What Makes A Great Teacher (Part One)
I read an article recently that immediately made my senses sharpen: What Makes a Great Teacher?, which apparently is a precursor of an impending book.
This is an incredibly difficult question, and many of the stakeholders involved will answer very differently: is it strength in classroom management, or thorough knowledge of the material, or pedigree or education, or possession of advanced degrees, or something entirely different?
My mother was a great teacher– legendary, you could even say. I was always conscious of this, whether it was because every where we went in our small town, former students would come up and greet her, tell her how much she changed their lives. She was the kind of teacher adored by “bad kids” and AP students alike, the kind of teacher who gets asked to be the commencement speaker for years, even after she has retired.
Both my sister and I had her as a teacher, I for AP US History and my sister for US History before me, so I can testify to her greatness personally. My mother has a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s in history, but she has said to me before many times that she thinks her master’s degree is essentially worthless– not because she didn’t work hard for it, but because she doesn’t believe you can be taught how to be a good teacher in a classroom. In her opinion, good teaching comes from years spent practicing and refining the class. It certainly didn’t come from technology– I remember her mimeographing handouts and passing around manila folders she’d taped magazine photographs to, so we could see some of the famous images she told us about in class.
But if it doesn’t come from technology or graduate-level education programs, where does it come from? How do we recognize and develop highly effective teachers?
8 Comments
Trackbacks
- What Makes A Great Teacher, Part Four « A Patchwork Life: writing, teaching, learning more each day
- 2010: A Recap | A Patchwork Life
I’m currently teaching teachers right now. In theory, I’m teaching them about how to use technology effectively in their teaching. I think of it more like an immersion course. They’re embedded in the tools right now so that when they get in the classroom, they’ll have some things at their fingertips that they can use. I’m not a great teacher. I’m a good teacher. I don’t know what would make me a great teacher. Practice, certainly. But I also think a certain joy in teaching, in seeing students succeed, of really connecting to them. I have had that. And when I do, I am getting closer to a great teacher. I think that joy, that connection is also about really hearing your students, really accepting their contribution to the class, letting those contributions inform your practice in real ways that students can see.
My mom, too, was a great teacher. Her students loved her. She had a real enthusiasm for teaching. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes depending on the group of students.
I’m looking forward to your next installment.
I think that technology is like a foreign language– immersion is key, to help you get over the initial awkward and unfamiliar stage! I’m lucky enough to have access to a lot of technology and support when it comes to technology, but I still am sometimes wary of jumping in head-first.
I’m going to talk about this more in my next post, but one of my mom’s constant sayings was that you have to love teaching to keep doing it, because otherwise, it’s just too hard!
These days I’m feeling like it’s like porn: you know it when you see it. Actually, I do think I can name one characteristic: a good teacher is aware of everything that is going on in her classroom at every moment, from how engaged each student is, to how much of the content each student is grasping (and as you know, those are two different things), to how she needs to shift her teaching moment by moment to engage everyone and help everyone grasp the content. That is the weakness of my worst teachers: they are unable to see thebig picture and balance the macro and micro at once, that is, to engage with multiple students on multiple levels at the same time, while simultaneously keeping track of the group. I see this with both bad teachers who are strong on content and bad teachers who are weak on content.
Becca, you are anticipating some of what I’m going to post tomorrow! But I completely agree– student engagement only happens in concurrence with teacher engagement, and both are symbiotic and thrive in connection with each other. And your example is also one reason why I will always be in favor of class sizes that are as small as possible–juggling the macro and micro is easier when there’s fewer students.
Good teachers: ones who like going to school and ones who do not might staying late. All these teachers do not use the same methods, but they are good at what they do use, for they like school.
I really think liking school is a definite pre-requisite to being a good teacher.
Maybe?
Hmmmm. I think I would not like going to school if I taught at a different kind of school, which I think would say more about their culture and my personality than whether I had the potential to be a good teacher somewhere I was better suited to be. I agree with you about staying late, though– being a good teacher means being aware of the incredible time it requires to be a good one and to be a valuable member of your school community.
I’m curious about the idea of “liking school”–I loved school as a kid, but I wonder if it’s possible to have hated it as a kid, and be a teacher who wants to make school better for all the other kids who might hate it, for whatever reason.