On the Importance of Teaching Excellence Condensed from essays by Thomas E. Cronin in PS: Politics and Political Science (1991) and The Journal on Excellence in College Teaching (1992). Great teachers give us a sense not only of who they are, but more important, of who we are, and who we might become. They unlock our energies, our imaginations, and our minds. Effective teachers pose compelling questions, explain options, teach us to reason, suggest possible directions, and urge us on. The best teachers, like the best leaders, have an uncanny ability to step outside themselves and become liberating forces in our lives. Successful teachers are vital and full of passion. They love to teach as a painter loves to paint, as a writer loves to write, as a singer loves to sing. They have a serious purpose and yet enjoy enormously what they do. They teach their subject -- politics, physics, psychology, or whatever -- as if it really mattered. They can get excited about their subject no matter how many times they have held forth on it. They vivify their subject and rise well above the mechanical, dry, or routine. They push themselves just as they push their students, and their courses become memorable learning experiences. Great teachers know that they are always on stage and that who they are, how they act, and what they believe are as important as what they teach. Teaching, like leadership, is a performing art. Nonverbal behavior -- eye contact, posture, tone of voice, intensity, facial expression, and attitude -- have as much impact as, if not more than, what is said. Whether people listen to and believe, as opposed to just hear, a teacher depends on a host of variables. As one professor of English states, "There’s not a second that goes by within the classroom when something about your values isn’t being made obvious whether you are talking about your values or values in general or not" (Gelpi, cited in Marincovich, 1989, p. 7; see also Arnold, 1990). Or to paraphrase a former professor of mine, a teacher’s major contribution sometimes is not the subject taught but the model caught. Some things can be taught; others must be learned through experience. College teaching falls into the latter category. Learning to be an excellent teacher is a career-long undertaking, because a great teacher is never a finished product but rather is always in the process of becoming. Young professionals can develop a program of learning how to teach while still in graduate school. Students can interview the best teachers on the faculty to find out about their methods, preparations, and qualities as teachers. Graduate teaching assistants can request feedback from their students, peers, and faculty mentors. They also can videotape their teaching and review the tapes with master teachers. Students can build a shelf of classics on the art of teaching that can be read, reread, and discussed with friends. While still in graduate school as well as on their first job, new teachers should sit in on classes and seminars, not only in their own discipline but across the curriculum, of those widely recognized as first-rate teachers. No one knows the formula for effective teaching, but it is worth trying to define what good teachers do. The following are my reflections based on years of teaching, supplemented by references to some of the outstanding works on college teaching. If much of it reads like conventional wisdom or common sense, it is. Good teachers show that they are the masters of their subjects. The first law of teaching is to "know your stuff," to be exceptionally knowledgeable in a subject area. This task never ends, because the flow of important research never stops. Staying current in one’s field is exacting yet crucial. Teachers must feel comfortable with a subject if they are going to succeed at explaining it. They should know how to talk about their subject from several starting points, prompted by a variety of questions. Teaching a subject is far different from conducting research or studying for a doctoral examination. No matter how good a teacher’s style or other abilities may be or how charming and devoted a person, the teacher will never be effective if he or she has glaring gaps in understanding the materials. Good teachers exhibit passion for their field. Memorable teachers are enthusiastic about their subject and teach with a joy and intensity that are often contagious. Time and again, former students recall their best teachers as those whose special quality was their infectious enthusiasm for what they taught. As Van Doren observes: "A teacher can fool his colleagues; he may even fool his president; but he never fools his students. They know when he loves his subject and when he does not" (1964, p. 39). What invariably touches the hearts and imaginations of students is a professor’s personal devotion to learning and truth. According to an old proverb, the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, and the great teacher inspires. Good teachers are organized, prepared, and especially clear. A course can be improved tremendously if, well before the term begins, a teacher organizes and prepares carefully. It is time-consuming yet crucial that reading materials be fully screened before they are ordered for the bookstore or library. A detailed course outline can be a major teaching instrument as well. James March, a gifted teacher-scholar at Stanford, shares with his students, in the syllabus, the central issues of his course on organizational leadership. The issues are not merely listed but presented in detail, posing the questions and ideas around which his course is organized. These are the questions and ideas that his lectures will raise and the readings will address, and that students can tackle for their research papers. Good teachers demonstrate that they know their students as individuals and care about them. Students understandably yearn to be treated as human beings instead of products. How could they possibly like it when a stuffy, formal, pretentious professor lectures on and on, wholly indifferent to them? One of the first laws of public speaking is to know the audience, to find out about the group to be addressed. It is helpful, if class size permits, to have students introduce themselves. I ask students to pair up and interview each other on a number of short questions (such as their major intellectual interests, their enthusiasms, what makes them different, why they signed up for the course, etc.), and then the two students introduce each other before the whole class. In larger classes, there are still ways to learn a healthy sample of names and individuals. A teacher might interview a dozen students the first week of class, or invite a few for coffee or lunch. Sometimes I announce to my class, for example, that I will be having lunch or dinner the next day in one of the student cafeterias and welcome anyone in the class to join me. Far more than most teachers recognize, students often are as interested in us as they are in our subject matter or discipline. Students are especially interested when we share a personal anecdote or dramatize a concept by describing a personal experience that illuminates it. Good teachers display listening skill. They learn to squint with their ears. They know that they cannot listen to students by doing all the talking. They patiently weigh the comments of a student who is either wide of the mark or communicates poorly. Type A teachers, compulsive presenters, and truth givers resent such intrusions. It is crucial for teachers to develop patience so that they can wait, not 2 or 3 seconds, but 20 or 30 seconds for responses after posing a question or asking for volunteers. Experts call this wait time. Students often need time to process the question and to brood about it for awhile. Good teachers create a positive environment for learning, for asking questions, and for growing and changing. The best teachers encourage us to learn from our mistakes and to overcome our fear of failing. Good teachers talk about their own failures and their recovery from them. One student told me he had just had a wonderful teacher, and I asked why he was so impressed. The student replied: Because he stretched us. He pushed us in this direction and that.... He used to say, gently, have you considered this possibility? Have you thought about this idea? But never with a sense of embarrassing you. Yet always trying to get you to think and grow and learn. Another person raved about a past teacher because "he didn’t make me feel embarrassed to be bright." In other words, the teacher encouraged an atmosphere of freedom and room to grow. Teachers can encourage shy students to participate by asking for their comments or giving them assignments in advance of class. On the other hand, teachers have to restrain long-winded students who raise their hands with such frequency that they unduly monopolize class discussions. And it is important not to criticize students harshly when they make errors. Classrooms ought to be safe havens for making mistakes. A professor can have high standards and push students to excel yet still foster a climate in which it is okay to make a mistake. The old adage, "Praise in public, criticize in private," should be kept in mind. Good teachers learn to praise questions and to weigh a students’ comments, always finding something of merit. Students need to know that it is okay to try a venturesome assignment and that they will not be penalized for thinking big or bold thoughts. They need encouragement and affirmation. The best teachers understand that positive feedback is a more powerful motivator than negative feedback. A typical student perceives as evenhanded an appraisal that has four positive comments for every negative one. Striking this balance is no easy task. Good teachers ask a lot of themselves and their students. John Stuart Mill once said, "A student of whom nothing is asked that he cannot do never does all he can do." The best teachers push students beyond their normal limits. Neusner writes: A good teacher is someone who can enter into the mind of another person and bring to life the mind of that other person. A good teacher does the work by arguing, pressing, asking questions, challenging answers, asking more questions. The life of the good teacher is expressed in giving life to ideas, imparting meaning to what appears to lie entirely beyond intellect, making the obvious into an adventure. A good teacher is argumentative, disorderly, prepared for confrontation everywhere, all the time, with everyone, on everything -- all for the sake of the vital mind, the freely inquiring spirit. (1984, p. 106) The best teachers are forceful and demanding. They teach up, not down. They convince us that we are much better and brighter than we thought. Teachers and leaders, says Gardner, share a trade secret, "that when they expect high performance of their charges, they increase the likelihood of high performance" (1990, p. 197). If teachers expect students to be disciplined, to think precisely, to analyze rigorously, and to question, purpose, and challenge ideas, it is more likely that those students will excel. Many students are waiting for someone to light a fire under them. Their failure to set priorities and to develop significant personal purposes undermines their capacity for growth and learning. "When a person does not know what harbor he or she is making for, any wind will do," goes an old adage. This is where a demanding, challenging teacher who gets people interested in what they may become can make all the difference. The great teacher grabs us and, in essence, says that if we have no great convictions and aspirations, we had better find something about which we can get excited. Good teachers raise a lot of questions, too. They ask constantly what is worth knowing. What is important for students to learn? What is true, right, just, and beautiful? What is an educated person? Teachers are meaning-makers, and in order to survive in a rapidly changing world, "there is nothing more worth knowing for any of us, than the continuing process of how to make viable meanings" (Postman & Weingartner, 1969, p. 81). They encourage us to be skeptical and to question our intuitive tendencies. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said that "to have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man" (1928). The good teacher encourages students to question the texts they read, themselves, lectures, their classmates’ comments, and contemporary events. Good teachers not only invite questions but also plant, water, cultivate, and reward them. They create a learning community in which students challenge each other. These teachers encourage disciplined thinking and stress the importance of communicating with precision, cogency, and force. They promote the ability to draw implications from research findings and to explain the findings to others. They also teach about the variety of ways that we can gain knowledge and understanding of ourselves, society, and the universe. Good teachers relate abstract ideas to the realities of everyday life. They "bring the subject home." This was the hallmark of historian Henry Steele Commager’s effectiveness at Amherst and Columbia. He related constitutional principles to pressing questions of social justice or to contemporary struggles between Congress and the President. The challenge of a teacher is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects that kills the vitality in our overly compartmentalized curriculum. "There is only one subject matter for education," according to Whithead, "and that is life in all its manifestations" (1929, p. 10). Covering all the material is never as important, especially in a good seminar, as getting the whole class to explore tensions and contradictions and to examine key assumptions and values. At the Aspen Institute seminars, tensions and dilemmas often are the engine that drives good discussion. Confronting contradictions and attempting to resolve them is an exhilarating experience for moderator and participants alike. Consensus need not be the goal; thinking about and understanding ideas and values should be. Aspen's Executive Seminars rely on the Great Books approach, yet use the texts only as a point of departure and not as an end in themselves. The goal is to explore each other, our basic values, and our world, and to learn a bit more about ourselves. Good teachers demonstrate not only their learning but also the process by which they learn; they realize that part of their job is to teach people how to learn. Teachers teach not only their own subject but also the principles of study and concentration and their rewards. Highet points out, "Many students, far more than college and university teachers realize, have emotional and intellectual impediments, often without knowing it themselves; and one of the imperative duties of teachers is to diminish or remove them" (1976, p. 94). Teachers take care as they correct papers. The best teachers provide detailed feedback to their students and insist that struggling, underachieving students come to their office for conferences. Similarly, good teachers work with the writing or reading laboratories at their college or university to help students overcome deficiencies. Good teachers invent ways for students to become active rather than passive learners. Most students prefer to learn by doing rather than by just sitting and listening. A few rare teachers are superior lecturers and make that system work well. Students broke into applause at the end of Woodrow Wilson’s weekly lectures at Princeton. But for many of us, lecturing is not the most effective method of teaching. Smith concludes: I came away from my years of teaching on the college and university level with a conviction that enactment, performance, dramatization are the most successful forms of teaching. Students must be incorporated, made, so far as possible, an integral part of the learning process. (1990, p. 210) Good teachers take into account the old truism, "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand." Engagement, involvement, and participation count. Effective teachers enlist other members of the college or university staff as collaborators in the enterprise of teaching. Good teachers form alliances with librarians, secretaries, and custodians, all of whom can be invaluable assistants in securing materials to teach a class. Writing center specialists, health counselors, student life staff, resident assistants in the dorms, admissions officers, and support staff can help in ways that the teacher has not thought of until getting to know them. Most of these staff members work at colleges and universities because they care about students and ideas. If a teacher tells them about his or her courses, research, and problems, these individuals will find ways to assist, to provide feedback, and ultimately to improve the teacher’s performance. It is worthwhile also to become acquainted with those who control funds and consider nominations for visiting lecturers. These guest speakers often are willing to visit one or two classes while on campus, and such an appearance usually makes for a stimulating class. Good teachers design feedback mechanisms, learn from their mistakes, and experiment continually with ways to improve. The good teacher talks to students about what worked and what did not. Throughout the course, the teacher asks students to write candid, anonymous comments about what they liked or disliked as well as suggestions for improvement. To be sure, some students complain about demanding assignments and long books, but many are honest and helpful, especially if they appreciate that a teacher is earnest about learning how to improve. Good teachers are interesting people who have fun. To enjoy one’s professional work, it is necessary to keep a broad perspective, to have a lively mind and far-reaching interests, and to understand what matters in life. Highet writes: The good teacher is a man or woman of exceptionally wide and lively intellectual interests . . . [They must know more about the world, have wider interests, keep a more active enthusiasm for the problems of the mind and the inexhaustible pleasure of art, have a keener taste even for some of the superficial enjoyments of life -- yes, and spend the whole of their careers widening the horizons of their spirit. (1950, p. 54) Conducting a research project is a way not only to stay up to date and enthusiastic about one’s field, but also to inform one’s teaching. Rosovsky makes this point as well. By far the healthiest and most efficient method of fighting burnout is research. Unlike the somewhat grasping and passive bookworm, the researcher invests in him or herself while interacting with an international world of critics and colleagues. These are not activities congenial to deadwood or burned-out cases: they cannot share in the stimulation of give and take. A research-oriented faculty is less likely to be the home of intellectual deadwood. Active, lively, thoroughly current minds that enjoy debate and controversy make better teachers. (1990, p. 90)   Conclusion Great teachers love their subject and convey that enthusiasm to students. They care about students and feel privileged to teach. They view learning as a verb rather than a noun, not as neatly packaged facts but as an ongoing process of discovery. There is much debate as to how to measure good teaching. No one is exactly sure how to define excellent teaching, because no one ever finishes the process of becoming a master teacher, just as no one ever finally reaches the goal of becoming a truly educated person. No single style or formula for good teaching can be passed on. To become good, one really has to work at it. Teaching is demanding, and great teaching plainly requires enormous dedication and sacrifice. Back to the President's Homepage