the Good teacher

Every day things that make a good teacher

What is a good teacher? What makes a good teacher?

Good teachers are rare! You stumble upon them sometimes, and it is pure joy to sit in their class room. I cannot remember good teachers from elementary school - I don't think I could recognize the qualities back then. But I am an emotionally intelligent person - I can sense what happens around me and cannot accept injustice. My approach to defining good teaching and my source of wisdom to my own teaching, comes from equality and caring.

In the first grades of elementary school, I felt like the most important characteristics of a good teacher was caring and teaching  kids as own children. This characteristic was important also as a teenager. It is important that someone shows you that you matter and that you are visible. We would have less drop-outs in secondary school, vocational school and also University, if we teachers cared enough.

The Finnish society is currently talking a lot about the marginalized youth. When I was writing my Masters thesis I found a funny guide to thesis writing that helped me get started and helped me stick with it until the final page. The author Juha Hakala is a professor at Jyväskylä University in Educational Science and brought today some new facts to my knowledge about the marginalized youth through his "Ajattelua ja ideoita" blog. "There are 51 300 alienated (drop-out) youngsters between the ages of 15-29 in Finland. Out of that number, the most severely alienated are 32 000 youngsters that are not even registered as job seekers." The worry about the alienated youth was also one of President Sauli Niinistö's election themes and I stumbled upon this tavallisia (="ordinaries") webpage filled with ordinary suggestions on how to get your life in order through Juha Hakala's blog. Here are many suggestions on how to help youngsters and I hope there will be enlightenment and deeds and not only talk the coming year. There is certainly involvement at all levels at the moment.

Above is the mental side to good teaching which is linked to everything you do. But of course, a good teacher needs good teaching methods and needs to be a professional in the subject also. I strongly believe that you need to have a teacher qualification in order to learn how to teach. I hope our iVET program will bring these to our attention. Teacher training will for sure give us tools. I also believe that with experience, you become better in teaching. The risks lies in that you might become too comfortable and do not want to make too many changes to your routines. The future will tell what will happen to me :-)
 
These are my top 10 good teacher qualities that I want to share with you.
Good teachers:

- are relaxed, but determined about teaching their subject
- make the class relaxed and the students confident to open up
- are verbally unlimited
- involve all students
- treat all students with respect and equality
- encourage all students
- manage to drive the students to do their best
- make the students forget their roles and limitations
- do not allow any bullying
- are not afraid to make mistakes

References:
Hakala, J (3 December 2012). "Syrjäytymistä ehkäisemään". Ajattelua ja ideoita retrieved on 8 December 2012 from http://blogi.ideo.fi/2012/12/syrjaytymista-ehkaisemaan.html

Ihan tavallisia asioita. Retrieved on 8 December 2012 from http://www.tavallisia.fi/.