BAD TEACHING
Yes, it's the infamous Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In the Harry Potter series, she is known to be one of the most evil, cold-hearted characters. She also happens to arguably be one of the worst teachers to have ever taught at Hogwarts. Let's look into this, shall we?
1. She immediately creates an unwelcoming environment in the class when she burns one of the student's beautiful paper birds. Instead of embracing the creativity, she shuts it down and makes it apparent that such activities will not be allowed.
2. The first thing she discusses is the final examination for the course, and while that in itself is not an issue, the way that she brings it up is - she tells her students that if they do not study appropriately, the consequences will be "severe". I don't believe that anything should be severe in a classroom setting, as it has a negative connotation (as does consequences).
3. She is a huge hypocrite. When Hermione inquires as to why there are no spells in the textbook, Dolores scoffs and asks her why she would need to use any spells, despite the fact that at this point in the video, Dolores has already used three spells. A teacher should never teach through "do as I say, not as I do".
4. She believes that the students should not be learning through practical application, but rather exclusively from theory and reading. This pedagogical approach is almost guaranteed to fail and do a disservice to your students; there needs to be a mix of theory and practical application.
5. She throws a tantrum as soon as she starts speaking to Harry, telling him that he needs to raise his hand before speaking (but does this in a rude manner) yet she did not say this to Ron who also did not raise his hand before speaking, setting the stage for inequality in the classroom.
6. She refuses to see Harry's side to things, saying he is telling "lies" when expressing worry about not being able to defend himself against the dark arts. This then creates tension which results in a gruesome punishment for Harry (not shown in this video).
Dolores is only in this video for approximately two minutes and twenty seconds, but in even that short period of time, there are six major red flags pertaining to her teaching style. Some of them were more obvious than others, but they are all certainly damaging to the students and classroom environment.
GOOD TEACHING
After seeing a clear depiction of bad teaching, that leaves the question - what is good teaching? It is hard to create a rubric for the ideal teacher, but there are some features to John Keating's character that make him an admirable teacher.
1. When Todd comes to class unprepared, John does not fail him, discipline him, or exclude him from what his happening in the classroom; he encourages him to make something up on the spot so he can contribute to the class.
2. John creates a welcoming environment by encouraging Todd to do something out of his comfort zone, paving the way for him to accomplish the task of writing a poem.
3. John embraces every drop of creativity in Todd's body; he encourages Todd to say what comes to mind, not to think, no matter how weird the thought is. When Todd thinks of a "sweaty-tooth madman", despite the fact that this thought is absurd, at no point does John reject the idea, but instead encourages it.
4. He does what he can to make sure that Todd does not worry about what his classmates think of him, telling John to "forget them" when they start laughing at one of his other strange thoughts.
5. John is able to achieve an incredible product and disprove Todd's idea that he is not a poet. He helps Todd realise that he can indeed create profound, artistic, moving poetry from pure instinct.
While there may be some questionable elements to John's teaching, for the most part he is effective in allowing the students to succeed academically, as well as grow as people and realise their own abilities. By the end of this clip, the other students are in awe of Todd. The fact that John was able to change the students' view of Todd and make it something positive speaks volumes to him as a teacher and a person.
STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGING STUDENTS
Reflecting back on what we did in class on March 13th, 2017, and what we read about in Tobias' article, I have come up with some strategies to implement student engagement in my future classroom.
I think that a fun introduction would be something that I've actually done on my own time with friends in residence: someone would play a series of four chords on either guitar or piano, and we would cycle through numerous pop songs that had the same chord progression. With my friends it's just a fun "jam" session, but with a class it could be so much more. The possibilities are practically endless and it would be a great introduction/transition into a project in which students would need to create a "mash-up" of at least 2 pop songs. They would be allotted some time to work on it in class, and then once the assignments were complete, they would present.
Of course I would use this further as a transition into classical music (once the students had gotten the hang of it). I would show the video shown below as an intro into classical mash-up and have them create a similar project as to what they did with the pop music.