There are many teaching styles and many teaching deliveries. Some styles are truly successful and children flourish. Everyone comes out a winner, and that teacher and his or her style is never forgotten. At cocktail parties years later, someone is remembering teacher who had a great style, and there is great fondness.

Some styles are not memorable. The lackadaisical teacher who spends her day on her cell phone or who reads her own book while students are struggling with their lessons is a teacher that students won’t remember. The four hundred copy sheets a day teacher who rarely has the energy to get the copy sheets or work sheets home makes teaching a dull dull model.

Then there are mean ones. We all remember walking into the high school math class and being told that “Nobody in this class will pass this class.” I call this method, The Fort Knox method of teaching. The teacher’s got it, and he or she is not giving it away; it (knowledge) stays right where it is. And our tax dollars continue to pay this guard.

Then there are the teachers who say, “I never give As.” This is the Scrooge method of teaching. And for the most part, the students are undone by this inability to achieve. Conquest of the subject matter is taken away from the child by a teacher’s refusal to allow the perceived “riff raff” darkening the classroom doorstep to succeed. Nice.

Then there are the apologetic types who spend most of their year apologizing to the students for mistakes, misconceptions, and miss connections. These are the confusing teachers because they have clay feet. The student enters the classroom and comes out confused.

There are mollycoddles who think children are the icing on the cake, the stars in the sky. This kind of teacher doesn’t see children as human beings, but as boutique items. Not ever a good thing.

There are the pal teachers who claim to be every child’s best friend and turn out to be their own best friend.

There are teachers for whom the vast crevasse between the student’s desk and the teacher’s desk is so deep and so wide and so tall, there is no crossing – at all.

There are dozens of styles of teaching and every year students of all ages will greet not only a teacher, but a style or many teachers and many styles.

In the thirty years I’ve taught, I’ve tried to model myself on the better teachers I’ve had and known, but quite frankly, I’m always too busy trying to get my point across to really bother with what a successful style is. Getting the attention of thirty or forty little kids at one time is a trick in itself.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that if a teacher keeps kids guessing about what she is going to say or do next, there is a lot more interest on the part of the student to listen to the teacher. A dull teacher who never presents anything new is just that – dull – and kids, little kids especially with say, “why listen?” With little kids, a teacher needs to be part clown, part surprise, and part rewarding angel – at least some of the time.

Kids love competition, and competition is good for the American way of life, so when a teacher starts games, contests and “I bet you don’t know…” kids will respond positively to listening, and that makes learning more fun and therefore something they want to do.

Just taking a chair and sitting with your back to the kids in the front of the room will get some attention. Then looking over your shoulder will draw in more attention. What is she going to do next? Making a face will draw in the rest of the kids, and now with their attention, the voice goes down low so that everyone is listening. The first idea comes out…the teacher promptly chooses the least active child in the class to ask his opinion of the idea and the class takes off. Up she flies from her chair and the contest to acquire knowledge and prizes makes the class of nearly anything work.

Young children have very short attention spans, and some have no spans at all, so getting a group’s attention is the key to developing good teaching style. And getting the attention of any group is the beginning of all teaching to begin with.

My husband, who spent his life in the classroom, always said, “I have something to say, and they are going to listen.” That works with older students, but with threes, fours, fives, and sixes, what a teacher has to say has to be short, to the point, interesting and fun all at the same time and can only be delivered AFTER the teacher gets the group’s attention.

Now let’s talk about presentation. There are teachers who think that anything they present in any way they present it should captivate a class, but that’s quite the contrary when working with little kids. The class that most captivates a group of very young children is a class that is multi-dimensional and lively. I once taught the Norman Conquest to thirty very young children and held the whole group for thirty minutes, so I know this is true. It’s possible to teach almost anything, but dryer subjects better boarder on a comedy routine and have a lot of props and the kids need to be involved somehow.

Developing a style with kids means listening to them. There is always a mood, and a good teacher reads that mood, reaches into herself and draws out just what the group needs. Sometimes it’s a secret, sometimes it’s friendship, sometimes it’s information that just awes them. But it’s always interesting to THEM because they are the primary purpose – the reason why a teacher is teaching. It’s not about the teacher – the teacher comes last.

One of the problems older teachers have is the fiction that what they have “always done” is not only sufficient, but “all they are going to get.” This is a kind of half threat half punishment theory that put into practice becomes a real detriment to learning. This is a protective kind of distance older teachers welcome because the challenge to keep up with the constant changes of teaching is never easy. But a teacher who is teaching now children with antique tools will alienate students like no other style. Older teachers who realize this pitfall will remove from their possession, all prototypes of years gone by and will continue to upgrade ideas.

Best way to avoid aging is to associate and listen to the young teachers. What young teachers don’t have is experience. When an older teacher gets a hold of a terrific new scheme for teaching and applies her constancy and her experience, she finishes the teaching race first, and that’s the way it should be.

Developing a style begins at the beginning by watching experienced teachers who have stayed current. Secondly, developing a style takes a kind of unselfishness that puts the students in the foreground. Thirdly, a good teacher is constantly reviewing what the students have learned because that’s where the goal is.