How to be a good teacher

How to be a good teacher

Pulitzer Prize laureate Nicholas D. Kristof recently writes in his NYT column, “The greatest national shame of USA is education, not health care”, and he listed the core point to the education,

“First, good teachers matter more than anything; they are astonishingly important.”

“Second, our methods to screen potential teachers, or determine which ones are good, don’t work.”

Regardless of the second point, good teacher is the most important part of the education program. For the public governors, the emergent agenda is to invent a method or a mechanism to select really good teacher, for a person who wants to become a teacher, that’s to figure out how to be a good teacher, and try best to be selected by the method or mechanism developed by public governors.

Firs of all, we should set standards for a good teacher, and this is the most difficult but important point. Different people take different stands, for parent, a teacher who can make their child get higher scores is a good teacher; for teacher, a teacher who can make all the children get higher scores is a good one, but for a student, a good teacher is the one who understands him, respects him, takes care of him not only about score but also feelings, interests, above all, doesn’t hurt his heart. In my opinion, a good teacher is as good as to influence a student’s Vision of the world, as good as to be a friend of a student.

Second, you need follow the standards, and this is the working part, an idea without a carry out is a prate!

1)      Understand your students. As saying goes, “Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.”, and that begins with the love of the job and the students, the love makes you to observe the students, makes your students take you as a friend and tell you something about himself which can’t be found with observing.

2)     Respect your students. Respecting a student is easy, but respects some students is a very tough thing, especially sometimes your students piss you off, and out of animality, you may take revenge, but that’s what a good teacher doesn’t do.

3)     Choose the right method. Teaching is not about putting things to the students but pulling the students to learn. Compulsory study doesn’t work.

4)     Revise your work. If the effort you take hasn’t take effect, it’s time for you rethink your method. There is no student that can’t be educated, but there is incapable teacher

As you know, if you don’t like the job, you can’t be a good teacher forever.