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[PAULH]

(From Marie F Hassett, PhD )


The rest of this article will address some of the characteristics that good teachers exhibit. It is not meant to be all encompassing or definitive; many excellent teachers may possess only some of these traits, and consider others not mentioned to be just as valuable. The characteristics detailed here may be viewed simply as a selection of tools that allow teachers to create and sustain connectivity in their classrooms.


Good teachers:
� have a sense of purpose;
� have expectations of success for all students;
� tolerate ambiguity;
� demonstrate a willingness to adapt and change to meet student needs;
� are comfortable with not knowing;
� reflect on their work;
� learn from a variety of models;
� enjoy their work and their students.


Good teachers have a sense of purpose.

You can't be good in a generic sense; you have to be good for something. As a teacher, this means that you know what your students expect, and you make plans to meet those expectations. You, too, have expectations about what happens in your classroom, based on the goals you're trying to achieve. If you want to prepare your students for employment, you expect punctuality and good attendance. If you teach a GED class, you spend time explaining the format of the test and helping students to improve their test-taking skills. And if you want your students to become better, more involved readers, you allow time for reading and provide access to books.


Good teachers have expectations of success for all students.

This is the great paradox of teaching. If we base our self-evaluation purely on the success of our students, we'll be disappointed. At all levels, but especially in adult education, there are simply too many factors in students'lives for a teacher to be able to guarantee success to all. At the same time, if we give up on our students, adopting a fatalistic, "it's out of my hands" attitude, students will sense our lack of commitment and tune out. The happy medium can be achieved with a simple question: Did I do everything that I could in this class, this time, to meet the needs of all my students, assuming that complete success was possible? As long as you can answer in the affirmative, you're creating a climate for success.


Good teachers know how to live with ambiguity.

One of the greatest challenges of teaching stems from the lack of immediate, accurate feedback. The student who walks out of your classroom tonight shaking his head and muttering under his breath about algebra may burst into class tomorrow proclaiming his triumph over math, and thanking you for the previous lesson. There is no way to predict precisely what the long-term results of our work will be. But if we have a sense of purpose informing our choice of strategies and materials, and we try to cultivate expectations of success for all our students, we will be less likely to dwell on that unpredictability, choosing instead to focus on what we can control, and trusting that thoughtful preparation makes good outcomes more likely than bad ones.


Good teachers adapt and change to meet student needs.

Can we really claim to have taught a class in geography if no one learned any of the concepts in the lesson from our presentation? If none of our students ever pick up a book outside of the classroom, have we really taught them to be better readers? We don't always think about these issues, but they are at the heart of effective teaching. A great lesson plan and a great lesson are two entirely different things; it's nice when one follows the other, but we all know that it doesn't always work out that way. We teach so that students will learn, and when learning doesn't happen, we need to be willing to devise new strategies, think in new ways, and generally do anything possible to revive the learning process. It's wonderful to have a good methodology, but it's better to have students engaged in good learning.


Good teachers are reflective.

This may be the only infallible, absolute characteristic of all good teachers, because without it, none of the other traits we've discussed can fully mature. Good teachers routinely think about and reflect on their classes, their students, their methods, and their materials. They compare and contrast, draw parallels and distinctions, review, remove and restore. Failing to observe what happens in our classes on a daily basis disconnects us from the teaching and learning process, because it's impossible to create connectivity if you've disconnected yourself.

Good teachers are comfortable with not knowing.

If we reflect honestly and thoughtfully on what happens in our classes, we will often find dilemmas we cannot immediately resolve, questions we cannot answer. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that his correspondent, "try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language�. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer" (1986, pp. 34-35). In the same way, our teaching benefits if we can live for a little while with a question, think and observe, and let an answer develop in response to the specific situation we face.


Good teachers had good role models.

Think back again to your three best teachers. How has your own teaching been shaped by their practices, consciously or unconsciously? Think also of the worst teacher you ever had. Are there things you absolutely will not do because you remember how devastating they were to you or your classmates? We learn to teach gradually, and absorb ideas and practices from a variety of sources. How many movies have you seen that include a teacher as a character, and how might those films have contributed to your practice? We are not always aware of the influences on our teaching, good and bad; reflecting on the different models of teaching we've acquired, and looking at how we acquired them, makes us better able to adapt and change to suit new challenges.


Good teachers enjoy their work and their students.

This may seem obvious, but it's easy to lose sight of its importance. Teachers who enjoy their work and their students are motivated, energized, and creative. The opposite of enjoyment is burnout-the state where no one and nothing can spark any interest. Notice, too, that enjoying your work and enjoying your students may be two different things. Focusing too much on content may make students feel extraneous, misunderstood, or left out. Focusing exclusively on students, without an eye to content, may make students feel understood and appreciated, but may not help them to achieve their educational goals as quickly as they'd like. Achieving a balance between the two extremes takes time and attention; it demands that we observe closely, evaluate carefully, and act on our findings.
I would like to conclude with a poem by Lao-Tzu, the Chinese scholar to whom the Tao Te Ching is attributed. I have carried a copy of this poem with me for many years, and I find its message both helpful and challenging. It reminds us that good teaching is not a static state, but a constant process. We have new opportunities to become better teachers every day; good teachers are the ones who seize more opportunities than they miss.


Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.


I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
Simple in actions and thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all being in the world. (1989, 17)


Works Cited


Mitchell, Stephen, ed. (1989). The Enlightened Heart. NY: Harper & Row.
_____, trans. (1986). Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke. NY: Vintage Books.
Palmer, Parker. (1999). "The Grace of Great Things: Reclaiming the Sacred in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning." In The Heart of Knowing: Spirituality in Education. Ed. Stephen Glazer. NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

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[PAULH]

Quotations � about Teachers


I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.� ~Lily Tomlin as "Edith Ann"



The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth."� ~Dan Rather


In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work.� It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.� ~Jacques Barzun


Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.� ~Author Unknown


If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job.� ~Donald D. Quinn


Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.� ~John F. Kennedy


A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. ~Thomas Carruthers


Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.� ~Gail Godwin


A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.� ~Horace Mann


Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom.� To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.� ~Tracy Kidder


A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.� ~Henry Brooks Adams


A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others.� ~Author Unknown


The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.� He inspires self-distrust.� He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him.� He will have no disciple.� ~Amos Bronson Alcott


A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism.� ~Louis A. Berman


We expect teachers to handle teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and the failings of the family.� Then we expect them to educate our children.� ~John Sculley


Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.� ~Bob Talbert


The mediocre teacher tells.� The good teacher explains.� The superior teacher demonstrates.� The great teacher inspires.� ~William Arthur Ward


The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.� ~Edward Bulwer-Lytton


A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.� ~Author Unknown


What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.� ~Karl Menninger


Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts.� ~Author Unknown


Teaching is leaving a vestige of one self in the development of another.� And surely the student is a bank where you can deposit your most precious treasures.� ~Eugene P. Bertin


Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.� ~Author Unknown


Teachers who inspire realize there will always be rocks in the road ahead of us.� They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how we use them.� ~Author Unknown


Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.


Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.� ~Jacques Barzun


One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.� The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.� ~Carl Jung


The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.� ~Kahlil Gibran


The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinary" people to unusual effort.� The tough problem is not in identifying winners:� it is in making winners out of ordinary people.� ~K. Patricia Cross


When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.� ~The Talmud


The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.� ~Author Unknown


Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher.� That is, I used to, until she got an unlisted number.� ~Author Unknown


Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.� ~John Cotton Dana


There are three good reasons to be a teacher - June, July, and August.� ~Author Unknown


A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.� ~Thomas Szaz


To teach is to learn twice.� ~Joseph Joubert, Pens�es, 1842


The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you just learned this morning.� ~Author Unknown


Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first.� The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.� When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.� ~Marva Collins


The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.� ~Elbert Hubbard


Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance.� In teaching we rely on the "naturals," the ones who somehow know how to teach.� ~Peter Drucker


Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools.� The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.� ~Haim G. Ginott


The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.� ~Mark Van Doren



Quotations From Teachers:


The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents better is because it helps me to forgive their children.� ~Louis Johannot


If you promise not to believe everything your child says happens at school, I'll promise not to believe everything he says happens at home.� ~Anonymous Teacher

[lumber Jack]

You forgot some....(in your original post)

A teacher should always say please and thank-you.
A teacher should always have bright shiny shoes.
A teacher should brush their teeth after each meal.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a teacher oh so wise!

Since one of our endless duties is to be inspirational though, perhaps you have to have just a little of the maverick in your bones? Maybe it's not easy to be inspirational spirit if you worry about these things too much......

[biffinbridge]

With certain jobs in the Middle East a bad teacher is one who has classes in which some students actually fail exams.A good teacher is one who turns up to work on time and leaves on time,(usually several hours before and after the locals).

[lumber Jack]

That sounds enviously clear.

Here in the ROK our big boss man says.....

1.If students do not turn up to more than 25% of classes, FAIL THEM!
2.Please do not fail any students. It is unpopular.

"Bad" teachers are over-strict teachers, who scare the little lambs away. Therefore I am lax, and only considered a bad teacher by certain colleagues!

[seanaway]

I was once told I was a bad teacher because I complained when a teenage student tried to run me over with his scooter! Just because I kicked him out for persistent bad behaviour, bad language, bad attitude, and lack of interest. Upon reflection I should have just let his tyres down

[Chasgul]

A good teacher leaves his personal problems outside the classroom and inspires his students to do the same.

[go_ABs]

A good teacher displays admirable qualities without thinking?

A good teacher naturally inspires their students (without actively trying to do so) ?

A good teacher teaches, and doesn't post an acre and a half of text that readers skim past?

Just a few thoughts.

[amhall]

As someone who has not started so neither I can be called good or bad but as a person standing within a room with other people and want the best for all of them - I would see as a good thing and help where I could and that that I couldnt find someone who could! Am I being naive??

[stillnosheep]

Possibly not but due to the incoherence of your post it is as near impossible as damnit for anybody else to have the slightest idea.

[True Dreamer]

Great post PAULH... Well Done!

I think good and bad may not reflect the teacher's professional side, but rather his or her personal side. But the fact is, these two sides are inseparable unfortunately! In my opinion, on the professional side, a teacher should do his job as a teacher.... and that is to teach... to give knowledge to those sitting in front of him or her. A teacher should share this knowledge with the students and put it to them in the simplest, yet efficinet methods.

On the personal side, a teacher should be and foremost FAIR, smiling whenever the occasion permits, understanding and listening to students� questions (problems, difficulties...etc) whenever the time allows.

These are just a couple of things I wanted to share here in this great topic.


Lumber Jack... love your quote.... it reminded me of something - not eaxctly the same but similar - which I experienced in my first job! This is it:

Rule 1: The boss is never wrong

Rule 2: If the boss is wrong, see rule no.1 !

[Riddick]

Good topic

Someone who is an Adult.

[VanIslander]

Candy, lots of candy.

And a loud voice helps too.

(I am only half joking)

[Otterman Ollie]

Yeah nice idea ,nice thread,lots of good stuff coming out from those of us who work on the chalk face,we know what makes a good teacher,but, do the people who pay our wages ? Most importantly do our students ,sometimes I wonder if we are just deluding ourselves that what we do is right but the hirers and fires have a different agenda .

[Sara Avalon]