What Makes A Great Teacher?

[The Green Barbarian]

Their idealism seemed to inspire them at least at first and finding out what sometimes makes children 'tick'.
BUT there are many conundrums. e. g. Autism may be related to bacteria problems-Suzuki

Are you saying David Suzuki is autistic George? That would explain a lot of his bizarre behaviour, and his foolish politics.

Why would ANY teacher be positive about the Liberal govt. after
a decade of contract destruction (some declared illegal) and underfunding??

Maybe I'm naive, but I think teachers should teach, and leave the worrying about politics to someone else. As long as they have a job, and a curriculum, and a school, they should just be happy. Instead their crappy useless union wants to cry and rant and lie and bluster and intimidate. Why would any teacher be happy with such a garbage union representing them? I wouldn't be happy. I'd want Fraulein Fuhrer Lambert punted at the first opportunity. She's made every wrong move possible, and completely lost the public relations war. Teachers in this province were once regarded with a degree of respect, and they've be lead down the garden path by a union that has whined and cried and acted like giant babies, and teachers have lost that respect now.

Only if they had blinders on AND a tight bag over their head.
Hear no... Speak no.. See no..

Must we go through covering inflation costs again?? Pls ...NO!

and must we go through the declining enrollment again??? Pls...no!!

[The Green Barbarian]

Another great teacher:

I was in Grade 5 and my 'friend' Dennis was also for the second or third time.

His parents and he told teachers to "F.O." at the drop of a proverbial hat. Mrs. Schroeder, a husky,
tough 'older' lady did not tolerate that at all. I think Dennis had the strap at least a dozen times that year as the rest of us cringed in our seats.

Mrs. Schroeder had about 40 students in Grds 1-6 (No K then) and tried hard to stay on top of everything.
I knew Mrs. Schroeder as a very patient lady who encouraged a love of Reading and books, in me. No school library- just the provincial library to order them from. And she taught me the McCleans method of handwriting, which I occasionally still resort to, as well as a love for cultures of other countries.

I thought she was great but I am sure Dennis didn't! Oh if we could only go back. Some would say it would solve everything!

Thumbs up George!! Good story - and you managed to keep the leftist nutter politics and union garbage out of it completely. Fantastic!

[George+]

Okey, Barb. Tks.

Now where is Your non right wing "nutter" story?

[Smurf]

Now wouldn't it be great if the rest of us could do that too. Seems like the union is the only thing some of us want to talk about.
As the union is not necessarily their choice it has nothing to do with whether or not they are a good teacher.

I have to wonder about all the mention of techers loosing their respect etc. if they don't volunteer. Why is volunteering necessary? It is VOLUNTEERING right. It is not part of the job. Does it make any better a teacher. Maybe it works better for the school and the students but it is not part of the job. I believe a person can be an excellent teacher and not volunteer.

I have never actually figured out what makes a good teacher. Some people just seem to be able to get their point across. Some of the smartest people I know could not teach if their life depended on it. I helped tutor other students in math and sciences when I was in school but I don't feel I could ever have been a teacher. I was never real good at getting my point across. Teachers also have to have a great deal of patience. I can't even imagine being in the classroom with some children and both of us being alive at the end of the day.

[OnTheRoadAgain]

Poor Dennis. Lucky you! Good story thx

[sobrohusfat]

Best teacher i ever had was a tough, strict, older gentleman who wasn't very popular with most students.
But if you wanted to learn something, he had alot to teach you.

[Digger17]

I have several stories to share but don't want to get long winded so I'll break them into seperate posts.
My son was in the public school system until grade 3. His teacher at that time taught both my wife and I and from what we remember of her as our own teacher, she was ok. How ever that changed over the years. We were concerned over some low grades he was receiving and contacted her to set up a meeting. My wife met with her and came away furious over one of her comments. " Not everyone will be doctors or scientists, society needs people to pump gas and take the garbage away from our curbs". There was more to this comment but this alone should get any parents blood pressure up. Needless to say we were not happy that any teacher would have an attitude like this.
I won't get into the poitics of education but had we not made the decision to take our kids out of the public system, we never would have found the best teacher our kids ever had in a private school. This is not a bashing of the public school system as there were other reasons we made this decision which I'll get to eventually. His grade 4 teacher had several other students from his grade 3 class and she discovered that they could only read at grade one level. Yes we were guilty of being too busy with work and building a home that we didn't realize what was not happening with our sons education. His grade 4 teacher went beyond her class teaching time to get these kids caught up with spending a few minutes after school each day to help them catch up. She used tape recordings and headsets for exams so these kids could keep up while the others were reading. She did these extra things on her own time and her reward was that these kids coud all read with the rest of the class by the end of the school year. She found a way to teach outside the box, and for that we are for ever greatful.
Back to other reasons we left the public system. We were both trying to work and ballance all the different days off of school with babysitting and a strike in there didn't help matters. Daycare is expensive and they also have a schedule and rules so it was just easier to enroll them into a private school. I won't get into any political arguements because that's not what this thread is about and it's just something we did that worked well for us.

[Digger17]

What makes a great teacher? Well after raising kids of our own, coaching sports for 16 years and being a supervisor at work for 20 years I can only give my opinion.
-Excellent communication skills- I found that communication is the heart of everything. Communicate to others the way that you would want to be communicated with. If in doubt someone doesn't understand, ask them to repeat it back to you. Sometimes using humour keeps it interesting and helps keep them paying attention.
-Knowledge- Not only with the subject being taught, but knowledge of other ways to achieve the end result. A hockey coach once said "two kinds of players don't do a coach any good, those that won't do as they're told and those that do only as they're told". Thinking outside the box or thinking for themselves needs to be a part of learning.
-Patience-Sometimes it takes a little longer or a different method may have to be used, but giving up or moving on before the concept is absorbed should not be acceptable.
-Pride- This could be taken in several different ways, but the way I am concerned with is pride in the success of those I'm teaching. When I was coaching, it wasn't the winning or the further advanced atheletes always doing well that I got pride out of. It was the seeing the less advanced or less experienced players becoming better players and contributers to the team. Developing their confidence in what they were doing. For the record , we won a provincial softball tournament with 4 core players and 4 players that never played fast pitch before and 2 underage players. Those underage players had almost the same playing time as the others.
This is a base for a great teacher but not everything. IMO OF COURSE.

[goatboy]

Not a teacher but certainly do know
quite a few!

Their idealism seemed to inspire them at least at first and finding out what sometimes makes children 'tick'.
BUT there are many conundrums. e. g. Autism may be related to bacteria problems-Suzuki

Why would ANY teacher be positive about the Liberal govt. after
a decade of contract destruction (some declared illegal) and underfunding??
Only if they had blinders on AND a tight bag over their head.
Hear no... Speak no.. See no..

Must we go through covering inflation costs again?? Pls ...NO!

George, please explain how this is a decade of underfunding?

http://www.bcliberals.com/media/Page09.pdf

2011 also saw total funding of $4.27Billion and $8,491 per student, up from $6,216 in 2000.

[The Green Barbarian]

George, please explain how this is a decade of underfunding?

http://www.bcliberals.com/media/Page09.pdf

2011 also saw total funding of $4.27Billion and $8,491 per student, up from $6,216 in 2000.

now he'll just pull out the BCTF lie about inflation as some sort of justification for their other lie about under-funding. For every fact, there is a BCTF lie to contradict it.

[OnTheRoadAgain]

The political threads are elsewhere, thanks.
This is just a thread about great teachers, not politics.

[George+]

One teacher that I had, realized that coming from a muti-graded small school and split classes,
that I was far behind in basic Math i.e. Math facts. And my letter grading may have been a bit high for high school.
He simply gave me extra drills to practice and had me do oral drills with him for a bit. Caught up by the end of the year.
Great teachers recognize weaknesses and HELP.

[OnTheRoadAgain]

I think a great teacher knows how to engage students interest in learning.
Of course, it should be a given, but not many teachers can engage a whole classroom, or at least have good classroom management skills to be effective in engaging the interest of the entire group.