Page 78 - Teaching Principles and Methods Student Textbook short

1. Lack of Preparation.

A poor teacher does not prepare. Normally the teacher does not start out this
way. Usually he works hard getting ready to teach a particular course. But if
assigned the same course the second year, since the work has already been
done, he simply reviews the previous work and floats by with minimal effort.
Soon, he knows the course so well; he might spend 5 minutes in total
preparation time. After several sessions, the information becomes stale and
the teacher’s presentation becomes routine. And those that suffer because of
this laziness are the students.

I had a teacher in college who had taught for many years. He still used his
notes from the college where he studied some thirty years previous to teaching our class. The pages
were yellow and crumbling from age. It would have been nice if he had spent some time freshening up
the information and presentation.

A poor teacher may look at the material and say to himself, “Oh I already know this stuff. I don’t need
to prepare that much.” Again, the students suffer.

It all boils down to the fact that a lousy teacher is a lazy teacher because he will not take the time to
properly prepare to teach. He relies on what he has done in the past, rather than motivates himself to
make his courses better now. Things change every year and there is more to learn. A lousy teachers
does not care to discover new and important information.

2. Lack of Excitement about the topic.

Your attitude about life is infectious. Those around you will respond to your
enthusiasm about a cause and will even join with you to help. But a person who has
a discouraged and depressed attitude about life discourages others around them.
“They just want to eat worms and die.”

How you approach a subject and your excitement to teach that information to your class will transfer to
the student, creating a desire for them to learn. But the opposite is also true. If you lack enthusiasm
and present the information as just that --- stuff the students have to learn --- then the students will not
only find the information boring, but will even resist learning it.

The motivation for this lack of enthusiasm boils down to selfishness on the part of the teacher. Since he
is not excited about the subject, then no one else will be. That teacher is willing to let his students
suffer because he doesn’t care for the topic at hand. He has forgotten that he is a SERVANT of the
students and has lost his motivation to see them excel. Rather, he has become self-focused.

So if you want to be a lousy teacher, treat your topic as boring. I guarantee your students will respond
in like manner.

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