Good teaching is about listening, questioning, being responsive, and remembering that
each student and class is different. It's about eliciting responses and developing the oral
communication skills of the quiet students. It's about pushing students to excel; at the
same time, it's about being human, respecting others, and being professional at all times.
Good teaching is about not always having a fixed agenda and being rigid, but being
flexible, fluid, experimenting, and having the confidence to react and adjust to changing
circumstances. It's about getting only 10 percent of what you wanted to do in a class
done and still feeling good. It's about deviating from the course syllabus or lecture
schedule easily when there is more and better learning elsewhere. Good teaching is
about the creative balance between being an authoritarian dictator on the one hand
and a pushover on the other.