The Ideal Teacher

Teachers are humans:  they make mistakes, they have limited time; they do much more than stand in front of a class; and they need to live their lives away from school.  Please keep this in mind before we criticize or make demands any teacher!

Let's face it, some teachers spend more time with students in a day than the students' parents.  So, they have a big influence on students.  What qualities do we want in teachers that will make our kids grow up able to do what they want/need to do?  With this knowledge, perhaps we can have more meaningful discussions in a parent-teacher interview.  I have been extremely lucky in my life to have great and inspiring teachers; my wife and kids have not always been as fortunate; this is the impetus for this post.

Starting off with the obvious quality, we'll discuss knowledge.  You can't teach if you don't have the knowledge, right?  That depends.  Elementary school teachers are generalists; they need to know and teach many subjects.  Some elementary schools have specialist teachers that handle gym and/or music (someone has to have first aid in case there are injuries in gym).  Secondary school teachers are specialists; because of the way scheduling is handled, a teacher may end up with a course that they have never taught before.  Teachers (elementary or secondary) that are professional will make a concerted effort to quickly get up to speed and teach the subject matter competently.  Sometimes, they can even present the material with a newbie perspective that will help students because they have just experienced the learning hurdles.  I have witnessed teachers doing this commendably while teaching.  As a parent, I have also witnessed the opposite; one of my kids had a teacher telling students to Google answers for the French class.  My other child had a teacher that certainly had knowledge, but did no teaching in her Mandarin class because all the other students already knew Mandarin and took the class to boost their GPA.  Parents should talk to their kids about their teachers, as most can figure out if their teachers are knowledgeable enough.  So knowledge is a important piece but by no means a complete part of the ideal teacher.

I told my students that I would be always be fair with them.  What does this mean besides the obvious?  For starters, every student should get an equal opportunity to participate; class discussions should not be dominated by a few students.  Marking should be done without bias.  Tests should not have material that hasn't been taught; this doesn't mean that there shouldn't be challenging questions.  Teachers do make mistakes, but how it is dealt with differentiates the ideal teacher.  Poor teachers will be dismissive.  The ideal teacher can make up for it by giving bonus marks for students pointing it mistakes.  Sometimes, I purposely made mistakes during lessons just to see if the students were paying attention.  However, I would not over-do this as it would just seem incompetent.  It is also good to give students a chance to question authority by making a mistake and model the appropriate behaviour for correcting the mistake.  When students get older, many fear speaking in class because they don't want to make mistakes; a teacher can normalize this so that it's okay to make mistakes while speaking.  Teachers must never permit ridicule for mistakes; this is an important component of being fair otherwise student participation will shut down and society will lose future leaders.

What else is important?  Availability.  I don't believe that it's a requirement for teachers be available for extra help, so if they do then consider yourself lucky.  Some teachers may provide extra help through email.  Some teachers may use social media provided that the school board allows social media.  A lot of my colleagues offered their extra time which is awesome.  But students and parents have to realize that if this extra help is not used, then teachers may no longer offer it because their time is valuable too.  And sadly, very few students attend extra help even when they clearly need it.  Also, check if availability means there is parent interview time.  I argue that an ideal teacher will have open and transparent communication of teaching methods; if it can't be done, how will students buy into learning?  I know time is limited for teachers, but it may save time by pro-actively communicating teaching methods rather than explaining it to parents individually.

Another important quality or rather ability is classroom management.  Classroom management does not mean having students sitting in rows quietly reading.  It is making a environment so that the students are learning.  One class could have students talking loudly and moving around and another class could have students working quietly in pairs yet both may be managed properly.  A class may be quiet while a teacher is lecturing with no learning happening because a lot of students are on their phones not paying attention - this is not good classroom management.  Although teachers have the ultimate responsibility for management, this can be aided or hindered by administration or the school board.  The administration is responsible for class composition - with homogeneous class needs it is easier to manage a larger class size; as a class diversifies in learning skills, knowledge and needs, large class sizes will become more difficult to manage.  In the latter case, students and parents can help the teacher and themselves by advocating for smaller class sizes.  Personally, I have had classes of 33 students where learning was happening readily and I have had classes of 24 students where it was "trying" to get some kids to learn.  If a student isn't learning, it's a good idea for the parent to see if has something to do with class composition before blaming the teacher.

Finally, let's consider assessment.  In the previous post, Defining Success, we argued that learning was the goal.  We can't know if learning is occurring unless we have some kind of assessment.  There are two kinds of assessment:  formative and summative.  Formative is feedback for the student and parent that doesn't count for marks - it is supposed to help the student prepare for summative assessment; this could be homework, review packages, drafts, meetings, etc.  Summative assessment counts for marks - this could be a test, project, presentation, essay, etc.  Ideally, a teacher would give students formative assessment before any summative assessment - this should help students prepare and have less anxiety.  A last point on summative assessment would be the policy of retests.  The extremes of yes or no would probably be not productive.  There can be extenuating circumstances where a retest is warranted such as illness, accidents, etc.  Allowing retests on every single test ultimately won't teach the student how to prepare for tests properly.  Please keep in mind that retests are extra work for teachers.  We've all heard students or parents say "this teacher is easy" or "this teacher is hard." - everyone should take this with a grain of salt because ultimately it is relative and may not even be relevant.  We want students to be engaged and learning whether they come into class at a low or high level - students should have their own goals and work at raising their standards; there should be one standard that's attainable by some and not others.  This is the impetus for some schools and school boards to move away from summative assessment.

I know that some of the arguments are brief, but I will go into more detail in future posts.  I have left out a lot of teacher qualities/methodologies, but I believe those are independent of student learning.  I hope this provides information for discourse between teachers, students, and parents to improve student learning instead of people just complaining about a teacher - the goal should be how to improve student learning.  And THAT concludes this post!

Defining Success

Let's start at the beginning.  Students won't know if they are successful until they can define success!  Success will vary slightly as students age and as knowledge and skill increase.  So, what shall success be?  Happiness, friends, obedience, respect, social status, confidence, leadership, attendance, independence, work habits, marks - one class or all classes, life skills, awards, scholarships, top of the class, valedictorian, post secondary education or job entry?  Let me argue that it is learning or even meta-learning (learning how to learn).

Let's discuss the first 10 items.  I would argue these are attributes attained by focusing on the main goal.  If students are doing poorly in school, they may gain one or all of these attributes but it will be difficult to maintain them in the long run.  Students will attain these attributes through various courses; if one is not available, then an elective should be selected to gain that attribute.  Obedience is a red-herring; of course we want students to show some obedience but students won't learn how to stand up for themselves if they are just obedient.  Not all of these need to be attained in school; if the student is involved in after school activities that is an equally acceptable avenue.

Let's move on to life skills before tackling the more controversial items. It's easy to focus only on academics, athletics or arts.  But we don't want people living with their parents until they are 40 because they lack the life skills to live on their own.  It would benefit students to learn how to use basic tools (screwdriver, hammer, wrenches), make dinner, wash dishes, wash their clothes, shop for food and pay bills.  So parents should either teach them at home or sign them up for shop and home economics classes.

Okay, let's tackle marks, awards, scholarships, top of the class and valedictorian as a group.  I would argue that learning will achieve these objectives better than using these objective to achieve learning.  If the parents and student value learning over the marks the student becomes an intrinsically motivated learner.  Using objectives to achieve learning is usually done where parents rewards the student and the student becomes an extrinsically motivated learner.  Or the student is simply motivated by marks; this is also extrinsic motivation.  You will find books devoted to this subject alone, so this will be discussed in more detail in a later post.  Digression:  We live in a instant self-gratifying world of consumerism; IMO - this is partly due to students requiring too much extrinsic motivation; the other major part of consumerism is advertising but that's another discussion.  IMO - we can raise a healthier society that can avoid consumerism if we rely more on intrinsic motivation.

There is another argument to not worry about marks too much.  There is no guarantee that schools or teachers assess at the same level of difficulty (called standardized testing), so a B in one class might not be a B in another class.  Even if the test is identical, there is no guarantee that marking will be similar or even identical.  Additionally, standardized testing is also a controversial subject; it gives the teacher less leeway on teaching what the class needs or relevant.  Again, this will be revisited in a later post.

Let's finish off with some anecdotal evidence (without divulging everything about my family's personal lives).  Personally, my wife and I have never stressed marks with our kids.  We have always stressed whether they are learning and whether they have been putting in the effort.  They have had part-time jobs while at school.  They have been pretty good at most of their classes, received some awards and scholarships but they were not elite academically.  And we have all been happy with this because they turned out to be hard working successful adults.  They have never felt overly anxious or stressed out at school or work.

I give you one more abbreviated anecdote.  I had a parent-student-teacher interview where I told a parent her child had very high marks in my class but that he was coasting a bit to get his work done by taking the easy route.  I said that the child could learn more by taking a risk in doing harder tasks.  The parent started crying because she had been trying to convince the child of the same thing; she finally got someone to agree with her.  So, the point is that high marks doesn't necessarily mean that a student is learning.

My final argument for learning as a measure of success is that we are in an ever changing world; learning is the way to succeed.  Many people don't find a job in their field of study, or they change jobs because they are not happy in their field, or have to look for different job because of an accident or disability.  The only way to adapt is to good at learning.  Learning more is also a way to get a promotion.  I consider myself a life-long learner; I love getting more skills (I recently took a welding course and trying to find a blacksmith course) which is why I'm on my third career.  I hope this provokes some thought or confirms your beliefs.  And THAT concludes this post!