What makes a good education "teacher"?

[Retroboy]

Personal thread component:
High school, post-secondary, graduate... regardless, pick your single best teacher and describe precisely why that person made an impact on you. What specific skill or set of skills - personality, intellect, experience, sense of humour, communication capability, patience, 'other' - made them stand out in your memory?

Discussion component:
How can we create an educational system that reinforces and attracts the right people that know how to, and will, provide these things to students? Or, alternately, are students too individual for any single teacher to reach?

-- Retro

[SquidDNA]

As someone teaching at the college level I'm interested to see where this goes.

[The Collector]

Organic chemistry teacher (background in physical organic chemistry) in college. Old timer who retired this fall.

He knew OChem inside and out. Tests were legendarily brutal. Lectures were extraordinarily systematic, logical yet sensible, the product of twenty years of subtle refinement and the ability to bring humor to Ochem (that and stories between dense concepts to avoid nuking our attention span).

After taking General Chem I was getting worried that chemistry would be all rote and no logic. I figure without him I would've changed majors, which is kinda big.

[Zir]

I think a good teacher is one that can keep control of a classroom, and convey the information he's supposed to on a day to day basis at the straightforward level with no frills. A teacher doesn't seem to need to be creative to just get by, because he has his text books, it's just getting people to listen to whats written and clarifying what they don't understand. Great teachers are all different, what makes one is unique to them. Sometimes you get teachers who are easy going and you can identify with at the friend level, and others just have a creative and enthusiastic way of explaining things. I'd say the key factor is personality. What I don't like is average teachers going out of their way to prove themselves as "down with the kids" or unique. For most teachers, the best thing they could do for their students is to just do things by the book. From my experience a great teacher isn't more smart, they just have flair.

[Retroboy]

Squid, since you're potentially going toward academe as a career, your own answer to the topic might be quite interesting too.

I'll describe my own mentor a bit further on, but suffice it to say I admire him greatly.

-- Retro

[SquidDNA]

My favorite teachers broke up the lectures with witty and insightful antecdotes. For some students, I guess myself included, the more information you can throw at a key concept, the more it will network and stick in someone's head. This is why teaching the history of science tends to be important. Names and dates are boring as hell, but, as a less helpful example for this context, I'll always remember that it was Pasteur who famously said that "chance favors the prepared mind" because my professor followed it up by dryly saying "this is particularly notable because it was the only English he ever spoke in his life."

Spoiler

Pasteur, was, of course, French.

Chargaff's response to Watson and Crick's paper was "How embarassing not to have thought of that." Hilarious. Why? Chargaff was the father of biochemistry. Chargaff's rules. A+C=T+G. A=T, C=G. But he didn't know why it was significant.

I was teaching my students how to do dilutions (reviewing for the practial, really) and after I'd made all the illustrations with flasks and samples and calculations, one of them piped up and said "can't we just use the formula?" And I think I said "Well, as long as you know what the formula means, sure. This is the concept, this is where the formula comes from."

[The Collector]

In immuno I found it very helpful to see the dilution calculations visually: I know our TA did it in our lab section, but the other lab section taught by the professor was left to fend for themselves, and as a result they usually did worse than us, especially on the practicals.

I don't believe in teachers needing to pretend to "be like us". For instance, my biochem professor tends to use a lot of slang, often asking "ya'll with me" every so often. As students we are aware of the distinction between teacher and student, and for me I see it as a fine line that can be toed but never crossed. All the teachers I've thought well of treat us as students aspiring to become fellow scientists, never "equals" (though I tend to treat my graduate students as something closer due to the reduced age gap), and never as subhumans who don't know what they're doing.

Wit is always good, since it helps things stick. So does pattern analysis. It's hard to do glycolysis/TCA/ETC/Oxphos without being able to visualize the patterns. My biochem instructor never quite did the pattern stuff, so I had to draw out the cycles and design the patterns myself.

[Guilliman]

It' quite dependand on what they teach in my opinion. Certain classes need an iron hand of rulership, while others can be more 'loose', if you catch my drift.

I remember my hystory teacher, well one of them. He was a very fun teacher. He treated everyone in his class individualy, and if there were problems they'd be explained in the student's way, rather then the teachers way. (I hope this makes sense :s) He treated everyone the same, with respect and patience. If the class got out of controll, he wouldn't back down to give punishments either. I think he had the most perfect balance between all this. He made people realise if you treat everyone the same, he'll treat you the same, rather then dictator(teacher) -> slave(student). As a lot of teachers I know have some form of superiority complex after the years, even so slightly.

[Lord Abaddon]

A good teacher is one on who's class you don't feel sleepy. I liked history the best. Just because I like history, not because of the teacher.

[Tseng_Fox]

A good teacher is one with excellent grasping of his subject and a Powerful, Iron Fist sense of Discipline.

A teacher is good if he keeps the learning enviroment a learning enviroment by preventing any sort of childish behaviour.

Even better would be if the teacher was Religious.

[Blurr]

Never should a teacher be religious or have any other strong ethical commitment IMO simply because that is not his job

i think there are 2 kinds of good teachers 1 is someone who is just good at teaching tell him what must be learned and he will teach it. I had a further Maths teacher who i thought was absolutely amazing he explained extremely complex concepts in easy to understand ways and the whole class passed with above average grades. On the last day of term i found out he was actually a Geography teacher who retrained as a Maths teacher cos he couldn't find work!

The other is a person who is passionate about their subject and can convey that passion to the students. I had a chemistry teacher who used to enjoy the lessons more then us! She got us all excited and we would sit and listen to here for an hour and a half at a time without getting board.

[Vaarok]

A teacher gives you enough facts to ground you in the subject, but also make you curious enough to learn more on your own.

[Tiresias]

Favorite teacher at high school was my tutor for many a year, he was inteligent and anti authoritarian (eventually got him in big trouble when he stole a school minibus and took his class on an unscheduled field trip) but he actually taught stuff rather than reciting facts. He really got me interested in what I do today.

At uni it's the lecturers who show interest in engaging and have humour. The best has comedy breaks mid lecture with funny youtube videos and the mighty webcams in norway website.

[Dark_Avenger]

a good teacher would also have to be one that is not biased towards something

though that is a bit hard due to the fact that its pretty much impossible not to be biased to certain subjects

just gotta make sure those teachers avoid that situation

[SquidDNA]

I think that situation is called "being in a classroom." The best thing to do in my experience is just to alert the students that your bias might be an issue whenever it comes up. It's less of an issue in the sciences just because that's more a matter of perspectives in problem solving. I might say something like "I really hate approaching the question like this, personally, but then I'm molecular biologist, not an organic chemist. It seems difficult and inelegant to me, but here's how to do it.."

[Black]

A good teacher is one that elicits curiosity in his/her students. A bad teacher would make learning any subject unbearable. An enthusiastic and likeable teacher can make learning the most esoteric subject enriching.

A good teacher also has to be creative. We all think slightly differently about things, and often we have completely different approaches to the same idea. When a teacher has to convey difficult concepts to a wide variety of students, they have to be able to easily see the same concept in different ways, capable of breaking it down into more tractable pieces, and giving their students a comprehensive enough view that understanding becomes easy.

I never thought teaching was an easy job.

[Kushan_Pilot]

My college history professor had this way of keeping your attention. He's ancient, probably late 60's or early 70's, but you could tell history was his passion, and art form. His sheer age made certain he was there during a good chunk of the interesting stuff towards the end. I had the benefit of a small class size in both parts (before & after 1877 or whatever), so he made use of a room where you were within 10 yards of him at any given time.

He used various technique's, like looking you in the eye, changing the volume and pitch of his voice so that you had to commit to some effort to follow him, or maybe it was just the student being tricked into listening as there was no steady drone-like noise that begs for falling asleep. He often adopted a conspiratorial whisper at exactly the right time, like discussing a particularly shady event in history. This was a generic classroom (with no one owner), so he often started his day by bringing in a number of posters or otherwise interesting documentation and putting it on the walls. Every time.

Then there was my government professor. This was my first semester of college, and I was still a carrier of "excitement" and "innocence" (/joke). He wasn't nearly as subtle as my history professor, but he remained genuinely interested in the material. I had opted for sitting in the front row, but off to the side somewhat. Perfect, but not, as it turned out. This was approximately his favorite place to stand in the classroom...or maybe that's where he simply decided to be that year. He had the habit of lecturing about something, and then turning to me to answer the question or throw in my own idea. Perhaps he liked my answers, as they were usually appropriate, or "right" in a way as to throw him into an excited lecture about a particular part of the days subject. I wouldn't know until later I had in fact done right, as I would encounter him later in town. When I expressed surprise he remembered me, he identified me as one of his favorite students. It felt like I was fumbling the ball most of the time (out of my element as a shy kid), and maybe that's where the rest of the class were kept in line - the poor sucker at the front was dredging up an answer, so lets listen.

I like to think a good size chunk of my professor's remembering me or asking me the questions was my looking them in the eye's. In a way, I've learned that doing so can convey information to the professor, including hatred .

[Troubleshooter]

Personal side: I had very few teachers that were worth a damn. They all had good intentions, and were likable enough, but most of them let me sleep in class and skip homework because I got high test scores... so my education was pretty flaccid.

Discussion component:
How can we create an educational system that reinforces and attracts the right people that know how to, and will, provide these things to students? Or, alternately, are students too individual for any single teacher to reach?

I think the best kinds of teachers are the ones that draw you into the subject, make you want to know more about it, and then challenge you to take the course material to the next level. I was terrible at math for most of my life, hated algebra and such... but when I went to technical school and saw how the math was directly applicable to the real world, suddenly it all made sense... and I found myself asking a lot more questions and seeking out information on my own. It was like night and day.

How do we form an education system that rewards teachers and students with the best environment and tools to get the job done? Privatize most of it, introduce competition between schools for the best teachers, and reward students for regular achievements on a more frequent basis. One of the addictive aspects of games is when the player is regularly rewarded for a certain behavior, thus reinforcing that behavior and getting more of it. As students progress in the system, some form of peer ranking, privileges, and tangible rewards should be up for grabs. Kids who consistently fail to perform should be put in a focused, government run, high impact program to help them past the hurdles that are holding them back.

In short, let the kids who can compete engage in the system thats run mainly on private funds, and use taxpayer money and resources to a greater effect on a smaller number of kids. Kids are not too individual, the system is too rigid and structured to let kids excel IMO.

Also, I would like to see tenure for non-university level teachers removed.

[Da_Fish]

I'd have to say my Irish teacher is the best teacher I have and probably one of the best Irish teachers in the country. The reason he's so good is that he goes through everything with you and prepares you so that you can impress the examiner. He is easily the most dedicated teacher I've met as he will frequently come in early for classes. I think his one flaw is that he teaches you to pass exams and nothing else. He gives you the notes to put together your own sample answers and corrects them himself, so you have a good answer for the exam. He hates students who use advanced Irish as he knows they can't pull it off due to it's complexity. I suppose that problem is more with the system than anything else, as it focuses more on knowledge of Irish Literature than Irish grammar. The teacher is forced to teach us poetry rather than the actual language.

We used to have an extremely good maths teacher who never left a student behind. He always tested the ability of students and gave harder questions to better students. He even forced me to go to a local university to do Maths Olympiad training. =/
I feel that kind of teacher is the best that you can have. It's a pity he went to another school to teach slower students.

[Nanor]

Fish, my Irish teacher was cool too. He had a great sense of humour, and even though he never seemed to really teach anything, I, and most of my class, all passed our exams. It was great.

I think a teacher needs a sense of humour and the desire to teach. Not someone who went in to teaching because they had nothing else in mind, but people who actually want to teach.

[Heretic]

My science teacher was excellant. He made really funny jokes, taught us brilliantly and he was known for being able to shut up a hall by looking. Seriously, he was a drill seargeant before being a teacher.

My first history teacher was great, he was funny, strict and a good teacher. A couple of years ago he died of cancer, a hell of a lot of children cried, in a secondary school.

[WhiteGulls]

A good teacher makes you feel like you're learning something interesting. I've had some awful CS profs who just sit there and drone on, not really teaching us anything. Just giving a base example and moving on. However, the ones I enjoy give the base example and then relate it to other things. Or give me an example use of what we just learned. It's pointless to give someone an idea in a class and expect them to learn it when you can't give them a reason why.

Oh, and they test over the important details. I had a prof last term who - we realized this after the second midterm - made a huge point on certain subjects about how there ABSOLUTELY were better implementations of them. NEVER should we use it this way, we're only going over it for the sake of pointing out it exists. NEVER even think about using it, it takes up so much time, blah blah blah, for five minutes he'd go on about how awful this was. Naturally, it was worth 12 points on the midterm.

[BananaMaster]

It's somewhat an odd position to take when judging what makes a teacher "good" in the student's eyes, especially when the standard s and circumstances that go along with the learning experience continuously change.

I've had teacher's in the past that were downright despicable in terms of how they treat their students, yet respectable on what the final product that the student is capable of producing with his or her own merit. My instructor from my third year of architecture school is probably the best example to describe the inter-personal conflicts that arise between the teacher and student relationship. In my particular school, you are given the opportunity to not adhere to the status quo of "professors" and the like where the learning environment in structured according to seminars or classes--such categorization does not apply to a studio and to abide by the usual university formula is not conducive to learning, especially in a studio environment. If you want to say "fvck off" to a particular teacher, you can, provided that your reasons can be backed up with adequate measure. As for my studio instructor, well, let's just say that he was the type of instructor who was generally disrespectful of other student's work, and would without a doubt get in front of your face and say that your project is "shit," even if means in front of a review. Worse, some of the students felt downright depressed due to his insults and general sentiment that whatever they did was a "failure" in his eyes. After weeks enduring his berating insults while undertaking a stressful individual design competition, I simply became fed up with the instructor's behavior and had a very heated argument--and quite surprisingly, I ended up being the person berating him. Luckily, the entire class was also fed up and none of the other instructors intervened.

The point is, a good instructor/teacher sets his own ego outside of the school and sets himself in the position of not just criticizing the student of his/her project, but elevating a student's motivation to excel in building the best project that the student can deliver with the given allotted time. Encouragement from a mentor is invaluable in the practice of architecture in which your greatest motivator is more likely to be yourself than the competition with your peers or goal of getting a good grade; it is after all your project and whatever input that is given on your part, whether that be in a group is totally up to the individual. I respect my third year instructor, even if I don't particularly like him personally.