In this issue: What
Makes a Good Teacher? What Makes a Good Teacher?Many
parents would like to educate their children at home but are worried that they
may not be competent to play the role of being
their children’s teacher. A
Teacher’s Perspective
I
reached the lowest point in my teaching career about two years after I started
working as a full-time school teacher. I was working in a school in a
‘deprived area’, teaching a ‘difficult class’ when a particularly
‘disruptive pupil’ started to make an extreme ‘nuisance of himself’. My
reaction was to tell him to leave the room but he refused, I tried to force him
to leave and, before I knew what was happening, I found myself engaged in a
fight with a thirteen-year-old boy. This
incident made me stop and consider what on earth had happened to me in the few
years since I had left school that could have led me into trying to play the
role of a bullying and overbearing school teacher. These are a summary of the
conclusions to which I came: · I
had modelled my own behaviour in the classroom on the way that teachers had
behaved when I was at school. · I
went into each lesson with a pre-arranged idea of what should take place in that
lesson, irrespective of what the children wanted to do. · I
placed greater importance on the views of superiors and colleagues than in those
of the children that I was teaching. · I
had never stopped to consider whether or not the children wanted to be in school
in the first place. I
realised that I had quickly fallen into the habit, that is prevalent throughout
the education system, of blaming the children for everything that was going
wrong and never accepting any of the blame myself. I had accepted those
prejudices that are reflected by the use of such phrases as ‘deprived area’,
‘difficult classes’, ‘disruptive pupil’ and ‘making a nuisance of
themselves’, which are used to imply that there must be something wrong with
anyone who does not, or cannot, conform to what the teacher is telling them to
do. My
initial response to these realisations was to try to carry on doing the same
things but in a nicer way, but I soon discovered that something much more
radical was required. I
took a break from teaching and did not return to it until I had children of my
own, which naturally renewed my interest in education. I wanted to know whether
it was possible to teach without having to resort to any of the tactics that I
had disliked in my teachers when I was at school and which I had abhorred in
myself during my own brief teaching career. Since then I have done a lot of different kinds of teaching work, including working in a Steiner school, doing private tuition, teaching children excluded from school, and, above all, being involved in the education of my own children over the course of the past twelve years. Over this time I have found that it is indeed possible to be a teacher without being a bully, that all children, no matter what they have been through, are prepared to give a good teacher a chance to do their job, and that far from being a tedious and mundane activity, teaching is probably the most inspiring and exhilarating occupation that it is possible to imagine. I
have found that good teaching rests upon principles that include the following: · Before you try to teach anything, get to know
the person who you are teaching. (This shouldn’t really need to apply to
parents but it may if their child has spent a long time in school.) · As a teacher you have to put the welfare of
the person that you are teaching above everything else, even above your own
wants and concerns. · You have to recognise your own limitations.
Children are not fooled when you pretend to know something that you don’t
know, it just makes them annoyed. It is always best to admit when you don’t
know something. Once you have managed to do this a few times, it gets easier and
you soon realise that there is very little that you do know, and then you
and your pupil can learn together, which is when it starts to become fun. · Be open-minded. You have to be
open-minded. For example, perhaps you think that exams and qualifications are a
good idea but your pupil does not, in that case drop the idea of working for
exams. Perhaps you dislike everything to do with exams, but your pupil wants to
have a chance to test themselves against other people of their own age, in that
case get the required books and work for the exam. It’s not your job to be
dogmatic and to try to persuade your pupil to come round to your point of view. · Never allow yourself to be dictated to by
superiors, education authorities, family, friends or anyone else not directly
involved in the teaching situation. Your role is to provide a safe environment
in which your pupil can work and learn. If you cannot provide this, you are not
a teacher, you are someone else’s puppet and your pupil will not respect you. · Even if you are teaching more than one child,
treat each one as an individual. Each of your pupils needs to feel that they you
have their own especial interest at heart. · Forget the idea that there are certain things
that everyone has to be ‘taught’. The activity that is really going on when
a child is working with an adult is not that the adult is teaching but
the young person is learning. When the adult starts to expound upon a
particular subject, the child does not learn about the subject but does learn
that the adult is capable of behaving very foolishly. It is surprising that so
few adults are aware of this fact, because it is certainly something of which
they were very conscious when they themselves were young. When
viewed from the perspective of how schools are run, this list may appear to be
hopelessly idealistic but I receive messages every week from people who are
working along these lines and who, as a result, find their teaching to be not
only effective but also enjoyable. Perhaps
it is not surprising (but it is still shocking) that these messages do not come
from practising school teachers, university professors, or educational
professionals – the overwhelming majority of them come from mothers, and a few
fathers, who have simply decided to put the needs of their children above any
personal ambition and now find themselves educating their children at home. To
their extreme surprise they are now privileged to be enjoying the activity that
has always been regarded as the most important and the most worthwhile of all
human endeavours: the successful education of the young. Home
education is not without its challenges and it is undoubtedly true that some
people do find it hard to balance the roles of teacher and parent but it is also
true that, in today’s environment, it is much, much easier for a parent
working at home with their own children to do the job of being a teacher
properly than it is for anyone working in a school, and no parent should
ever feel unworthy to be their child’s teacher. Gareth Lewis A Pupil’s PerspectiveWhat makes a good teacher? I'm sure that a child and
an adult would reply very differently to this question. I remember that when I
was little one of the things I least liked was when the teacher made me feel
stupid. I could not understand long multiplication, and the obvious amusement of
the teacher made me lose faith in myself and come to believe that arithmetic was
impossible. Even when I left school I continued to fear mathematics, and it was
the one subject that would regularly reduce me to tears. In the end I dropped it
altogether (a freedom that, I know, most children do not have) and concentrated
instead on subjects which I had never learnt to dread – I think that most
teachers forget that, to a child, a long-multiplication sum is as complex a
concept to grasp as the principles of rocket science would be to them. To be
laughed at because you cannot understand something entirely outside your
experience is both damaging and unfair. A good teacher, in my opinion, remembers what it was
like to be a child themselves and acts accordingly. They treat their pupils with
respect, and if a subject is found to be difficult they simplify or cease to
teach it altogether. A time will come when it becomes easier, and, until
then, the pupil will derive no satisfaction from trying to understand it. Another thing which is important – perhaps all-important – to a teacher is kindness. However clever, or passionate about their subject a person is, they cannot communicate that passion to their pupils unless they treat them with kindness. The power that a teacher possesses is remarkable –
in fact, to a child, the teacher is often more important than the subject; an
unsympathetic teacher can make the most enjoyable things hateful, whereas in the
hands of a good teacher even subjects that initially held no interest become a
source of pleasure. I disliked gardening for years simply because the
teacher had no interest in his pupils and presented gardening as a series of
irksome chores, whereas a subject which I would have expected to dislike – namely
Trigonometry – was made enjoyable because of the enthusiasm with which it was
taught. When the Teacher is
Also One's Parent
I left school when I was nine and since then my
teachers have also been my parents. In the right circumstances I think that a
parent can make the best teacher – not that other people cannot be good
teachers, but a parent naturally possesses that affection for and interest in
their pupils which only the very best teachers can emulate. Sometimes, I know, parents remember how they were
taught at school and try to recreate that situation at home. They remember the
desks, the children seated in respectful rows, the blackboard and the omniscient
teacher, who presented information in a certain way, and told his pupils how to
interpret it, and what to think. This is the situation that causes children to rebel
– often it is one of the aspects that they most dislike about school, and look
forward to ending forever when they leave. I know that when I started learning
at home I loved the idea of being able to sit in my own kitchen, at the table at
which I ate my meals, to get up and sit down when I liked, to talk as much as I
wanted, and – most delightfully – to discuss History, when we were meant to
be doing French, or to chat about what we were going to do that afternoon in the
middle of learning about Ancient Rome. This may seem like a small thing, but it
gave me a sense of freedom which I could never have experienced at school, and
it meant that learning was no longer something that took place away from real
life, in a controlled environment, but something that fitted into the rest of my
day. The aspect that I was most excited about was that my
parents would now be my teachers – people who I knew, who I did not
fear, and with whom I could be myself. As far as I was concerned the hated
relationship of "teacher" and "pupil" was over, and when my
mother slipped into the authoritative tones which she no doubt associated with
her own schooldays, I couldn't understand it. We talked it over, and after that I would tell her
when she was beginning to use her "teachery" voice, and she would
laugh and once more become herself. For me it was very simple: I wanted to learn and I wanted to be assisted in that process by someone who was my friend; whether they were "qualified" or not was not an issue – it was not even necessary for them to be an expert; their age automatically made them more experienced and enabled them to understand things which I would have been unable to grasp; the most important thing for me was to be treated with kindness and respect and someone who did that was, in my opinion, a good teacher. Bethan Lewis
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