How to Teach Adults

by Dan Spalding (Jossey-Bass, 2014)

A Guide Built from Experience

How to Teach Adults is written by a social justice advocate and ESL instructor in Oakland, California. Spalding loves teaching adults but found little guidance when he began, so he set out to create this book as a Kickstarter project. The book emphasizes that student learning is the goal of teaching. Research highlights are sprinkled over personal experience and reflection, adding up to a comprehensive, practical, student-centered guide. Several chapters orient the new professional to the teaching contract, the union, and institutional policies, while others cover the syllabus, course objectives, the first day of class, formative and summative assessments, and different types of classwork.

Training or Education?

Spalding's distinction between training and education is an interesting one in the context of Calculus I and Business Calculus at Foothill. He cautions that it is exploitative for teachers, who intrinsically wield power, to mold students into workers who improve the bottom line for unseen capitalists (or, as we often call them today, "billionaires"). Instead, teachers should produce changes that expand students' horizons, understanding, and opportunities. At the same time, he insists that teachers are not social workers: "Their job is even harder than ours."

Disclosing Thoughtfully

On humanizing ourselves to students, Spalding walks a middle line and advises teachers to "disclose thoughtfully." For me, that could mean talking about my own organizational struggles and the techniques that have helped: keeping a single calendar and adding events and committments the moment they are first discussed, designating one work bag and zipping my work keys into it, and keeping digital rather than paper files for information I want to refer to later.

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