Effective Teaching in the Secondary Classroom

Undergraduate

Children across America spend roughly 12,000 hours in school from kindergarten through grade 12. How those instructional hours are spent dramatically impacts students’ academic and personal well-being. Many studies have demonstrated that teacher quality matters to students’ long-term outcomes including graduation and job placement. In this course, we delve into the essential principles of being an effective teacher, focusing specifically on the U.S. secondary classroom. Building community, designing culturally sustaining curriculum, teaching inclusively, and assessing students authentically are a handful of the principles we explore together through articles about teacher practice, video examples of classroom practice, and students' opportunity to enact some of these practices during class. Each student is paired with a current public school teacher in New Haven to engage in a case study of effective teaching throughout the seminar. By the end of this course, students learn some core principles of effective teaching, gain an understanding of the complexities of enacting effective teaching practices given educational inequities, conduct a case study about effective teaching, and practice some aspects of secondary teaching. EDST 1110 recommended. SO W 4pm-5:55pm