Saturday, October 30, 2010

How to become a GREAT teacher

Many still believe the old adage that "Great teachers are born, not made" to be true. To an extent this philosophy makes sense; generally the world's best teachers belong to two broad categories: those that knew from an early age that all they wanted to do when they grew up was to teach; and those who stumbled upon their teaching talents and passion by accident and later in their career paths.

However you came to join the ranks of this noble profession; you too can be a great teacher overnight. These teachers share a few common characteristics which separate them from the average and competent teachers of the world. Great teachers inspire a passion for learning, for achieving, for taking the world to pieces and viewing the findings with ever-increasing curiosity; in their charges.

When a class moves on to the next grade, the true teacher's influence will go with the students. The students will continue to apply the skills they learned and will approach all new problems with confidence; because they have learned how to ask the right questions and where to find answers to their questions. These students will move from grade to grade equipped with study skills and methods that they can apply across all subjects in order to attain the highest marks and grades possible.

Great teachers start with great passion for their subject and profession. They are often idealists who have resilience and are able to face that the reality of teaching isn't what they expected it to be. Their positive attitude towards "life, the universe and everything" enables them to look for and find the good in even the most ill-disciplined child. A born teacher will view every setback as an opportunity and look for the lesson contained therein. These professionals seldom repeat their mistakes: they learn from these and adjust their approach accordingly.

The greats in the classroom are also empathetic people, sensitive to body language and other non-verbal communication forms. A great teacher instinctively knows when a hurting child needs a good hug or to be left alone for a while. These essential soft skills will be played out in the staff room too. No great staff member ever sat in a corner gossiping and criticizing school management teams. Great teachers embrace change and react positively to new ideas that have the potential to improve a system or the whole school. Only the whiners, the barely competent teachers will be heard to say, "That will never work in our school."

Great teachers are flexible and are unfazed by unexpected interruptions or changes to the daily school program. An unexpected evacuation drill or fire drill during a test won't cause an uproar. Setting a new test is not so difficult after all and the unexpected always brings ideal opportunities to introduce relevant topics. After the fire drill, the excellent teacher will abandon the test and move into a discussion of, for example, Internet and chat-room safety.

Great teachers connect with their students and find creative ways to get through to even the most unlikable class members. They patiently try new learning and teaching methods with slow and difficult children. They even look forward to grading students' work because they are excited to see if students have grasped the concepts and if there are any students who have shown an improvement in their grades. Students will testify to the fact that a superior teacher's comment on a test paper looks like an essay in comparison to a comment made by the mediocre teacher.

While average teachers tend to avoid contact with parents, the greats are so excited about the breakthroughs they make in students' lives that they often seek out parents to share their excitement. Average teachers tend to want to be the expert in the classroom at all times, they seek control of knowledge and processes and seldom admit to not knowing an answer. A truly great teacher on the other hand, is not threatened by her students and will model problem solving behaviors for them. If for example, a student asks her the meaning of a word, the teacher might say, "I actually do not know that answer. Let me get the dictionary and we can find out what it means."

You know you have become a great teacher when you go out on a family shopping spree, for example, and feel qualified to confront the smoking teenager whom you have never met about the perils of smoking and peer pressure; and he relates to you not as an interfering older person, but a truly concerned adult with his best interests at heart.

In summary, great teachers enjoy their work, look forward to school each day, start missing their students during vacation times and see a teaching and learning possibility in almost every situation in which they find themselves. Great teachers are resourceful, caring, flexible and positive people and they leave the world a better place when they die.

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