Keys to Great Teaching

I have divided my own rules for great teaching into four categories:

• Credibility
• Passion
• Logic
• Kinesthetics (enhancing learning through use of the body as well as the mind).

Three of these connect to the Greek terms, ethos, pathos, and logos.  I realized while teaching these terms as part of persuasion in my English 1A classes that they constitute the fundamentals of my own “persuasion” – which we call “teaching.”

The fourth category, kinesthetics, or Teaching the Whole Student, is my list of techniques and reminders that our students are not little brains encased in fluid and connected to electrodes.  Instead, our students have bodies which need to move, hands that like to draw, backs that get tired of sitting, and so on. Marilyn Patton

• Establish your credibility: Ethos
• Teach to the heart as well as the mind: Pathos
• Design logical, sequential courses and assignments: Logos
• Remember kinesthetics: Teaching the Whole Student