Monday, August 29, 2016

To Put It Bluntly, THIS Is Why I'm A Rock Star Math Teacher

You can only be a great teacher if your students do well; student performance is the only criterion for evaluating teacher effectiveness.  This article explains, in part, why I'm so good at what I do:
How to help students do better in school? Maybe we should try hiring better-looking teachers. Or subsidize gym memberships and makeovers for the teachers we already have.

Those, at least, are the implications of a new study from researchers at the University of Nevada, who designed a simple but revealing experiment using college students to see whether a lecturer’s attractiveness has any impact on how much of the lecture students retain. If you guessed that the answer is yes, go to the head of the class. Extra credit if you intuited that teacher attractiveness had other effects as well...

Overall, the findings are consistent with a mountain of previous research about the effects of physical attractiveness. Earlier studies have found that good-looking people are considered more capable, intelligent, persuasive and socially skilled.
We're not just considered, we are. I'm just sayin'.

:-)

10 comments:

Niels Henrik Abel said...

Well, I guess I'm sunk, then....

T-Bone said...

All of a sudden, The Police's "Don't Stand So Close To Me" is running through my head. :)

Darren said...

The article says it doesn't have anything to do with *sexual* attraction, just physical attractiveness.

Anonymous said...

Well, this doesn't explain my successful 30 years. I'm not ugly, but I'm certainly not one of the beautiful people! If I'd only known, I would have had plastic surgery a long time ago and not worked so darn hard all these years to be good at my profession!

Darren said...

You still have to be good, anonymous. Being attractive just amplifies that :)

Anonymous said...

There ought to be a good Kardashian joke in there somehow.

Mike Thiac said...

I can kind of relate, and forgive my blowing my own horn. When I was a Field Training Officer, I had many Probationary Officers tell me I taught them more than their other trainers. But more to the point, in the dozens of probationary officers I trained, all passed evaluation on first try.

Not an exact match, my trainees are evaluated by the (roughly) same standard while yours go into different fields, but the fact is they passed their tests.

Great work man.

Darren said...

But you're not hot, Mike :)

Mike Thiac said...

Grow some hair Darren! ;<)

Darren said...

I have *lots* of hair. It's just not on the top of my head.