Who were your favorite teachers growing up?

Maybe it was a private music teacher or a choir director or your high school English teacher or a professor you had in college.

What do you remember about them? What was your learning experience like? What approaches did you observe? What do you find yourself incorporating into your own teaching?

This is our topic today. Perhaps you've heard the age-old adage: we teach how we were taught.

Of course, we know this isn’t the full story: we all have unique backgrounds and a variety of experiences that inform the people we are today and the teachers we are becoming.

Observing our own teachers is certainly a part of that, but this alone doesn’t define what type of teacher we are or will become. But it is worth considering every now and again:

How do these influences and past experiences affect our teaching mindsets, our approaches, and the way we think about learning?

Are we keeping an open mind, pursuing new avenues of instruction, learning new technologies, and challenging our perceptions from time to time or are we getting stuck in a rut, clinging to the things that feel comfortable and safe and familiar, teaching the way we’ve always taught?

For show notes, click here.

Resources mentioned:

*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

“Teaching the way they were taught? Revisiting the sources of teaching knowledge and the role of prior experience in shaping faculty teaching practices” (Amanda Oleson & Matthew T. Hora)

Experience & Education (John Dewey)

“Five Things You Only Learn When You Start Teaching” (Cambridge University Press Blog)

“What My Teachers Taught Me About Teaching” (David Cutler)

Perceptions and Influences Behind Teaching Practices: Do Teachers Teachers Teach as They Were Taught? (Stephanie E. Cox)

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens (Benedict Carey)

Better Learning Through Structured Teaching (Douglas Fisher & Nancy Frey)

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel)

“Review: Make It Stick” (Cult of Pedagogy)

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Daniel H. Pink)

Ep. 003 - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool)

“To Learn, Students Need to DO Something” (Cult of Pedagogy)

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Angela Duckworth)