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It Works for Me, Too! More Shared Tips for Effective Teaching
It Works for Me Too More Shared Tips for Effective Teaching Author:Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet In the four years since our first book on teaching, we have noticed both on our campus and around the country a new emphasis on the instructor as teacher (vs. scholar). We have read books on the subject, attended the prestigious Lilly Conference, helped establish a Teaching & Learning Center on our campus (Hal served as its first director),... more » and written for new journals focusing on pedagogy. It Works For Me, Too! is our contribution to the Renaissance in College Pedagogy, our attempt to fuel this brightening interest in effective teaching. Like its predecessor, this book is a compilation of tips from workers in the collegiate trenches, but this time our contributors (some volunteers, some drafted) reflect the national interest in this subject and come from all around the country. We begin with a few theoretical approaches, but the major focus of IWFMT (not exactly a memorable acronym) is that average day in the classroom and what momentary magic some instructor has injected into the mix to make the experience much more than average. Sometimes the advice is general, but usually it?s specific. While the advisor may be in a different discipline than you, we have every confidence that you will be able to use this information in your area. After all, most of us weren?t born good teachers ов we made ourselves that. During an observation last fall, Charlie watched as an instructor had her students reproduce exactly what Keats described on that famed Grecian urn. He went immediately into his Am Lit I class and had his students draw up the floor plan for the turret in which Lady Rowena is suddenly transformed into the lost love Ligeia. Only when his class could actually picture that pentagonal structure could they begin to see what magic might have transpired that fateful night. The best tips aren?t only shared; they are borrowed, reshaped, and adapted to one?s own philosophy, and, as John D. MacDonald once said about good writing making more good readers, that reworking makes us all much better teachers. So, read and adapt.« less