Heather Wiseman

“Teaching is rhetorical, meaning that it inevitably depends on the particulars of specific audiences, purposes, occasions and constraints.” -Taggart, Hessler, and Schick

I believe that there is not one universal prescription for teaching. Teaching is adaptive. The objective is to give the students what they need—what they need to feed their mind, what they need to succeed, what they need to desire more. Every new class brings new students with new needs. I believe an effective educator is attune to these needs. Someone, or some motivational poster, once told me that “A good teacher knows the lesson plan and a great teacher knows when to cast that lesson plan aside.” As much as I may hold fast to my own objectives, I know the teaching is also learning, so I must take the other part of the equation into account. Most students I encounter have ideas about what they want to learn. I just have to be willing to listen to them.