Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! (What qualities make an excellent teacher?)

Member Name: katygriff

Product:	What qualities make an excellent teacher?
Date:	23/10/06 (2964 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They Teach Us.

Disadvantages: There Are Some Bad Ones.

I had a very mixed time at school and although some of this was due to bullies, much of it was down to the teachers. Not only at school but at university I have noticed what is needed to make a good teacher as I have seen some extremely shocking ones at times. I do have my reasons why I think the standards do go down sometimes but I do think that the majority of teachers I have come across have been great. Also my Mom works in a school as a nursery nurse and she has to do a teachers job most of the time as the others simply cannot do it properly so I have had quite a bit of advice while writing this review so hopefully for any aspiring teachers you will understand some aspects that are expected of you.

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The Good:


My Experience:

I have always had quite a good relationship with most teachers because I was very quiet and very studious throughout school and university. I am also quite an approachable person so I think at school the teachers always knew they could ask for my help or give me things to do and they knew I would get on and do them. The good teachers I have come across have been confident, quite firm and knew what they were doing. They were approachable and friendly as I think this is what you need in a teacher.

My favourite teacher was one of my university lecturers who helped me throughout my course and managed to give me sound advice which led to me thinking of him as a bit of a mentor. He was fantastic and when it came to my dissertation he would let me explain things to him and then give me advice on how to do things better and he was genuinely excited about my dissertation simply because he loved what he did for a living.


What you Need to be a Good Teacher:

Confidence;
Confidence is a major thing for teachers as to be able to in a way command kids and young adults you need to be able to come across as a confident individual. So many teachers I have seen (yes even in quite posh schools) be knocked down by pupils simply not listening and basically playing up. These teachers have then acted quite withdrawn which has lead the playing up to continue and increase. I think confidence is all about the way you act and the way you approach things. If something is wrong then make it known and do not let it carry on.

At school I used to sit there all lesson with one teacher with three students constantly talking throughout which was driving everybody mad. This teacher thought it was a good idea to ignore it so they would get bored but of course they didn’t and it just got on everybody’s nerves with nobody solving it. So come on teachers make sure you can stand up for yourself and other (good) fellow pupils.


Knowledge;
I have seen this quite a lot of times unfortunately but a teacher who has not actually got the knowledge to teach the subject is awful. If you are going to teach then you need to be able to know your subject(s) inside out and it ties into confidence as you need to be confident in your own intellect. If somebody steps up and asks you a question then you need to be ale to give them a solid answer and not freeze, even if it is to say you will find out for them.

The worst teacher I ever had was a Biology teacher at school and he knew nothing. He used to sit there and get us to read a chapter out of the book and then do experiments from it. If anybody even asked a question he used to make us look it up in the book and he could never not refer to the book. That was just awful.


Turn Up;
The most important thing about being a teacher is to actually turn up to do your job. As a student I used to feel awful if a teacher did not turn up for school or university because it wasted a lesson. There are always supply teachers which is so annoying as they never really know where in the syllabus you are and also it is hard to adjust to another teaching style when you are so used to one already.

The reason I bought up this section is because when I was at school we had a teacher that never used to turn up to any of the lessons and when we counted in one academic year we had only actually had twelve full lessons from him which is ridiculous. Everybody failed this specific A Level and most of the reason was because the teacher was never there.


Be on Time;
You expect to lead by example so you need to always be there on time. I cant stand teachers who keep pupils waiting because it is just bad manners. If a pupil is late then they are ridiculed for it so it should be the same with teachers. We had one English teacher who was always strolling into class five / ten minutes after it had started. We just found it rude although to be honest we did like the extra time to gossip.


Be Prepared;
The one thing that you actually must be (and no excuses) to be a teacher is to be prepared. My Mom spends some of her weekend making sure she knows what she is doing each day of the week as there is nothing worse than getting to the school and in front of all of the students and getting stuck with nothing to say. Me personally when I was at school I liked to have a schedule so that I knew what I was doing for the academic year. This works with most subjects and I think it is good to get people used to the real world where they will need to work to targets and time periods.

Plus if you are prepared for what you are doing then the job should be pretty straight forward but if you don’t then you can easily get confused. I remember when I had to actually do a lecture once at university and act as the teacher and I prepared so much that it went perfectly. My friend however didn’t and it all turned out messy with her getting stuck with what to say. Know what you are doing and it shouldn’t go wrong (hopefully).


Be Passionate;
If you are teaching then people will expect you to be passionate about what you do and believe me it does come across if you are not. The example I have is when I was at school and our English teacher was ill so we had an arts teacher come over and take over a few lessons. She was so bored and the lesson was a complete disaster because she wasn’t interested so it affected the class and they became uninterested. Teaching is quite a hard job (apart from the holidays) so you do have to be passionate about the subject you teach, especially if you are going to teach it every day for years.


Expect it to be Hard Work;
My Mom has known a lot of people go into teaching because they expect the job to be very easy. I mean you get the good holidays and you get to leave to go home earlier than others but the actual job can be tiresome and extremely hard work. This gets people around exam time as they have to spend their evenings marking exams. My Mom always says that every teacher she knows moans about the job and whenever I ask her why she just says they think they get it too hard.

What I will say to aspiring teachers is that it is not as easy as you expect and if you just want to go into it for the easiness then you will end up disappointed.


Want to Teach;
My final bit of advice is to let you know that to be a teacher you really do have to want to teach. This is so important because repeating from above a little many people do go into it for the wrong reasons. I would love to get the holidays and time off they get but I would absolutely hate the teaching part (which is a bit of a drawback really) so I would never get into the profession.

Successful teachers do want to be teachers and you can tell these people apart from everybody else. They are the ones with all of the qualities I have mentioned already so are passionate, enthusiastic and always on the go. These are the teachers that I liked at school and that I actually enjoyed been taught by as you really felt you could learn something from them. Everybody else just used to get ignored really.

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The Bad:

My Experiences;

Well my A levels were a disaster because of two teachers. I had one who never used to turn up to lessons which I told you above and then one who just used to read from a book who incidentally was the same one who apparently ‘accidentally’ taught us the wrong syllabus. This resulted in me failing two important A Levels which I was not happy about at all.

At university I have to say I had no problems as all my teachers were excellent but my fiancé and housemate had about 70% of their teachers be a pain. This would be missing lectures and getting substitutes in and even at times cancelling lectures. My housemate even had a lecture each week where the teacher wouldn’t offer any help to anybody who asked and just preferred to sit there playing on the internet.

My Mom is always telling me about the teachers at her school who come and go because they cant handle it and also they moan constantly about their job. She tells me that certain teachers constantly are unprepared and she ends up having to do their work for them to actually be able to teach the kids to a decent standard.


What Not to Do:

I know I have already touched on these but here is a quick reminder list;

• Don’t be late
• Don’t miss a lesson if you can help it
• Don’t act bored
• Stay calm in most situations
• Don’t expect it all to be easy
• Don’t go into the profession if it is not what you really want to do
• Don’t be naïve and expect you can just get by with minor knowledge
• Don’t be un-organised
• Don’t be unapproachable.

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So there you go and I hope you now know what I expect in a teacher. I have had my fair of absolutely rubbish ones who I have just sat there wondering why are you a teacher and then I have had great ones who I could truly see loved their job. Teaching is one of those jobs you do really need to want to do so do your research before you go into it and anybody wanting to be a teacher, good luck.

Thanks for reading.

xxx

Summary: 90% Are Great.