Not long ago, I served as a mentor for a Lilly Teaching Fellow, Gabe Robbins. Gabe sat in on my Psych 230 class one day, and afterwards, told me that he was most impressed with the way that I engaged the class with questions. This aspect of my teaching was something that I had never really thought about. I spend a lot of time organizing my classroom presentations, developing in-class demonstrations, and selecting examples that illustrate the concepts about which I lecture. These are the sorts of things of which I am aware. Once Gabe brought it up, I recognized that I do continually ask questions in class. Some are rhetorical, by which I mean that they are meant to engage the students in the issue at hand and are not intended to evoke answers. Other questions require an answer and are designed to inform me as to whether the students are following the lecture. If many students indicate that they cannot provide an answer, then I know that I need to back up a bit in my presentation and perhaps try another perspective on the topic. 

I mention this incident as a way of demonstrating that I have only a limited awareness of the techniques that I employ. What I am most aware of are those techniques that require deliberate planning on my part. Given this limitation, I will organize my techniques under three broad teaching imperatives: Be entertaining, empathetic, and informative. These imperatives are principally applicable to the classroom teaching context.