What Makes a Good Teacher?

What makes a good teacher? A kind, caring, and patient personality? A desire to make a difference in the lives of his/her students? The ability to motivate students and present content in a way that is fun and engaging and will make students eager to learn? Being an expert at content knowledge? A combination of some or all of the above? And can people learn how to be effective teachers, or is teaching a natural skill or instinct that people either have or don't have?

A few days ago, I read the article Can Good Teaching Be Learned from the March 2010 NY Times Magazine. This article addresses several current issues related to education, including some of the characteristics that make an effective teacher and how school systems can "create" better teachers. Click here to view this article on nytimes.com (the article has a different name online, but it is the exact same article as in the magazine). As the article points out, individual teachers can make a difference in the lives of their students. I certainly believe that, and that is one of the main reasons that I want to be a teacher. According to the article, researchers have actually proven the significant impact that individual teachers have on students' learning; numerous studies about which factors most affect and improve student learning have shown that

"Every factor under a school's control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to."

So if we know that the quality of a child's teacher influences how much they learn, then the question becomes what can school systems do to get better teachers? One aspect of teaching that is emphasized in the article as a characteristic of good teachers is classroom management. As the article explains and as we have discussed in my classroom management class this semester, a teacher cannot effectively teach a lesson (no matter how good that lesson is) if the he/she does not have control of the class:

"Students can't learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions."

I have also seen the importance of good classroom management while I have been observing and helping in different elementary school classes this year. As mentioned in the article positive reinforcement, modeling, and giving clear step-by-step instructions, all seem to be very effective, especially in early elementary grades. In each class where I have observed, the teachers have had different systems and strategies for managing their classroom and the classroom management systems varied depending on the personality of the teacher as well as the needs of the students in the class. I don't think that there is really any one best way or that one way will necessarily work for all teachers or with all classes, but some ideas that seemed to work well and that I would like to incorporate into my future classrooms include:

• Commenting on what a certain student(s) is doing well in order to encourage everyone else to do the same - for example "I like the way Sally and Bob are sitting quietly...". I have noticed that this technique can be very effective in getting a class of 5 or 6 year-olds to pay attention and listen to their teacher or to me.



• Class reward systems for good behavior - here are 2 examples that I really liked:
  
  1. Awarding points to each table when students do something good, such as everyone at that table working quietly on an assignment or being the first table to clean up and all sit down quietly. The teacher used tally marks to keep track of each table's points on the board and then the table with the most points at the end of the day/week received a sticker and got to have the class Woody doll sit at the table for the next day.
  
  
  2. Class marble jar - whenever the class as a whole did something good, the teacher added a handful of marbles to the jar and then when the jar is full, the class gets to vote on a special treat.

• A "talking signal" that is made like a traffic light and is used to tell students how loudly they are allowed to talk at any given time (the picture below is from Mrs. Nelson's Class web page, but I have also seen this idea used in one of the kindergarten classes that I volunteer in on Tuesdays and Thursdays)