M. Nanda Dermawan A1B214259

Good and Bad Teacher

A good teacher is a person who finds individual approach to every pupil, taking care about the child’s adaptation in class, increasing one’s social status in class and making sure the children learn to take into account and respect the thoughts of other people.

Teaching can without any doubts be called the leading power of the society’s development. It is well known that there exist three main factors that influence the development of the personality. They are: heredity, social encirclement and education. Usually the term education is used meaning the great impact that parent have on the future personality of their child. But this also includes school education, because nowadays, when parents are very busy they are the people, who teach children what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong. Through them children learn to perceive the inner world. And the way they perceive it depends on the teacher’s personal particularities that are transmitted to children through interaction and the knowledge that the teacher offers them. A good teacher is a person who finds individual approach to every pupil, taking care about the child’s adaptation in class, increasing one’s social status in class and making sure the children learn to take into account and respect the thoughts of other people.

Teachers have the very important responsibility of shaping the lives of young, impressionable children. With this responsibility comes great pride and joy. Therefore all teachers should strive for what can be considered to be a “good teacher.” A good teacher can be defined as someone who always pushes students to want to do their best while at the same time trying to make learning interesting as well as creative. Effective teachers use facts as a starting point, not an end point; they ask “why” questions, look at all sides and encourage students to predict what will happen next. They ask questions frequently to make sure students are following along. They try to engage the whole class, and they don’t allow a few students to dominate the class. They keep students motivated with varied, lively approaches. Great teachers are warm, accessible, enthusiastic and caring. Teachers with these qualities are known to stay after school and make themselves available to students and parents who need them. They are involved in school-wide committees and activities, and they demonstrate a commitment to the school. They are in their classrooms early and ready to teach. They present lessons in a clear and structured way. Their classrooms are organized in such a way as to minimize distractions. They reach parents through conferences and frequent written reports home. They don’t hesitate to pick up the telephone to call a parent if they are concerned about a student. A positive or negative influence from a teacher early on in life can have a great effect on the life of a child. Teachers, especially at the elementary level, must be very creative with their teaching styles. Not every child learns the same way, nor are they interested in the same things. It is difficult to keep the attention of 15-20 children under the age of ten. Classroom setup and design is a good way to get and keep the attention of students. Workstations are a good way to encourage different types of learning. By allowing children a chance to choose which activities they want to participate in, children are taking control of their own education. At the elementary level, children are always learning and sometimes don’t even know it. When I was in kindergarten, I can remember playing at the different stations in the classroom. One station was for gardening and we could plant seeds and check them every day to see how much they had grown. Another station in that classroom that sticks out in my mind is the arts and crafts station. There was a large array of crayons, markers, scissors, construction paper and building materials we could use to make pretty decorations to give to our parents for our homes. By choosing which station we wanted to work at, we were becoming much more interested in what we were learning because we were doing what we wanted to do, not what we had to do

Therefore there is much more to a teacher than high professionalism. What makes kids hardly wait until the lesson starts in one cases and hating the subject in others? Of course high professionalism in the field of the taught subject is very important, but when it comes to being a bad or a good teacher this is not the weightiest factor. A good teacher is a person who not just reproduces the knowledge he got. Not a person that only brings up the interest to the subject. It is a person who finds individual approach to every pupil, taking care about the child’s adaptation in class, increasing one’s social status in class and making sure the children learn to take into account and respect the thoughts of other people. It is a man or a woman that can not “play” the teacher’s role but he in the first place “ a feeling human being” in front of the students, a person that can show emotional response. For example, if the teacher is professionally good enough but does not take critics from the pupils constructively or does not explain why he thinks he is right this makes a huge gap between the students and the teacher. And when there is no emotional contact the learning cannot be called successful, for the students are not completely involved. When the teacher does not treat students as people that obey him, treats them like they are equal to him and explains equally to everybody it can really be a pointer of a “good” teacher. And one other very important thing is creativity.

One of the indicators of a “good” teacher it is his desire to teach in a new, original form, adding something new and personal to make the learning process as exciting as it can possibly be. A bad teacher is a person that focuses only on the information he provides not taking into account the children or anything. It is a person that is doing its job. Such a person can be very good in the theoretical part of his subject but he will never have students being emotionally attached to him. It is a teacher that lets his personal mood influence on the way he treats his students, ect. That cannot reduce awkward situations with humor either it is him in the situation or his student. Being a good teacher is about loving children and wanting to give them only the best the teacher has inside of him.

References

Denver Post (2009). The difference between good and bad teachers. http://www.denverpost.com/2009/06/02/the-difference-between-good-and-bad-teachers/