Friday, April 10, 2009

Traits of great teachers

One of the "Try This" points of Chapter 3 of Jackson's book is (paraphrased): Make a list of the 10 most important attributes of great teachers. Cut that down until you've only got 2, the 2 most important traits of great teachers.

Here's what I came up with, in the order they occurred to me:
  • A passion for the subject matter
  • A passion for teaching
  • Love for your students
  • Communication
  • Organization
  • Planning and following plans
  • Teamwork
  • Intelligence
  • Presence of mind in the classroom
  • Sense of self-improvement
The second list looked like this:
  • Passion for teaching
  • Love for students
  • Communication
  • Teamwork
  • Sense of self-improvement

The final list boiled down to:
  • Passion for teaching
  • Love for students
I did this list yesterday over coffee. These all seem a little generic; important, yes, but important in the way that "optimism" would be important. If I were to do this list this morning, I'm not sure it would look the same.

How about it? What do you think are the most important qualities of a great teacher?

2 comments:

behind the scenes said...

In being a teacher there are a lot of different things that you say you should have. If you had to make a choice of only TWO traits of a Great Teacher I would have to say love and compassion. Love for the subject matter, for your students, for your school and its staff, as an artist you have to loave fixing the little imperfections that hinder your work from being complete and you tirelessly and sometimes painstakenly take the smallest brush (bit of matterial) and go in to fix the imperfection, yet it seems that you can have a shakey hand and infixing the last spot on the canvas you create one or two more sports. You then start the process over again not only because you have to but because your love for the are beaken you to you cant let it set on the eisel unfinished you have to complete it no matter what.

JohnCosby said...

@behind the scenes: I think you've got about the same idea that I have. I like the "teacher as artist" metaphor. It seems apt.