You may be a bit doozy after just reading the first paragraph. Let's take this a step at a time.
1)
First of all, what are the traits of a good teacher? The answer is a different for everybody, but obviously, a good teacher's methodological teaching must be effective. If it's not effective, then it's not good. Bill Gates likes to talk a lot of crap on the percentage of teachers we should learn from. NO! We should incorporate everything that's effective and use it in teacher's teaching. For example, a math teacher found that students' probability test scores rises when the class does a hands on project on experimental probability. Then the math teachers should share his findings with other math teachers. So in conclusion: Traits of a good math teacher; knows what kinds of teaching is effective, and incorporates the good teaching techniques.
2)
Okay, so we know that a good teacher knows what to teach, but how should a teacher teach? I believe that this is a simple question, a teacher should teach by reaching out to their students and teaching in such a way that the students understands. Most of the people in my math class are confused with the math topic simply because the teacher explained it in a way that was confusing; the concept was distorted when it reached into the students' brains. So thus, I believe that great teachers are not the ones who know, "what" to teach, but "how" to teach. A great teacher knows from experience on how the students will best understand the information, and will explain it in that way.
3)
Now we understand how and what to teach, we should focus on the "amount" we teach. Many teachers believe that we should cram things into student's head and expect them to know things before the test. Of course, as a student, I know that is inefficient and ineffective. We must be given time to contemplate on the problems on our own. We should understand the concept from our own perspective. However, some students are not as diligent. And to in my perspective, not being diligent is equivalent to having a bad teacher.
So there, education somewhat demystified.
4 comments:
What is a good teacher? To answer this question, we must first ask, "how do we learn best?" Do avoid some aspects of this question and it's even more difficult twin, "how do we learn" that have resisted the efforts of the best philosophers, I will give instead a fuzzy answer that I believe will be met with agreement and will be sufficient for the analysis of what is a good teacher and for the conclusion we will draw.
People learn by acquiring information, but they also learn by doing. But it is important not to carry out examples after the material has already been learned. Otherwise, learning by doing is rather self-explanatory. All you need is a procedure given clearly enough. Learning by listening or reading is a far trickier area, and, I think, for our purposes here, we need only break the surface. It is important to have material presented fully, and to be able to ask questions to clear misunderstanding. In addition, the material must be presented in a meaningful way -- meaningful not only to the student's future but also to his values, if not his interests, now. We learn things because we feel that there is a lesson to be learned, and it is important that, as we learn, we are also told the big picture -- not only for our motivation but also for our learning itself.
So a good teacher must be able to present the subject to the student in a meaningful and lucid way. He must also be able and willing to answer questions regarding the subject. Finally, when learning by example or learning by doing is appropriate, he must be able to give clear directions and make apparent why things work the way they do. But teaching surely is not the only thing teachers do.
A teacher is also responsible for evaluating the student and making sure the student is performing up to some standard. Indeed, this evaluation is important not only to ensure that students get a decent education but also to select the right students for admission into one school or the other, or to one class or the other. However, this job of evaluation is often delegated not to the teacher but to standardized tests.
I digress for a moment to note that teachers must also create an open personal relationship with their student. No one learns well when they feel that their teacher is against them or just does not like them in general. In order to instill development in a student -- and this is essentially what learning is -- the teacher must be willing to form a personal relationship with the student to understand how best to teach the student and how well the student is learning.
That remark ties in to the problem of evaluation. What is closer to the student and therefore more accurate an evaluation of the student: a teacher or a standardized test? Surely the teacher, who works with the student for a year or sometimes many years, knows more about the student than a test or any number of tests will ever reveal. The teacher, as a skilled person, is able to provide a more precise, more deep, and more accurate evaluation.
But, one might say, can we really expect our teachers to do this? Is the whole point of a standardized test to set some standards that account for different schools, different teachers, and different students? But one must then recall that the teacher's job is to provide such an evaluation. The teacher's job is to asses the student, and the teacher is hired because his expertise allows him to do so. Do we hire factory workers and then delegate their jobs to robots because we do not believe them capable of performing the task themselves? So why do we believe that a standardized test will asses the student better than a teacher, part of whose job is to provide this very assessment?
After reading this, I feel like I should get paid for being a student. :)
Well in a sense you do get paid. Just later. The students who work hard get better paying jobs. The students who slack off get the lower wages.
Luck is part of success too.
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