video got me wondering, what can be done to improve teaching? The first problem I thought of is how little teachers communicate about their jobs. We are all so busy, we rarely about how to do the job better. And we almost never talk consistently about how to do the job better.

So here is the challenge I am setting for myself. I challenge myself to schedule 15 minutes a week to talk to at least one other teacher about how to do our jobs better.

Here are the big keys:

1. The time is scheduled. All teachers involved have agreed to use this time for the purpose of improving.

2. We use the time to try and improve. To focus on how we could be better, what we could do better, how we can better serve our students. Anything else, specifically problem-focused, excuse-seeking talk is off topic and needs to be shut down.

So, that is my challenge to myself. If it seems to work, maybe I can convince other teachers to do it too.