What makes a good teacher?

“My teacher is very good at teaching”. This is the kind of words which most teachers love to hear from their students. The question is what makes a good teacher? The question seems to be very simple, but sometimes a simple question is quite hard to answer. To become an effective teachers require several essential qualities. Being knowledgeable is one quality, but knowledge alone simply is not good enough to be qualified as a good teacher. There are 3 qualities which a good teacher needs to have.

First of all, a good teacher needs to pay close attention to his student’s learning. By doing so, a teacher can clearly identify his students’ needs and modify his teaching style accordingly, as there is no tailor-made teaching style that suit all classes. Moreover, a teacher will put more effort into his teaching by explaining lessons clearly because the teacher cares about his students’ understanding.

Secondly, according to James (2008), a top teacher should “promote the active engagement of the learners”. Traditionally, a teacher’s role in a classroom is to teach and student’s role is to listen and acquire the knowledge. The teacher treats students as a blank bank account in which he will just keep depositing knowledge. This model is what Paulo Freire called “banking model”. However, this model is outdated, because a teacher should get his students involve in his teaching by asking questions and contributing ideas in the class. If students are not involved in their learning, lessons from their perspective will become boring and they will not learn. Therefore, it is teacher’s duty to engage students to participate in the classroom to produce fruitful results and understanding.

Finally, a teacher should not only be just a teacher but also an entertainer in the classroom. Being entertainer means that a teacher should make his lesson interesting in order to attract student’s attention. A student learns best when he is interested in a lesson which means he will put more effort into listening to your explanation and additionally do more research about that particular topic. One way to be entertaining is to bring his sense of humour to the class and make student enjoy his lesson as much as possible. However, a good teacher must balance between entertaining and teacher or the class may become anarchy.

To sum up, 3 qualities needed to become a good teacher are: focusing on student’s learning, engaging students into learning and being an entertainer in the classroom. However, these qualities are just some of other several qualities. Being teacher is deemed to be a fine profession and to live up to a good-teacher standard is such a very difficult task to accomplish. It is therefore teacher’s duty to find possible ways to upgrade himself to be a fine teacher.