To be a good teacher, it's nice to have thorough knowledge of the subject you are teaching and also a genuine love of that subject. It's best if you can be comfortable enough to let that love and excitement that you have show through, because it really helps. I had a conducting teacher once who taught our class three times a week at 8:00am. That's always a brutal hour for a class, but she was consistently very high-energy and enthousiastic, clearly very passionate about the subject. By the end of the semester, her energy had brought us to the point where we were conducting Faure's Requiem--one of the most rewarding musical experiences I've had. Admittedly, though, sometimes enthousiasm is not enough to cut it and can actually be annoying. And sometimes you can be a perfectly effective teacher with hardly any enthousiasm at all. I had this great French teacher once who seemed so blas
é about teaching our class that it was actually funny. Every so often, she would just roll her eyes and threaten, under her breath, to jump out the window so she wouldn't have to deal with us anymore. But she was from France, and French was in her blood and in her every word. That was intriguing, maybe enough to take the place of the need for overt enthousiasm.All that is almost beside the point, though, when it comes to attitude. I think the most important thing for a good teacher to have is the right attitude toward the students. You have to believe that your students want to learn. Even if they actually don't want to learn, there is no other way to go about it. I hate those teachers that present this attitude of "Hey guys, I know none of you wants to be here. You're just in it for the grade. I'm on your side: I don't want to be here either." I don't find that endearing. I find it stupid. The other attitude I hate is "I know none of you wants to be here, so in order to get anything out of you, I have to threaten you, because if left to your own devices you will certainly slack off." You need to respect your students as people, good people, curious people.
College students are busy people. The life style we lead is one of having to balance all the different demands on our time coming from all our different classes and other obligations. There is always more to do than can realistically be done, assuming you want to do it all to the best of your ability. Thus, things have to be prioritized. In order for an assignment to reach the status of high priority, it should be challenging and inspiring. Somebody has to convince me that it is worthwhile, that it will be a benefit to my education. They have to convince me that they care that I do the assignment. When things don't get done, it's not necessarily because I'm slacking! I appreciate it when teachers set up an environment that inspires me to care about my assignments. Last semester, the homework for my French class was the same all the time: workbook pages that always followed the same format. Long lists of vocab that we couldn't hope to memorize. We never were tested on the vocab. I once got full-credit for a workbook assignment that I didn't even finish. I also got full credit for a composition that wasn't even on the right subject. Clearly nobody cared about those assignments or about really learning the material. I don't think I actually learned anything that semester. On the other hand, in my theory class last semester, I came to school one day, toward the very end of things, scared to death about a paper I had just started writing way too late. Sympathizing with me, my teacher offered to hold a class discussion about my paper topic and answer any questions I had until I had been assured that I was heading in the right direction and could continue confidently. For that and many, many other reasons, he was one of the best teachers I've ever had.
Challenge us. Make us answer questions in class at random. Make us speak up so often that it's no longer scary. Make us really think about the material. Encourage independent thinking and not just regurgitation of facts. Care about us. Respect us. Don't be threatening, just positive and encouraging, but demand a high level of achievement. Those are the good teachers.
2 comments:
I think that there is another key aspect of teaching that wasn't quite elaborated here. Showing students subject matter from a new angle. In your last blog you mentioned how challenge pushes us out of our comfort zones; good teaching does just this.
How? How do you teach something in way that is not mundane and transparent?
I think that this is where spontaneity comes in. Our society lauds organization and meticulous planning to such an extent that the beauty of the subject matter is 9 times out of 10 counfounded or reduced to mere bullet points. The best teachers I have had have been the ones who show me the vast complexity of an issue in all its inextricabilities. It's like seeing a spider web in the early morning when the sunlight hits it so it sparkles... glorious, ethereal, seen only by those who look.
This is why I like photography so much; I can crouch, climb trees, lay on my backside, stick the camera lens through the holes in swiss cheese....all in order to see the world from a new, fascinating, unforseen angle. Good teaching does just that.
I once had a Western Civ. teacher who tossed out the rulebook entirely. You only had to be in the classroom for five minutes to realize that he was someone special; he would spontaneously pray in French or broken Spanish when he was feeling a particular emotion. There were no textbooks, and homework assignments included things such as reading "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe or answering the question "What is grace?" (What does that have to do with Western Civilization, you may ask). He did not write notes on the white-board; rather, he drew elaborate concept maps that tied in theme after theme, pattern after pattern, minute detail after minute detail. When I think of the French Revolution, I immediately picture him standing atop of the table shouting in french, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite." I sing little songs when I think of the Industrial Revolution. I get all teary-eyed when I think of when we studied Imperialism...he showed us such heart-wrenching pictures of third-world villages in Africa that he had aided each summer. He made history-- which is on the surface dull, redundant, and merely factual--something real, applicable, and tragic. And he did all of this without making us open a textbook.
Moreover, I think that the mark of an excellent teacher lies in something that is paradoxically "unprofessional": stepping over the "teacher student" lines and investing in a relationship with the student...rather, the young adult. The best teachers in my experience have also been the best counselors...not just for emotional, soap-operish crap that afflicts the typical high schoolers. They have been good resources. My Western Civ professor helped me get involved with inner-city tutoring (He eventually left the school to move to the inner city, where his heart lies with refugess). My science teacher taught me a lot about time management and work ethic...this stemmed from after-class conversations (er, tangents).
The best teachers invest.
Wow, Court. Thanks for sharing that about your Western Civ teacher. He sounds like an incredible man. I hadn't been thinking of the subject in that way, but you're entirely right that the ability to present things from a different angle is an incredible gift in a teacher. That may be the rarest thing to find. It's hard to think outside the box. Plus, so many teachers aren't given the chance even, because they are forced to follow a prescribed curriculum determined by the bureaucracy, whether they want to or not.
But that was very insightful of you to combine the two points about how leaving your comfort zone is a valuable learning experience and that a teacher should inspire those learning experiences by pushing you a little out of your comfort zone. How cool. Teachers do cater to comfort zones too much, because people will often complain when they are challenged, and teachers feel hurt by complaint. I wish I'd had a good history class at some point in my life, but I haven't.
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