How Has Your Teaching Evolved?

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they were each doing at the beginning of their teaching careers that they felt was very effective, and as importantly what they were not doing, and then what other aspects came in later when more bandwidth came online as they developed automaticity (unconscious competence).This is a discussion about low hanging fruit / first order effects / climbing the steepest part of the curve as quickly as possible and the law of diminishing returns.  For the most part this episode is not maths-specific and there is value here to teachers from all specialisms.  The duo also talk about how important it is to be constantly striving to improve teaching and share what they are each working on at the moment.  They elucidate the 'soft' metrics that they were using to test their own competence while developing skills in these core areas.  Alongside this is the emphasis on sticking with an approach, reflecting and refining the ability to make it work effectively, and not giving up and looking for the next silver bullet.