What is essential for effective classroom teaching? What is the key to facing a group of 25 or so students, of any age from elementary through graduate school, and commanding their attention in such a way that learning occurs? What are the secrets of those who are good at it, and why do so many teachers struggle?
Those are some of the questions I’ve pondered through my 40-year journey from middle school teacher to school principal to university counselor. I’ve written about the subject in magazine articles, newsletters, and books and spoken about it to hundreds of audiences from local school groups and state-wide PTA conventions to national conferences (and on several occasions outside the country). And my response to the question is ever evolving.
This is how I see it now: The key to effective classroom teaching is to look, speak, act, and respond as a person of both authority and compassion. It doesn’t matter if our audience is eight-year-old third graders, 16-year-old high school juniors, or 22-year-old college seniors: Those of us who teach must present ourselves as persons of authority, men and women who have knowledge and wisdom at a level worthy of the teaching profession, and we must teach with compassion, modeling the courtesies and kindnesses that are the glue of social relationships.
Of course, we must be lifelong learners of the art and practice of teaching—the tricks of the trade that effective learners continue to amass year after year, always improving their craft. And we must be well educated ourselves, particularly in the subject we are teaching. But without that authoritative presence and courteous and kind demeanor, our wisdom and knowledge will die somewhere in that critical space between the sender and the receiver of the day’s lesson.
An important distinction must be made here: Authority is not the same as power. To be authoritative is not to be authoritarian. The former means one who speaks with wisdom, leading through example and encouragement; the latter means one who rules through power and rank, demanding blind obedience and engendering fear. We all have horror stories of suffering through authoritarian teachers; there is no room for them in today’s classroom.
The challenge for those of us who teach, then, is to learn the art of authoritative presence and practice the compassionate courtesies of interpersonal relationships. If we do that persistently, we will experience radically different classroom environments. No, not perfect classroom environments. But radically improved ones nonetheless.