Discussions
What Makes a great Teacher
Posted by TimWicks • 4/11/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: classroom, education, school, self help, self improvement, student, teacher, teaching, time to shine
I had this discussion with colleagues the other day, about what traits make a great teacher. I have listed 15 of them here, for example number 1 is Be crazy about your kids (read students if they are older students)
Read the 15 traits of a great teacher and let me know if I have nailed it, or if some are missing. Post your results in the comment section of the blog.
Blog post can be found here:
TwitPWR.com/bMn/
I can't wait to see what you think makes a great teacher.
Cheers
Tim
User Comments
-
-
Well, for one..... making sure they never EVER get reported on my blog. -
Teaching well in the class room, care and dedication
www.ugpro143.blogspot.com -
adaptability. Not only are there different learning styles, but different students are motivated differently and/or impeded by different obstacles and fears. Any successful teacher must understand what makes each individual student tick, what helps him move forward and what holds him back, and then adapt her approach to remove those obstacles and smooth the road.-
Yes MadameX, adaptability needs to go on the list! As you can see at TwitPWR.com/bMn/ I refer to connecting and relationships a lot because from a good relationship comes the ability to get to know the student. I really believe this is of the utmost importance.
-
-
A teacher needs two basic qualities.
Knowledge and explanation power.
I have seen teacher with good educational degrees but no explanation power.-
I agree. That's why I don't teach art classes (although I've had opportunities & invitations to do so.) I can paint but I'm no good at explaining it. -
LGramlich,
; I hadn't thought of it like that. I will add "the ability to explain things in a way that is easy to understand" to the list.
-
-
They have to love what they do and must be great listeners as well to be able to relate to their students with more than just speech.
I also believe they have to have leadership qualities to lead their students on the right path through the learning experience, and help by showing the obstacles that may stand in a student’s way.
A good teacher is also always prepared before entering a classroom with their curriculum.
They must also be confident in themselves and be professional though out the day or a student might not take them seriously.
After all they are shaping people’s lives.-
Thanks Angie, these are already in the list on the blog post I refer to in the original post at TwitPWR.com/bMn/
-
-
Knowledge, the passion for teaching, the love of children. -
A good teacher is someone who teaches individuals approach to learn, think and validate the knowledge -
I only lasted 1 1/2 days on my teacher training course....I ran away to find bacon-
Bacon smell much better?
-
-
I have posted a comment to your blog: your list contains no knowledge, it's more about being an educator (animator) than being a teacher in the sense of John Taylor Gato who has been teacher of the year but who then revolted against the schooling system:
I may be a teacher, but I’m not an educator
By John Taylor Gatto
From The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 1991
I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think.
I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.
I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can,t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.
An exaggeration? Hardly. Parents aren’t meant to participate in our form of schooling, rhetoric to the contrary. My orders as schoolteacher are to make children fit an animal training system, not to help each find his or her personal path.
The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the faith that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.
That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its “scientific” presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of biology.
It,s a religious idea and school is its church. New York City hires me to be a priest. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.
Socrates foresaw that if teaching became a formal profession something like this would happen. Professional interest is best served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating laity to priesthood. School has become too vital a jobs project, contract-giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “re-formed.” It has political allies to guard its marches.
That’s why reforms come and go-without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.
David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can,t tell which one learned first — the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I will label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too.
For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won,t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education.” After a few months she’ll be locked into her place forever.
In 26 years of teaching rich kids and poor, I almost never met a “learning disabled” child; hardly every met a “gifted and talented” one, either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by the human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.
That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation.
There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen–that probably guarantees it won’t.
How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum, or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn, or deliberate indifference to it.
I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work, I think.
++++
You can find his site here:
www.johntaylorgatto.com/-
Thanks to mylotnovice for the john tayor gatto post. I have seen a video of him and really like what he has to say. I too have felt this way about the industrialised system I am part of.
You say my blog post has no mention of knowledge. I will add it to the list, as I increase the list from 15 to 20. Do you have a suggestion? I am very focused on relationships, and for me knowledge comes in way down the list. Why? So many teachers are brimming with knowledge, yet do not connect with their students. When I think of my daughter in a class, I hope for a teacher that can connect with her. These are just my thoughts of course. -
Whoops, accidental second hit on the button ;p
-
I mean TRUE knowledge not lot of useless "stuff" to learn by rote without understanding
By this I mean the same than Feynman told in his Book "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman" :
www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Character/dp/0393316041/re...
"I often liked to play tricks on people when I was at MlT. One time,
in mechanical drawing class, some joker picked up a French curve (a
piece of plastic for drawing smooth curves - a curly, funny-looking
thing) and said, "I wonder if the curves on this thing have some
special formula?"
I thought for a moment and said, "Sure they do. The curves are very
special curves. Lemme show ya," and I picked up my French curve and
began to turn it slowly. "The French curve is made so that at the
lowest point on each curve, no matter how you turn it, the tangent is
horizontal."
All the guys in the class were holding their French curve up at
different angles, holding their pencil up to it at the lowest point
and laying it along, and discovering that, sure enough, the tangent is
horizontal. They were all excited by this "discovery" even though they
had already gone through a certain amount of calculus and had already
"learned" that the derivative (tangent) of the minimum (lowest point)
of any curve is zero (horizontal). They didn't put two and two
together. They didn't even know what they "knew."
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by
understanding, they learn by some other way-by rote, or something.
Their knowledge is so fragile."
-
-
I'm proud to share this, it's something about my teacher.
That says it all.
hangingonahyphen.blogspot.com/2008/10/finding-miss-nelia.html-
Wow very lenghty post, will need to come back to read it less quickly seems to be a great piece of litterature
-
Nice story
-
-
smart, care, know how to entertain students, and loving,...etc -
-
patience, understanding and being a good listener-
3 of the most important! will add them to the list on my blog, thanks
-
-
Carry! -
understanding and patience -
Hi Tim - reading this discussion and your blog sent me on a weekend journey of readings - so thanks. I have reflected on my blog a compilation of what I have read in your critical list, what others have contributed and what my teaching team are currently discussing. I wanted to be succinct with a top 5 - but got 7... Being a passionate facilitator was my no. 1, and includes being a learner, carer, having high expectations - linked it back to your blog and this discussion. Thanks for the thoughts and discussion.
www.ictece.blogspot.com -
Patience & Dedication-
Patience seems to be a popular choice. I wonder about how patience can be the perceived state a teacher is in, when really it is their deep understanding on human needs, and how to meet them. What do you think?
-
My husband's a University Professor. Trust me...it's patience. *L*
-
-
Patience. And the ability to make things interesting. -
You might appreciate this short explanation (not from my blog, but something I valued because my wife is a teacher)--
www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=13 -
At the heart of teaching excellence is the knowledge that one is not there to tell students what to think, but to enable them to think for themselves.
-
I like it! And not just thinking for themselves, but also thinking about their thinking, and self managing their behaviour. This is facilitation in action. A guest blogger posted on the Time2Shine Blog about being a Teacher vs a Facilitator here:
www.timetoshine.com.au/component/option,com_wordpress/Itemid,55/p,119
It is worth a read.
-
-
dedication and always carry your patience on your pocket-
I like dedication. In a school context the gap between those that are dedicated, and those waiting for a paycheck stands out.
-
-
-
Hi Welly, as you can see on the blog at www.timetoshine.com.au/component/option,com_wordpress/Itemid,55/p,160 the number one trait is "be crazy about your kids". Is this similar to 'love your kids'?
-
-
Patience when a student doesn't understand something.-
Hi Paul,
seeing as you threw in 'patience' again, I will repost what I said regarding patience earlier in the day:
"Patience seems to be a popular choice. I wonder about how patience can be the perceived state a teacher is in, when really it is their deep understanding of human needs, and how to meet them."
What do you think?
-
-
Patience -
Here in America, being halfway competent
-
A good teacher must know how to deal others unlike this kind of senseless mentor who suspended a 6-year old pupil Zachary Christie www.e-buzzonline.com/world-news/zachary-christie-live-interview/ -
I should never understand the lesson
how really difficult it truly is -
A good teacher is like a map : helps you know where you are and gives direction where you are heading. But oftentimes, students prefer shortcuts... -
Intelligence, understanding, insight...and a good sense of humour. Apologies if I'm going over the same ground as others. -
An experienced teacher once told me that i would be a good teacher if i could teach my students how to learn themselves. -
We had a teacher, who understood us, our age, and was one of us.
The best thing is that the whole class scored excellent grade when we passed out of our school in his subject. Nobody in our class scored below 80%.
I had blogged about him. in my blog
(july 2008 : posts titled: micro tip pen and deforestation)
Add Your Comment
This discussion has been locked.
