What made them a great teacher?

In My Humble Opinion
21

No good teachers until college, and then they were all good- I’m not kidding. What made them good teachers? I think it was that truth- not learning, not marks, not their pay- mattered to them. What we learned was supposed to give us a framework on which to hang our understanding of the world. This sounds hopelessly idealistic, but it’s actually true- the professors at my very small (16 students in my year) college worked for free, because they valued education, and they believed that education was supposed to enable us to seek wisdom.

You’ve heard me talk about Augustine enough, Octavia. I’ll shut up… except for this, I think quoted from The Closing Of The American Mind, but I don’t know which dialogue it’s from originally:

Socrates to Antiphon, “if I have something good, I teach it to them (my friends), and I introduce them to others who will be useful to them with respect for virtue. And together with my friends I go through the treasures of the wise men of old which they left behind written in books, and we peruse them. If we see something good, we pick it out and hold it to be of great profit, if we are able to prove useful to one another.”

In my never-humble opinion, that’s the best quality a teacher can have- proffering knowledge as something that has intrinsic value. (end of boring pontificating)

22

Mrs. Graham - 7th grade English, 9th grade English, 10th grade Drama, 11th grade American Lit, 12th grade British Lit.

She got to know her students very well, she knew our strengths and weaknesses, and she cared about all of us. When I didn’t perform up to par, she’d take me aside and ask what was up. She demanded respect from her students, but she also treated us with respect. Her classes were always interesting and fun; discussion and projects were a big part of her teaching. I never got bored in her class when our school switched to 80 minute block periods.

Mr. Boothe - 9th grade Algebra.

His was the only math class I ever had that I enjoyed. I can’t particularly remember why, only that he was funny, and I wanted to learn so that I could impress him.

23

There have been several over the years. But first, let me say, Octavia that I have the utmost respect for you, going in to teaching - be proud, be a teacher!

Back in high school, I had an english teacher named Wayne Shipley. Now this was a guy who could get you interested in just about anything. How did he do this? He made it fit YOUR life personally. If we were studying early american literature, he managed to relate it to your own personal life today. When we studied film with him, he was able to make those movies fit every single person in the room by relating some part of the film, a character, a scene, some dialogue, etc.to something in YOUR life.

To do this, however, he had to get to know his students. And I think this is the thing that made all of my “great” teachers. They would take the time to honestly get to know you through conferences, extra time in class, even just running in to you in the hallway and stopping for 30 seconds to ask how you’re doing.

Another example was another english (and drama) teacher name Bill Smith. Bill had a terrific talent for making everyone in his classes feel dignified, wanted, respected, listened to and genuinely needed - extermely important things for a bunch of hormone laced kids in their middle to late teens. Because he was so genuine with his students, Bill was able to teach in a very effective manner. Even material that was kind of difficult (certain writing assignments, reading Shakespeare, etc.) became easier with him because he was able to get you to see how the topic at hand related back to you - kind of the same way Shipley did.

Then in college, it was one of my first year Physics professors - Pete Eastman. The reason that Pete was such a great teacher was his approach to the subject. If you’ve been a student of his, you’ll never, as long as you live, forget his basic advice on vector analysis - “It’s simple, the up’s gotta equal the down’s; the left’s gotta equal the right’s…” He also had a talent for mixing in good (sometimes goofy, but good) stories into the class discussion. When discussing the basics of friction, he’d always bring up an old car that he used to have with bald tires and how badly it handled on the icy Maine roads in winter - “…Low coefficient of friction…”

As I think back to all the wonderful teachers I had, I can pretty much say that the best ones were the ones who respected you as a person and brought a little laugh and a little life to the subject. The worst ones were the ones who taught pretty much out of the textbook, didn’t care whether you lived or died, could care less if you passed the test and wouldn’t take the time to coach.

Be friendly, be genuine, get to know your students and really, honetsly care about them and how they’re doing in school - you’ll be a GREAT teacher!

24

My favorite teacher was in fact a high school history teacher. So I guess i might have something to say…

I would first of all go with everyone who said “He’s passionate about his subject” Yeah, that’s what makes a great teacher. Mr. Paulson was passionated about history, and actually thought it had some bearing on the present. And tried to convince us of that. Maybe that’s why we learned a lot about the Labor Movement- a part of history that has quite a lot to do with the way we live now but barely makes a blip in most high school text books.

Because he thought we study history to understand how we live now, how we live now came up a lot. Politics came up a lot. And he never made any bones about being a staunch conservative (even as he taught us the importance of Unions :slight_smile: ). That’s not what made him a great teacher. It could, possibly, make him a bad one. BUT. He didn’t bring up his political ideas to indoctrinate us.

He was a Reagan Republican and I was (at the time) something of a socialist and he invited- reveled in- challenging my ideas and, more importantly, my challanging his. I was his favorite student because i was willing to argue with him. (Sadly, some other students parroted his politics to currie favor. They did not understand this guy.)

What I’m saying is I had a teacher who WANTED me to argue with him.

THAT’S a teacher.

25

Mr. Gillard, my tenth-grade english teacher.

He never condescended.

On the contrary, talking to him about books really felt like a one enthusiast-to-another sort of thing, although with hindsight I can see how slyly he kept setting the bar a bit higher for me, even lending me books from his own library. He encouraged me to read Chaucer, which opened a few doors for me. He had a real knack for determinining what you were interested in, and putting something under your nose that was similar, but better.

Other teachers that I liked simply had great personalities, but he was a real teacher.

betenoir, I wish I had your history teacher. The history teacher I remember most clearly was in the wrong job. I actually stopped going to his classes after he refused to change a mark he’d given me on a test. We were studying the French Revolution, and one of the questions was, “Who said ‘Let them eat cake?’”, the expected answer being, of course, “Marie Antoinette”. I wrote in the earlier attributions to satirists, and he marked it wrong. I was ticked because I’d done my own research, and could show it to him in more than one other book. He said that he didn’t want me doing extra research, he just wanted me to write what was our (crappy) textbooks said. I appreciate that he was overworked, but he stubbornly refused to give me my mark. So I spent his class reading on my own in the library for the rest of the year. Of course, I failed history, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that I probably had a better grasp of history that the poor suckers who took it from him. (I realize now that that wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but as a teenager, I just wanted to make sure I learned the stuff. Kids have some funny ideas.)

I guess both anecdotes suggest that the encouragement of outside study is something I valued from a teacher.