Difference Between a Good Teacher and a Great Teacher
During my educational career as a secondary school English teacher and a secondary school counselor, I have been fortunate to observe the difference between “the great teacher” and “the good teacher”.
In my opinion, there is a demonstrable difference between a good teacher and a great teacher. A good teacher enjoys her work, has control of her class, is conscientious and industrious, and does an impressive job with the subject matter. The students are in good and capable hands, well behaved, on task most of the time, and are learning.
In the hands of a great teacher, however, the classroom comes alive. It becomes not just a place for regurgitation; it becomes instead a living breathing entity that feeds upon itself. A great teacher is like a conductor of an orchestra or an actor on the stage. The teacher is the performer and the students become their responsive audience. The information is the script and the presentation itself the music.
In this a classroom, the instructor and the students are animated and involved. The classroom atmosphere is dynamic. Students ask, they answer, they discuss and they think. Students in this class are involved in discussions about ideas, are writing often, and are involved in class presentations. The students become contributing factors to their own educational environment. An observer can enter this room and sense the energy in the air and know that something very special indeed is happening here.
It takes some time for students to adjust to great teacher’s instructional style. Some may, at first, be intimidated by it. Indeed some may not ever be able to adjust at all. Most students are accustomed to the good teacher; they are unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with being an integral part of their own learning process.
In order to be effective, the great teacher must among other things:
- Be well prepared.
- Feel comfortable with himself and his grasp of subject matter.
- Encourage students to feel comfortable with themselves and the subject matter.
- Be experienced enough to allow their audience to be creative and yet not wander too far astray from the intent of the lesson.
- Command respect for himself and respect his students in turn.
It takes a special person to be a great teacher just as it takes a special person to be a successful conductor of an orchestra or a successful actor on stage. When I was in college, I took a writing class. I was fortunate to have an instructor who actually demonstrated the tense of verbs with his actions. To demonstrate the conjugation of the verb hang, for example, he would actually hang out of the window of the classroom. (It was a window on the first floor of the school so it was not too scary an exercise.) I had a Literature teacher who taught Beowulf using the Old English inflections and read the entire work to us in Old English which I sounded more like a foreign language than my own.
Did these teachers entertain their audience and make a lasting impression? Did their students learn and remember? You bet they did.
I have always believed that great teachers are performers at heart.
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