Material Detail

Dr. Kuchner is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Stony Brook President's Award for Excellence in Teaching. She discusses why it is important to teach to the whole student - recognizing that they have complex lives that impact their ability to learn but also to bring experiences to the classroom. She shows empathy for the student’s situation to improve the connection between the instructor and student and increase learning. She also believes that the instructor should show respect for the students by giving them choices rather than hard policies, making them responsible for, and part of the decision making process about their own learning. They should be encouraged to embrace the learning process. Instructors should respect the students enough to give them time to reflect on and respond to questions posed in the classroom.

Trust is critical for learning to occur and knowing student names is important in developing that trust. In addition, if you expect students to share personal information in the class share some of your own to show that you trust them. Joan believes that it is important to convey passion for the subject matter – to exaggerate emotions and tones when addressing your audience. She personalizes learning by involving all the students in conversations with individual students. She uses objects to help model the discovery process and then applies this process to concepts and ideas. Dr. Kuchner believes that the secret to good teaching is to enjoy your work and transmit that feeling to your students. You should also encourage students to share their learning to give it meaning.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again