Wesley Bauerschlag

AGSC 325--Instructional Design in AGSC

Characteristics of Effective Teachers Paper

There are many ways that teachers try to reach their students, and get across the subject material.  Some of the ways we experienced effective teachers were as students in the classrooms of some of our favorite teachers.  Learning the characteristics of effective teachers is a valuable tool that we as educators will pull out of our educational toolboxes and hopefully be able to use in an effective manner.

In class we learned about five characteristics of effective teachers and how to use their styles in our own classrooms.

·        Clarity is the first characteristic that one should work to be better as a teacher.  It is very important that the students get the information in a clear and complete manner so that they can “file” the information away for later reference.  When information is presented in a clear and precise manner there is less time to try and figure out how it “fits together.”  There are also some negative aspects, like if you are so rigid that the information is lost in translation, then what is the point in trying to be clear. 

·        Variability in the classroom is a great way to keep the interest of your students.  When they expect a certain thing the lessons tend to become more of a routine and more like a chore.  It is important to keep the attention of your students by teaching in a variety of different ways.  The variability also gives students the opportunity to use there different learning senses to learn in a multitude of ways.  There needs to be a consistency to variability in order to eliminate an excess of confusion. 

·        Enthusiasm is a very important quality to have with life as well as in the classroom.  When you get excited about something it catches on with others and they feel the excitement.  Monotone personality is boring and students will loose interest.  It is important to use body language to emphasize the importance of material.  The enthusiasm should not be over used otherwise it may become less effective.

·        A task-oriented / business-like behavior is very important in order to stay on task in the classroom.  There needs to be structure in the classroom to avoid chaos.  Task-oriented activities are critical to having an effective classroom, because it helps eliminate behavioral problems.  However, too much task-oriented / business-like behavior can take away from the variability in the classroom.

·  The student opportunity to learn material is probably the most important aspect for being an effective teacher.  A way to measure of how effective a teacher has been is by the amount of information that the students learn.  It is important to give students an opportunity to learn in the class in different ways so that the students are able to learn and reflect in different ways.

            The characteristics of effective teachers are very important to being the best teacher to our abilities.  I believe that it would be extremely difficult to try and master all five of the traits all the time, because I feel that it would actually take away from the actual material that needs to be presented.  However, I believe that each one of us has a style that we will be good with and we should try to use and incorporate each one of the five characteristics of effective teachers in order to hone our skills as professional educators.

Wesley Daniel Bauerschlag

P.O. Box 7023

College Station, TX 77844

e-mail: wdb2003@yahoo.com

Phone: 210-355-7005

AGED 325 HOMEPAGE

AGED 601 HOMEPAGE