Art and Science of Teaching: Chapter 8

Our district is investigating The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert Marzano (@robertjmarzano).  


Disconnected empathy.  That is the essential learning with this chapter.

While reading this chapter I kept thinking how much I take teaching personally.  It's my craft, it's my passion, but the chapter kept reminding me to disconnect and not take so much personally.

Here are my takeaways:

• The quality of relationships is key to student learning
• Everything comes back to "guidance and control"
• How much are you as a teacher committed to the well-being of ALL participants
• "We are a team here and succeed and fail as a team.  Additionally I have stake personally in the success of each one of you."
• Be consistent
• My biggest weakness is "The causes of many behaviors labeled and punished as rule infractions are, in fact, problems of students and teachers relating to one another."
• Teachers need to be "considerate, buoyant, and patient."
• Show the appropriate amount of dominance and cooperation
• Have emotional objectivity
• Brophy and Everston (1976) state: "professional view of their students looking upon them primarily as young learners with whom the interacted within the student-teacher relationship  elicited the highest result of student learning.
• Classroom needs a sense of community
• A teachers actions as well as their works are "listened" to by the students.
• Teacher Enthusiasm is key
• Use humor....when appropriate...
• Action Steps for your classroom:
1. Know something about each student, invest in them, get to know everything you can.
2. Engage in student activities, go to their events, care about them and their families.
3. Talk to every student every day, or as many as you can.
4. Personalize learning (Blog posts on this one are plentiful: 1, 2, 3 )
5. Smile, care, engage, interact, be interested...
6. Use humor....when appropriate...
7. Enforce both positive and negative consequence (this one I still struggle with) 
1. Acknowledge when students follow the rules instead of just when they don't
8. Practice removing yourself from the situation
1. Listen, you are not going to love every kid.  Use a consistent tone.  Give them the benefit of the doubt.  What could have possibly make them act the way they did.  Reason with them, support them, it's not personal.