BetterLesson Interviews Gregory Woodward on Teaching

Gregory Woodward teaches 7th grade at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Boston, MA.  We featured his Columbus: Hero or Villain? lesson last month, so you may recognize him.  Read our interview with him below and sign up or login to check out his detailed and rigorous curriculum materials.

1. Three words that describe your teaching persona:
Urgent, Structured, Honest

2. Why teach?
Watching students develop as people and as learners is incredibly rewarding. I am extremely lucky to have such an awesome job and work with such dedicated people (teachers and students) every day.

3. What would you be if not a teacher?
Environmental Crusader

4. What do you do to optimize student engagement in class?
Students are always doing something that is clear, measurable, and meaningful in a way that is understandable to them. Every lesson has to have an urgency that is palpable to everyone in the room, or else all is lost.

5. Coffee, tea, or caffeine-free?
Coffee. Definitely.

6. Describe your classroom management style in a few sentences.
My management style involves calmness and honesty. I make the stakes of the class clear to students, that history has direct ethical and political consequences. I try to eliminate myself from the picture and make it all about what we are studying.

7. Favorite Cartoon/TV/Movie Teacher:
Edna Krabappel

8. Most vivid teacher dream?
No lesson materials or plan! Total chaos ensues!

9. Favorite Book:
Too difficult a question...I'll just give you the last book I read, which I definitely liked: Kafka by the Shore by Haruki Murakami

10. Is teaching a science or art?
Teaching is a mix of both. The results need to be data-based (which I suppose is scientific), but the methods can have artistic qualities.

11. Anything to add?
I am truly lucky to work in education!