What Makes a Great Teacher?

Teaching is a passion as much as a job.

What is it that turns a good teacher into a great one?

Now there we find THE question!

Nobody wants to do anything by half measures and, when you are responsible for educating others, you cannot afford to. But, while you can be good as a teacher, how can you become great?

Try to remember a teacher from school, which one stands out to you? For people who, like me, have to remember further back than some, this might be a challenge but not if that teacher was great.

I remember two; Mr Alder, an older Welsh gentleman who was the most enthusiastic and frankly bombastic music teacher I ever had who was possessed of a clear passion for music. I remember his skill with the piano and powerful voice as he taught us songs I couldm still sing (badly) to this day. Not just any songs, powerful old Welsh ballads,sea shanties, and ragtime hits from his youth. His skill and enthusiasm were infectious and his classes forever memorable. He encouraged enthusiasm im our participation, skill didn't matter. We always looked forward to his classes.

Mr Bernard Butt. An tanned Australian with a passion for cricket and Grimsby Town Football Club. He has suffered from polio as a child and had some paralysis is one side of his face and one arm, leaving the latter somewhat twisted. He taught us history with a humour and relatability that we could not help but be ehthusiastic about. As we carried out revision or exercises, he would mine cricket - bowling to himself and batting the ball out of the classroom in a way it was hard not to watch. Mr Butt died one night in Greece as a ferry carrying kids on a school trip sank. He could no longer swim because of his disability so elected to get all the kids off the ferry alive. He and the one student he had no time to save never made it off.

Look at the detailed memories I have of these two, great teachers and there is your secret, if the lessons they taught were memorable, they stay with you, as does the teacher themselves.

Qualities of a Great Teacher

This is by no means the definitive list but I think it covers the most important points, of course please feel free to add to or opine on them in the comments.

• A passion for teaching; if they love the act of teaching and see it as the calling it probably is, and are clearly enthusiastic about the subject, that is communicated clearly in how they teach. Passion is easy to see and often infectious.

• Creativity; anyone can tell you about Julius Caesar or the plays of Shakespeare but can they make you live them? Grabbing someone's attention and deeply engaging them is not easy but it is highly effective.

• Adaptability; anyone can plan a lesson based on a topic but what if your planned matierial isn't working or engaging the student? Can you adapt and try new things on the fly? Can you deliver a lesson with zero prep and zero planning yet have nobody even notice? How flexible are they to student needs (within reason) and changes of circumstance?

• Empathy and Patience; as we discussed in an earlier article, not all students learn the same and it's important to see if a student is disengaged because they are merely truculent or is there another reason

• Awareness; does the student have an unmentioned learning difficulty of disability, is the student acting differently than normal, are they disengaged or demotivated? Can you see how it is affecting them and, perhaps, why?

• Communication; can they communicate lesson objectives clearly and well? Are they easy for a non-native speaker to understand? Do they listen to students actively?

• Resilience; when the odure strikes the portable ventilation device, how do they handle it? Together with adaptability, how do they react to sudden changes? If the student just cannot understand or grasp a topic, do they find new waus to explain or work hard to ensure the student understands?

• Involved; are they there, fully and obviously present? In online teaching this can be especially important as the student can immediately tell if they're looking elsewhere because the camera is the main method of intepersonal interaction during the lesson. Disassociation is obvious and lessens trust.

• Engaging; does the student feel their presence and evidence of all of the previous points? Do they use (appropriate) humour and ensure the student feels involved and invested in the lesson? Do they make the lessons memorable?

• Participation; Do they make sure the student is always involved and a clear part of the class? The difference between teaching to and teaching with. Do they recognise and thank students for their involvement and compliment any achievements and progress? Do they share regular and eary to understand progress updates?

As you can see, the list is neither short or simple but it is one thing, interconnected; you can have none without the others.

A complex juggling act?

In the world of online or remote teaching, many of these skills may be harder to achieve or demonstrate, it's true, as your interactions with students are predominantly limited to camera and audio but trick I find, is in the voice.

Perhaps my decades in telephone customer service plays a part here, active listening is the gold standard skill in those kinds of roles; voice tone and choice of words are all you have but can tell you a lot. How enthusiatically a student speaks about a particulat topic means they like it and have an interest so I'll use more of that kind of thing in the future. Learning to read your student and their engagement from purely verbal cues is a vital skill to have, in my opinion, and one language teachers probably already have if they are used to correcting their student's pronunciation or grammar on the fly.

Thought this list might seem large and complex to some, there are two basic rules I think are important; communicate your passion - if you're teaching a subject it is because you are passionate about that subject - and let your personality shine through, professionally of course.

Do that and the rest will follow.