How to pick good teachers to accelerate your learning (Part 1)
Which classes should you pick for the upcoming college (or high school) semester? Millions of students deal with this question twice a year. Many of us have asked this question at some point in our lives, some of us have even helped our kids or younger mentees navigate this question. One way to choose classes is to focus on the topics or subjects you’re interested in or want to learn more about. A better method is to pick the classes with the best teachers for you.
A “good” teacher, with their enthusiasm, patience and resonant explanations can make you fall in love with any subject, no matter how hard or esoteric you initially conceive it to be. Similarly, millions of people have been put off from a subject or had their spark for it extinguished by a “bad” teacher.
Picking classes with great teachers is a hack I stumbled upon during my time as an undergrad at Princeton and greatly increased my happiness in an intense academic environment. I still use this method today to better navigate self-guided learning in topics I’m interested in, every time I pick a book to read, course to enroll in, or podcast to listen to. Thanks to the internet, we’re spoiled for choice with myriad sources of information to choose from about any topic we could be interested in. With so many options of who to learn from, picking the right teachers for you is more important than ever. How do we pick the best ones for us?
In this essay I want to explore two questions. First, “How do we find the best teachers for us?” Second, “What makes a good teacher?” I’ll do this by examining what I call “The Five Pillars of Great Teaching”.
The Five Pillars of Great Teaching
From my experience, I’ve noticed that the great teachers all have 5 things in common. They are:
In this series, I’ll elaborate on the importance of each pillar in it’s own post, linked above. I conclude with a list of questions and methods to help you find good teachers to accelerate your learning.
Next, read about the first Pillar of Great Teaching, Expert Knowledge.
