How to Teach Adults

258 Pages·2015·1.67 MB·English

by  Dan Spalding

How to
Teach Adults
Plan Your Class.
Teach Your Students.
Change the World.
EXPANDED EDITION
Dan Spalding
Cover design by Sara Wood and Michael Cook
Cover image : © Shutterstock (RF)
Copyright © 2014 by Dan Spalding. All rights reserved.
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ISBN 978-1-118-84136-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-118-84137-2 (ebk)
ISBN 978-1-118-84128-0 (ebk)
Printed in the United States of America
first edition
PB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
T H E J O S S E Y - B A S S H I G H E R
A N D A D U LT E D U C AT I O N
S E R I E S

C O N T E N T S
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
About the Author xix
1  Foundations of Teaching 1
2  How to Get Started Teaching 25
3  How to Design Your Course 39
4  How to Lesson Plan 55
5  Grading and Assessments 81
6  How to Run Your Class 101
7  How to Present Information 127
8  How to Develop Your Teacher Persona 143
9  Growing as a Teacher 161
10  The Future of Education 191
Appendix: Teacher Glossary 207
References 211
Further Reading 215
Index 223
v
To my parents, my first and best teachers.
P R E FA C E
WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK
And why you should read it.
You’ve had bad teachers before. You had the teacher who lectured
in a monotone the entire class. You had the teacher whose answers
to your questions confused instead of clarified. You had teachers
who wasted your time with busywork, who tested you on things
never covered in class, and who gave you grades that bore no rela-
tionship to what you put into the course or got out of it.
Maybe you’ve been that teacher. Maybe you gave a workshop
that put your colleagues to sleep. Maybe you taught a course that
left you frustrated at the end of each class period. Maybe, right
now, you’re going through the motions of being a teacher, making
your students happy but not teaching them half as much as they
ought to be learning. Maybe your fear of failure is keeping you
away from teaching in the first place.
vii
Preface
Teaching adults is hard. When I started, I didn’t think you
needed any special skills to do it. Then, one day about a month
into my first semester, every single one of my students went home
during the break. An hour in a classroom all by myself gave me a
lot of time to think about how there was more to this “teaching
adults” thing than I had anticipated.
In my attempts to improve my teaching practice, I’ve
learned that there are few books about how to teach adults, and
all of them have their niche: teaching writing, teaching tennis,
teaching democracy . . . I have yet to find a good book that
shows you how to start teaching adults. So I spent three years
writing one.
This book is a distillation of everything I know about
the subject. It’s the product of reflecting on a decade of my
own teaching practice. It’s also the result of conferences, profes-
sional development workshops, and collaborations with other
teachers. It even has the best tips and insights from all those
specialized teaching books I read. I believe that How to Teach
Adults is the first and best book for anyone who cares about the
subject. It’s a concentrated reference you’ll come back to again
and again.
If you give workshops, this book will help you prepare and
present them better. If you’re thinking about making a career in
adult education, this book will convince you that it’s the best job
in the world. If you’re a beginning teacher in search of some guid-
ance, this book will give you concrete advice you can use to build
your career for the long haul. And if you’re a veteran instructor
looking for something you can use tomorrow, go directly to
Chapter 6, How to Run Your Class and Chapter 7, How to Present
Information. You can read this book from beginning to end or
skip around to find exactly what you need.
How to Teach Adults was written for athletic coaches, yoga
instructors, spiritual leaders, and drill sergeants, in addition to the
viii