What makes a teacher great?
When Moo descended from Mount Academia, he brought down with him the ten tenets to which great teachers, knowingly or unknowingly, commit. He asked me to transcribe them here, since they were in danger of being neglected and / or forgotten.
- Mastery of the subject – great teachers know their subjects inside out. They do not read their graduate school notes to their students, heads bowed, chins on chest, droning on in a low, boring mumble. They encourage questions and are open to debate with their students about the subject that they know so well and openly love.
Master thy subject. - Humility – great teachers are humble. They know that they are not omniscient. They also know that knowledge changes across time and that they too must change and follow new ideas. They also know, perhaps instinctively, that some of their students are as intelligent as they are. They never dismiss their young charges as idiots, fools, or lunatics to be beaten and forced into the required shape.
Be humble. - Flexibility – great teachers are flexible, not rigid. They can bend the rules, reshape the syllabus, change pace and tone to match the needs of their students. In addition, they ask their students about their needs and try to address those needs in a personal way, sometimes on a one on one basis.
Be flexible. - Reaching out – great teachers reach out to their students as a group and as individuals. They never paint themselves into the know-all corner where they alone know best, and they know, with absolute certainty, what’s best for their students. Great teachers know, above all, that one size, in great teaching, neither fits nor benefits all.
Reach out. - Equal treatment – great teachers treat their students equally. They do not fawn on the best and scorn the worst, nor do they teach by the WWII convoy system, teaching only at the speed of the slowest. By extension, great teachers try to create an atmosphere of love in learning and joy in the subject.
Practice equality. - Honesty – great teachers are honest, fiercely honest. They know their own strengths and weaknesses, their own limitations. They work on their weaknesses, striving to turn them into strengths. They also push the boundaries of their limitations, striving always to keep up with the ever-changing frontiers of knowledge.
Be honest. - Human beings – great teachers know that they are human beings and they recognize early on in their careers, that while they are teaching a subject, they are also preparing fellow humans for a life beyond the ivy-covered walls of academia. By extension, they emphasize the humanity of their students and try always to develop and sustain that humanity.
Be human. - The meaning of meaning – great teachers reach out beyond their subjects to teach the meaning of meaning. Why is the subject important? What can each individual use this hard-earned knowledge for, in their own lives? How can they reshape their own lives and create better ways of learning and living? This teams up with reaching out and enters the realm of learning for learning’s sake and love of learning and love of knowledge.
Love thy learning. - Creativity – great teachers are creative. They open their students’ minds to new ideas, fresh knowledge, better ways of doing things. They never use phrases like ‘thinking outside the box’ and they do not build better boxes, one or two sizes larger than current boxes, inside which their students must now sit, work, and think. Creative teachers tear down the walls of medieval academia and open their students’ minds to the winds of change and fresh knowledge.
Be creative. - Life long learning – great teachers teach students how to think for themselves, how to teach themselves, how to self-assess, how to check and double-check the knowledge (all too often nowadays, fake news and / or false knowledge) handed down to them from a multitude of sources, far too many of them unreliable. Great teachers teach their students to know themselves. They also teach them how to work out whether a source is a reliable fount of information, or not. In short, they teach life long learning and neither they, nor their students, ever give up hope.
Teach Life Long Learning.
