The Science and Art of Effective Secondary and Post-Secondary Classroom Teaching

About the Book

In this day and age with the advent and rise of teaching secondary and post-secondary courses via online instruction, classroom teaching has almost been forgotten as a primary and relevant means for instructing students at the secondary and post-secondary level. Today more than ever, effective classroom instruction is a requisite delivery process for communicating information in a manner that inspires students to attend class and listen attentively once they are present in class.

This book explores six social interpersonal and dramatic communication teacher behaviors (student respect, empathy, praise/encouragement, humor use, use of personal narratives/ storytelling and enthusiasm) that are an integral part of the definition of teacher effectiveness because they are correlated with motivating secondary and post-secondary students’ classroom attendance and attentive listening in a classroom environment. Moreover, this book explores how these six teacher behaviors should be utilized as significant criteria when recruiting and training prospective secondary and post-secondary classroom teachers.

In summation, the need for classroom teachers still holds an inspiring and relevant place in civil societies. Likewise, this book underscores how educators can use knowledge regarding effective classroom teaching to comprehend that skillful classroom instruction is both a science (behaviors that are learnable) and an art (behaviors based more upon natural oral communication gifts); yet all such behaviors should guide our recruitment and development of upcoming and currently employed classroom secondary and post-secondary teachers.

About the Author

Thomas D. Sharts is department chair of social sciences and fine arts with Northern Marianas College. Also he has authored the following books: The American Deception; The Poor Man’s Bible A-Z; Avant-Garde Sociology; The Five Areas of Being Human; Sunday School Lessons and Sermon Topics for Real Faith in the Real World; and Building a NonProfit Entity, Organization or Agency. Mr. Sharts has eighteen years college teaching experience and has taught in higher education in both the United States and overseas. From 1999 to 2007, he was the founder and executive director of Friendship Helping Ministries in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2002, he was the recipient of the Community Quarterback Award for Human Services Leadership as designated by the National Football League’s Carolina Panthers. Mr. Sharts interests are reading, writing, sports, and the visual and dramatic arts. He is also available for public speaking engagements or educational seminars in reference to sociological analysis on identified specific topics, business analysis, nonprofit creation and development, self-help analysis, etc. He may be contacted at tdsharts@yahoo.com.