Matthew Dicks’s 13 Principles of Effective Teaching

As my 27-year career as an elementary school teacher comes to an end, I offer this to all current and future teachers:

The 13 principles of teaching that I have gleaned over more than a quarter-century spent in the classroom.

They are all true, right, and essential for success. Waver not from a single one.

Matthew Dicks’s 13 Principles for Effective Teaching

1. If you haven’t given your students an authentic reason to learn, don’t even bother teaching the lesson.
2. The most effective tool for assessing student progress is absolute honesty.
3. When it comes to discipline, you must only say things that you are willing to do.
4. The first step in planning every lesson is to determine how to make it fun for students.
5. Teachers must read and write regularly to be effective teachers of reading and writing.
6. The student’s voice should be heard far more often than the teacher’s voice.
7. Teachers must think of parents as full and equal partners in the education of the child.
8. If your students are not laughing at least once every hour in your classroom, you have failed them.
9. The most important lessons you’ll ever teach often have little or nothing to do with academics.
10. The best administrators understand that teachers are more knowledgeable about instruction than they could ever be.
11. Time is more valuable in the classroom than anywhere else in the world. Waste not a second.
12. It is almost impossible to set expectations too high for students.
13. The single greatest assessment of a teacher’s effectiveness is their students’ desire to come to school every day.