Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

Some material is harder to teach than other material because of its content. It is the teacher’s job to make this material just as exciting and motivate students to want to learn it. The first step is to learn what your students already know. This will help you build a base and give you a starting place. Then you should link the new, harder material to the old material that the students already know. This will help keep the material interesting. You should also break down the new topic and teach it in smaller chunks instead of all at once. This makes the information easier to learn and if you teach it in a new, exciting way then your students will be more likely to pay attention.

I think that it is very important to give some sort of pre-test before the course starts. I have had a couple of teachers do this and I find that it helps me, as a student, see where the class is going. Teaching in new and exciting ways is what teaching is really all about. If you’re not able to teach something so that students will relate to it and find it interesting then maybe it is time to retire. I hope to bring excitement into my classroom everyday and have students that really want to take my course and get interested in the material.