What makes a great teacher?

Over 2/3 of the living genious of the planet lives in  China or India. To see the regressive policy visited upon these little minds sickens.

It's a really interesting article.  Thanks for posting it.  But I wouldn't use it as an excuse for knee-jerk anti-union sentiments, although there is a hint of that in the article.

I think that what they're doing in this article is expecting teachers to be miracle-workers and saints, who spend a lot of their own money, and a lot of unpaid time, making up for all the things that society does not provide for these children.  Who pays for that bacon-and-egg breakfast that Mr. Taylor feeds the kids on the morning of their standardized test?  My guess is, Mr. Taylor, who also cooks it on unpaid time.  Which is fine if you aren't a single parent with your own kids at home to look after and feed on your own time.

The pedagogical stuff is very, very interesting, though.  I think a lot of attention should be paid to that.

The other thing about this article is that I can understand the teachers' unions feeling threatened by this idea that their teachers could be fired if their students underperform on standardized tests, as long as it's not completely clear WHAT teachers need to do to help students facing overwhelming social issues that cause underperformance, or as long as schools and governments refuse to compensate the "miracle-worker" teachers who use tons of their own money and time on teaching and becoming substitute parents.

The whole article was talking about how Teach For America was completely stumped about what creates a good teacher, and how teachers' colleges don't teach new teachers the kind of pedagogical methods that will include all students.  So how on earth are teachers supposed to know how to become a bunch of Mr. Taylors, if even Teach For America still isn't sure what goes into making a Mr. Taylor? 

Are they going to fire everyone except for the occasional superstar like Mr. Taylor until they all somehow magically figure out his secret?  Are they going to compensate every teacher who spends hours of their personal time (most teachers do this anyhow) and tons of their own money on their classrooms?

I suspect that great teachers get shuffled over to schools in higher income neighborhoods.

Every year we receive invitations to attend the Great Teachers Seminar.  I never apply; I just don't feel comfortable with the name of the conference, as it sounds arrogant to my ears.  When someone comes up with a "Pretty Decent Teachers Seminar," or a "Not Bad Teachers Seminar" I'll consider attending.

Ah, Sven, so all the teachers at one school perform poorly while all the teachers at the other school perform well.  If that is the case, one should focus on the administration leaders who set the direction and tone in each school.  Yes, teachers belong to a professional community.  However, if the administration is not favourable to new ideas from the teachers, then things may stagnate in a school.  In Ontario, while the administration members are teachers, they do not belong to a union.

I would also be wary of checking the standardized test results for one year.  There may be lots of variances between years even if the same teacher is in the same grade classroom.  Also, in Ontario, the school results may be skewed in that students who do not write the tests are recorded as scoring zeros.  A few are from parents who refuse to have their children write the tests.  Others children who do not write the tests may be some in special education who are unable to write these tests.  Their scores are recorded as zeros.

From our own school experience, we all know, subjectively, that there are both excellent and poor teachers in the system.  For the sake of the students (and, after all, that's the whole purpose of having an educational system), I think we can all agree that we want to minimize the number of poor teachers in the system.

And, from our own school experience, we know too that you and I found some teachers really good, while other students found the same teacher not so good. 

I don't think we want to minimize the number of poor teachers in the system.  I think we want to maximize the benifits of education to as many students as possible.  Minimizing the number of poor teachers in the system is perhaps a factor in that, but making that the thrust, and assuming that improvement to education will follow isn't an assumption I'd make.

First, one has to start at the start, and ask what we want the purpose of education to be, and then move on from there.

I wouldn't say I'm vehemently pro union when it comes to teachers.  As a union guy, I find the role teachers play as part of the union movement-- if they are part-- a perfidious one indeed.   

When I was a union rep at our plant, my job-- and legal requirement-- was to represent the workers or worker to the best of my ability.  It was not my job to do management's work.   You know what is behind every "bad" worker?  a lazy supervisor or manager who didn't want to deal with that person when they should have, or didn't deal with them in a way that left me no room to manouver-- when they damn well could have.

Perfidiousness of teacher's unions in the union movement aside, you can't blame a union for not managing properly.  That blame is with the administration, Timebandit.

From my own experience, it was a desire to talk to students, not to teach them. The latter will come surely if you can communicate and engage people, even wee little people, in matters you care about.

In the spirit of the article and naming the good, I just wanted to send a giant amount of love and respect to one Jack Miller, who tought at Windermere High School back in the '90s. I never really cared before I met you, I just moved through the system. You helped me find my own path, in education and in life. You have a rare gift.

Timebandit wrote:

Did we demand her head on a platter?  You bet your ass we did.  Guess what?  She's still teaching.  All they did was get her to move schools.

I applaud the role unions play in the reasonable protection of their members.  Teaching is indeed a tough job.  But when they extend those protections to incompetent abusers, they lose my sympathy.

I hear you and understand your anger.  But if you think of unions like you might think of, say, defence lawyers, it might help.  Everyone in a union has the right to representation by their union, no matter how in the wrong they were, no matter how guilty they are, no matter what.

It is the job of the manager to set the rules at work and enforce them, and to document it when rules are not followed, give warnings, giving correction, and then ultimately, apply progressive discipline until firing.  If the principal was not documenting and applying progressive discipline, then this is not the union's fault.  The union can't save someone who commits a firing offense.  They can only demand that the employer provide reasonable proof that the teacher did it, and that they refused or were incapable of improving.

If your daughter's school or school board refused to do that, this is not the fault of the union - they are in the role of ensuring their members' rights are respected by the employer.  For all they know, that teacher could have simply been someone who was being persecuted and lied about, unless the employer provided iron-clad documentation to support their contention that the teacher is abusive.

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A teaching degree is not enough. They need to examine these people far more rigorously before they let them work with children - in terms of personality in addition to teaching style. There are great teachers out there, but they aren't being done any favours under the current system.

Your're right a BEd is not enough. Of the 1000s of teachers that Ontario schools will graduate this year a very, very small fraction will find employment as a teacher. Most of those will be supply, long-term occassional or teach outside their subject of interest/specialty. They will all need to rely on their personal connections with administrators to get those jobs. Teaching in ontario has become extremly competitive.

i think that when Michelle mentioned the fact that "great teachers" are those that spend countless un-paid hours working and countless dollars of their own money on students she hit the issue on the head. If it is only these teaches, who go well beyond the job description, who are able to make an improvement on student's "performance" than there is a systemic problem, not a problem with teachers.

Not to mention, if we start grading teachers on their ability to get students to parrot the right answers on these anti-intellectual standardized tests than we will see a new era in crappy education of young people.

I'm not a big fan of directly disagreeing with people online. I think its much more productive to just build on what you agree with and let everyone else decide what they believe/don't believe. I think this conversation is going a little off topic too, so I'm just going to put in my two cents about what makes a good teacher.

Simply, a good teacher propels students to move up in life. This can be done within the curriculum and just as importantly outside of it.

Teachers can inspire by modeling (this is probably why teachers who were active extracuricularly themselves tend to be good teachers), they can create good classroom environments with their emotional tone and by saying the right things at the right times, they can be caring people which will tend to get students to open up to them, they can spend tons of time preparing awesome lessons catered to the students in the class, they can be patient...

My point is some of these things can be measured, others can't. I can go in an interview and say I am caring, patient, foster a good learning environment... and even tell stories about how I've done this. Regardless of what is claimed in this article, many of the most important qualities of a good teacher are not readily measurable.

If you want to reform education, you need to reform society, so that we make people who are caring, compassionate... all those good immeasurables. No amount of standardized testing and luring with money will ever do the trick.

Other than an article in the right wing "Atlantic" .. what inspired you, Sven, to pose this question?

So you couldn't be bothered to put your own views forward first? Why  is that, if, as you claim, you have "an interest" in education?

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I would add perserverence and an ability to creatively solve prolems.

But, that all being said, the purpose of education, of course, is to actually deliver results.  So, a "great teacher" delivers results.  Period.

... Poor teachers should be fired.

Absoute right wing shit. Not that Im surprised. There's a whole range of non-testable things that teachers do. and, ... going by your above fundamentalist view, such things are irrelevant.

its just as i thought. this is simply a platform for you to spout garbage. no wonder you quoted the Atlantic article.

Anyone genuinely interested in what makes a great teacher, I would suggest checking out the BCTF website.

maybe start with ONE TEst Does not fit all

And never mind the crap on this thread. its practically hate propaganda. HTFG.

Here are some solid left wing education sites.

The little education report

The Rouge Forum

And, of course, here in Canada, and connected to the CCPA is Our Schools, Our Selves

oh yea.

Who cares about right wing propaganda. So you hate seniority. whoopie shit.

Actually, that remark says a lot more about you than it does about me. And what's the point of spouting this shit on a left wing site like rabble?

Poisoning the well?

It's a well established fact that the results of the work that teachers do is notoriously unpredictable. Teaching is an activity that involves not only the teacher but the students as active participants as well. 

Anyway, this propaganda is simply posed as a way to cut someone's salary based on such unpredictable results.

nice try, loser. What do you do for a living, by the way? ha ha