Successful teaching

Nearly all graduate students of education come to class with either a tentative or calcified formulaic belief on how to teach students. This comes from their being parents, elder siblings, company bosses, church leaders, and so on. The issue thus is not whether education graduate students have a teaching formula or not. The issue rather is whether one has a clear mental picture of his/her teaching formula. If one has one, I assume that it's already a product of careful and lengthy reflection. 

I believe that most forms of teaching require certain elements. It's not easy to name all of them as teachers have different ways of teaching. But I think all teachers would agree that the following are requisites of good teaching: (1) attention from students; (2) sustained attention (if not interest) from students; (3) emotional security with the teacher; and (4) academic connection. I believe that they should all be applied following such order otherwise one’s teaching will most likely fail. To me, the value of this formula is obvious. The teacher must catch first the attention of the students before he/she starts working on sustaining their attention. Simple as they may seem, both phases almost always pose a real challenge. The next phase is getting the students to feel emotionally secured with the teacher. This, too, may not be easy. This can’t go first with any of the previous phases which are like ice breakers whose purpose is basically to disarm and open up the students. When these three phases have already been established, only then should the teacher make a move for sustained academic connection with the students. I think it’s often unwise to just run the students through with academic teaching without securing first their attention, interest, trust, and confidence. While the elements in this formula are necessary conditions of successful teaching, still there are other important considerations, like classroom arrangement and other teaching policies whose purpose is to establish a culture (i.e., sustained and patterned behavior) of academic excellence. I hope I could say more about this matter in the future.