Topic: The Children You Teach

Thinking about your students through a developmental lens will enhance your teaching each and every day. It will also make your job more interesting and therefore more fun. You can do this in a general way by getting into a three-step habit.

Doing well can mean many different things. It’s only in recent years that psychologists have begun to tease apart the big glob we casually think of as motivation.

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, what role does developmental psychology play in teaching?

The value of play comes from the fact that the child wants to play, and has to come up with the play him- or herself. Attempts to simply make a lesson playful miss the very psychological characteristic that renders play such a powerful means for learning during childhood. Play is the child’s work.

When we think of what children learn in school, we tend to think of things like getting better at solving algebra problems, analyzing literary passages, and identifying important events in history. But actually, those very specific skills rest on more fundamental thought processes.

To be a good teacher, you need to be smart, energetic, and knowledgeable, and you need to really like kids. But that’s not enough.