Deeper reflection: Reconsidering what made great teachers great!

Deeper reflection: Reconsidering what made great teachers great!

Reflecting on the two teachers who had greatest impact on me, I had thought it was because they both knew their topics so well. Having listened and read through Week 3 materials, it is now clearer that we can isolate two very important qualities which stand out in memory of them… and it was these which made them great teachers!

My mathematics teacher (Mr. Wilne) had a brilliant ability to take toughest elements of the subject – i.e. Pure maths, which is the theoretical world of the subject – is not easy to visualise. However Mr Wilne had many tools in his artillery and was able to conjure images of the material using metaphors, imaginative drawings and hypothetical situations to draw a clear idea in our minds of, for example, a cuboid with n dimensions, not an easy task! It’s now clear that he was an exceptional STORYTELLER. This trait is worth even more than full understanding of the material (which he also had!).

Mr Craft was our Spanish teacher. Rather than being a standard language teacher (as we had for French and Italian) he somehow created breakthrough for the majority of the class. Rather than dreading the lessons like the other languages mentioned, we were on tenterhooks awaiting each Spanish class. It’s now obvious that his knowledge of Spanish had little to do with it… rather, he infused us with an unbelievable excitement about the things which made the language and the culture special. Food, Sports, Relationships… he was able to get across to us the idea of the Spanish ‘movida’ easily and with great enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was infectious, and he was able to motivate us with it as he knew how we thought (he had been to the same school as a student). So his natural EMPATHY with us allowed him to tailor the lesson to activate what we cared about and spread his ENTHUSIASM of the topic to us!

Overall, if a teacher can understand what their pupils are going through (‘know you audience’) and help them understand the reason and importance of the material (‘Storytell’) to a high degree, clearly they can have an important impact on their students. Therefore I believe that the two teachers I highlighted would (and did) have a similar effect on other students as well – their ‘magic’ was not so much about the material which they taught, rather how they felt about it, thought about imparting it to us and how they brought that to a fruitful conclusion!