What do those best teachers do?

Here are some thoughts to start us thinking for our breakfast on the 17th.

Who was your best teacher and why?

How important is the performance part of teaching?

What leads to transformative experiences for our students?

How important is content knowledge and scholarship to effective teaching?

Is knowledge constructed or received?

Does praise help or hurt?

Bain mentions Donald Sari and his principle of WGAD, Who Gives a Damn, is this a useful approach?

What about planning backwards, starting with the big picture goals and working to the specifics, do you do this, does it work?

Lecturing, does it work or does it drive students away?

How do you hold students attention while still being scholarly?

What about telling students who ask to drop the class that "good students" aren't allowed to drop the class (p. 136). Would this work?

Does humility set the best teachers apart?

There are also lots of other things to think about in this book. These are only a few of the issues that I found intriguing.