Wow, that was an extremely long read! I did enjoy the article on what makes a great teacher, and I feel that it brings up some important issues. Even after reading the Teach for America data, I have a hard time thinking that we can isolate a set of skills and say “this makes a great teacher all the time in every situation.” With this disclaimer out of the way, I will now attack the topic.
What makes a great teacher? One issue I don’t remember hearing mentioned was passion. That is my number one criterion. You can have the best education, but your knowledge is useless in the classroom if you are not passionate about your subject and teaching your students. Besides passion, someone must exhibit humility and a willingness to get better. If someone is very high on himself and his self-perceived teaching ability, it is very unlikely that he will accept criticism and improve. Another downfall of arrogance is how poorly a teacher is treated by the students. They will not care for him nearly as much as he does. As the last part of this point, constant self-evaluation is necessary (this falls under the willingness to get better tenet). The last important quality of a great teacher: a teaching nerd. I have friends who are absolutely crazy about teaching and learning about great activities and books. I believe this lifelong commitment to teaching and learning will make them successful in the classroom.
The downside to my criteria is that I’m not sure they are quantifiable or measurable in any way.
Now, I would like to touch on a couple of passages from the article.
“Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.”
I completely believe in all of these things and think that they are great, but there is no way that MTC could predict this in an applicant. Lastly, there is one thing that MTC can measure through essays and a resume: “What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record.”
Every MTC teacher must have the ability to pick himself up off of the ground, dust himself off, and try just one more time to reach the students.
wow. this is like worthy of a newsletter or something.
Posted by: bhbonds | 02/11/2010 at 05:26 PM