Bradford Egelston

In my experience, I've found that I can harness the "exuberance" of students who crave the spotlight.  I can often come up with a job for that student under the guise of "assisting" me.  In math classes, I'll often make students who like to speak up and interject into my fact-checker.  With a calculator, they'll check my mental math as I work out examples on the board.  When other students offer answers, I'll have my assistant "verify" the answer before I write it.  When a student asks me a higher order question, I'll have students give their theories or opinions… >>>

First and foremost, I have to "hook" students to increase their buy-in regarding the course material.  Teaching math, I often have math-phobics who have had limited success with math in the past.  Other times, their math skills have atrophied after spending years outside of a classroom.  I try to entertain as well as inform, so on the first night of class, I'll typically use a mathematical party trick to suggest that I have psychic mind reading powers.  The students are generally amazed, but as I repeat the trick, some of them start to recognize a pattern and then they begin… >>>