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I believe truly excellent teachers are born, not created, and that makes them special. They see teaching as a calling and a sacred trust not just a job. They went into teaching for all the right reasons and really feel driven to make the world a better place.
I disagree. Teachers improve too much over time for this to be true. There is a reason school districts will often ask for a minimum of three years experience. Because experience matters.
If you are someone who works hard, analyzes what works, throws out what doesn't, keeps what does and allows yourself to grow and learn, chances are you can become a great teacher even if you weren't born one. Maybe not the best of the best but a condender for sure.
The best teachers I knew didn't walk into the classroon, innately, knowing what to do. What they were was willing to learn.
I, deliberately, did not keep a lesson plan binder from my first year because I knew I'd make too many mistakes. Now I'm forced to rewrite every lesson plan but this time I'll have what happened last year as my guide. (I do have hand outs I used and lab instructions. It's the lessons themselves I'm rewriting.)
The say ex engineers track faster WRT becomming good at what they do. If what they tell me is correct (this from districts that like to hire ex engineers, I just wish there were more of them), I'll be the equivalent of a 3rd year teacher after my second year and the equivalent of a 5th year teacher after my 3rd year. Chemical engineers are optimizers and what I'm optimizing right now is the teaching process.
I would agree that there is a personality type willing to do the work.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 08-04-2009 at 06:31 AM..
You have to have a knack for relating to youth, too, plain and simple, or you won't be as good a teacher as a person with your same degree of skill in the content area who has the rapport you don't. It won't matter how brilliant you are, or how much you have to share if nobody cares to learn from you because they don't connect with you on any level. Yeah, you can teach without that rapport. But you won't be teaching as well as if you had it.
Relating better to kids can be learned, to a degree, over time and with practice, but you're going to be much more effective if that attribute is there naturally than if you have to force it. It's really just a matter of people skills, albeit a focused set...some people's are more honed than others' are.
The people who confound me are those who teach who are NOT particularly interested in young people learning the most they can, and who even dislike them. I can't imagine what the payoff is for going into the profession. "Summers off" just doesn't cut it. If you hate kids, you're going to be miserable 9 months of the year, for moderate pay and moderate professional respect. For me, the main reason to teach is because it's personally meaningful to me to educate kids. I can't imagine doing it were this not the case.
In my opinion, any one who stays in the classroom longer than 3 years is a special person. Within those first three years of teaching, a person knows whether or not they are cut out for teaching. I always wondered about those teachers who stayed for the great benefits and COLA raises, but waste tax payers money for being ineffective and know it when the effective teachers complain about receiving their low performing kids year after year.
Teaching is a craft that has to be developed, nutured, and groomed. Once you find your niche and age group of kids that you like working with, then I think you can become a great teacher. I have been teaching for 17 years, and primarily because of the No Child Left Behind legislation, I had to become great in the classroom or see only 10% of my kids proficient. I can honestly say, with the help of prayer and my faith, that 70% of my kids improved on last year's California Standards Test (CST) and out of that group 10% of them moved from either far below basic, below basic, and basic to proficient or advanced.
It takes a SPECIAL teacher who understands test data to help him or her lesson plan, understands the different ways kids learn, likes helping kids learn, has high expectations for each child, delivers the curriculum to the point where he or she isn't talking over the kids head, works with them in small groups (tutoring before or after work sometimes) to meet their different learning needs, differentiates lessons to meet all student different learning needs, and simply loves coming to work and helping students get over the hump. If you can do that CONSISTENTLY each year, then you are SPECIAL and an effective teacher who's doing his or her job.
I don't think it takes a special person to teach. Like any job, I think teaching can be learned. Are there natural teachers? Sure, just like there are naturals at anything but that doesn't mean that the average person who wants the job can't learn to do it well.
I think you have to want to be a good teacher to be a good teacher but if you're willing to put in the effort, you'll, eventually, get results. Some just get results faster than others. Like any profession.
Exactly. I do believe that you have to be reasonably intelligent, relatively speaking, and interpersonal skills help, but many of us approach it as something that can be analyzed and learned. Its precisely this approach that I think makes a, 'natural' or unnatural but nevertheless average teacher, into an excellent teacher. It takes someone who isnt so emotionally certain of themselves, but applies themselves in a systematic way to improve themselves and their teaching process.
Additionally, over idealistic and emotional individuals seem to spout endlessly spout rhetoric about "not going into teaching for the money" ad other nonsense that categorize good teachers based on their emotional and interpersonal traits. This is endlessly frustrating to us analytical types, who mostly sit in slience and listen to it for fear of getting into pointless arguments with these people. You dont hear this crap in other work environments. In other professions, save professions such as nursing(whats the conection?), professionals dont have to put up with so much judgmental unsupported nonsense about what makes them good at their job. At its core, teaching isnt different from other jobs. You either do what it takes to make yourself good at your job or you dont. If you have a personality problem, this will not happen. Otherwise, you can learn it. And I have a great relationship with my classes. The people who tend to judge others and who hold themselves up as being naturals, ironically, tend to have realtionships with their students that arent as strong in my experience. Kids are smart. Kids can analyze character efficiently.
Teaching is more an art than a skill, its something I'd never do, all the garbage you have to put up with, rude kids, non-supportive parents, impossible administration, it does take someone special to be able to filter through all that and still care enough about the kids to teach.
Exactly. I do believe that you have to be reasonably intelligent, relatively speaking, and interpersonal skills help, but many of us approach it as something that can be analyzed and learned. Its precisely this approach that I think makes a, 'natural' or unnatural but nevertheless average teacher, into an excellent teacher. It takes someone who isnt so emotionally certain of themselves, but applies themselves in a systematic way to improve themselves and their teaching process.
Additionally, over idealistic and emotional individuals seem to spout endlessly spout rhetoric about "not going into teaching for the money" ad other nonsense that categorize good teachers based on their emotional and interpersonal traits. This is endlessly frustrating to us analytical types, who mostly sit in slience and listen to it for fear of getting into pointless arguments with these people. You dont hear this crap in other work environments. In other professions, save professions such as nursing(whats the conection?), professionals dont have to put up with so much judgmental unsupported nonsense about what makes them good at their job. At its core, teaching isnt different from other jobs. You either do what it takes to make yourself good at your job or you dont. If you have a personality problem, this will not happen. Otherwise, you can learn it. And I have a great relationship with my classes. The people who tend to judge others and who hold themselves up as being naturals, ironically, tend to have realtionships with their students that arent as strong in my experience. Kids are smart. Kids can analyze character efficiently.
I accept that for you teaching isn't different from other jobs.
Why must you insist that others feel/think the same way about it?
I have worked in high tech and in manufacturing, as well as in teaching.
For me, teaching is different. I do not teach for the money. I am highly idealistic and emotional. (I would say "overly idealistic" is an oxymoron.) I am friends with former students from throughout the 30+ years since I started teaching, and thoroughly enjoy my 2nd generation students - with whom I get to work by their parents' choice, not by force.
I am also very analytical.
In plenty of other professions, I do and did, in fact, hear about "natural born" salesmen, problem solvers, actors, inventors, coders, etc.
Mightn't there be something to that 'nonsense?'
Last edited by jps-teacher; 08-22-2009 at 02:10 AM..
Maybe it takes someone special to be a good teacher, but I think that is then equally true for other fields. And what is "special" anyway? I also think it is important for people to know situations in which they will not be a good teacher. Some teachers are great teachers in certain settings. If you put them in another setting, they might still be great. Some teachers might be great in one setting, but horrible in another! I know there are situations and settings where I would not be a good educator or at my best and that my burn out rate would be high there.
Maybe it takes someone special to be a good teacher, but I think that is then equally true for other fields. And what is "special" anyway? I also think it is important for people to know situations in which they will not be a good teacher. Some teachers are great teachers in certain settings. If you put them in another setting, they might still be great. Some teachers might be great in one setting, but horrible in another! I know there are situations and settings where I would not be a good educator or at my best and that my burn out rate would be high there.
There are also different qualities that can make you a good teacher. For example, one teacher can be good because the kids really relate to them while another is good because they know their subject so well they can teach it six different ways. Both can get good results.
There are also different qualities that can make you a good teacher. For example, one teacher can be good because the kids really relate to them while another is good because they know their subject so well they can teach it six different ways. Both can get good results.
At the high school level if one does not relate with he kids, it doesn't mater if they can teach 12 ways this side of China...the kids will just get by...
At the high school level if one does not relate with he kids, it doesn't mater if they can teach 12 ways this side of China...the kids will just get by...
I disagree. The best teachers I had were the ones that really knew their subject. They could explain things. Of course you have to be interested in learning for that to work.
I do remember the teachers who related to students but I can't say I really learned from most of them. We had a good time in their class though.
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