Meet Josh

Inspired by the premise of Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, I wanted to talk to students about their best college teachers. The goal is to reflect on their experiences in a variety of college classrooms to find key actions that a college teacher displayed toward them or for them, so that we can learn how students believe they are best supported for learning. 

In this format, I sit down with a college student to ask a few simple questions about what they think makes for an effective college instructor. I’m curious if we can learn just one thing from each student, that might help us try something new, or double down on an activity or approach that students like and that they know helps them to learn.

In this student episode of Teaching Time-out, I want to introduce you to Josh, a doctoral student who’s got years of experience as a learner and a student, but also as a teacher. We touch on both sides of the classroom in this episode. The thing that really stood out to me in my conversation with Josh was this idea about engaging through the student versus engaging at the student.

This is something I’m going to reflect on for some time to come. He really talked about instructors efforts and passion for the field and for the content using the student’s own work to share and demonstrate that versus the traditional talking at and lecturing. As well as about the instructors efforts that really display both helpful ways for the students to learn and helpful ways for the students to feel like they matter.