Defining a Good Teacher
What makes a good teacher? In this installment of the series, What Teachers Do—Naming It, let's look at this ambiguous expectation of the "good" teacher.
Every student and former student might not take long to define a “good teacher.” When adults feel that schools are working, they might add that their child has a good teacher. Politicians will say that every child deserves a good teacher.
Good teachers, positive!
However, the standard for this goodness is fleeting, with a transitory definition.
To simplify how difficult it is for teachers to be a “good teacher,” let’s look at the differing perceptions, teacher evaluations, and expectations.
Perceptions.
What makes a good teacher? If I asked five different people what made a good teacher, I would have a contradictory list. What do you need out of a teacher?
Support and modeling—someone to break down difficult pieces and perhaps over-explain tough concepts. When you were stuck, that teacher chunked information for you to digest.
Tough love: You might struggle, but a good teacher emphasizes that you will learn.
High expectations—a person who teaches, sets a high bar, and tells you that you can reach the bar.
A welcoming attitude, a caring spirit, and a compassionate grader. If you were having a bad day, this good teacher gave you a break and did not push you. The teacher understands limits.
Strict rules with swift enforcement. You might misbehave, but not for long!
A harsh grader who holds students accountable across the content.
A kind person who instills a love of learning. This good teacher might not be rigorous with content, but you left that classroom confident and excited about learning.
A parental-type who remembers birthdays, visits during lunch, and contacts home “just because.”
The no-nonsense sage on the stage who knows content forwards and backwards, ready to ask pressing questions of all students each day.
You get the difficulty of classifying a good teacher. A better answer is that every student needs different things from a teacher at different points in their life.
I have had former students come to me, professing that I changed their lives, that they consider me often. I am not all of the above list, and some days, I am an average teacher.
And? I’m positive not every student considers me a good teacher or even remembers me at all. Being a good teacher is subjective.
Still, we have to talk about this concept because too often, the vague idea that if schools were full of good teachers, students would read better or pass whatever test lingers.
I argue that schools are full of good teachers. Not perfect human beings, but capable teachers who try their best. So why does this expectation stick around, too often with little nuance?
Research into teacher evaluation.
For decades, people poured millions of dollars connecting teacher evaluations with student test results, and they have nothing to show for the results.
These “experts” tied our performances to student testing which never found the good teachers. From The Death and Life of the Great American School System (page 288):
The US Department of Education poured hundreds of millions of dollars into value-added models of teacher evaluation; the Gates Foundation added hundreds of millions more, awarded to specific districts for the same purpose. After five years, it was impossible to see any results. Some teachers were rated based on the scores of students they never taught in subjects they never taught; some excellent teachers were found to be “ineffective” because they did not meet the targets set by computers. No district could show the benefits of having implemented value-added measurements to teacher evaluations.
The expectation for a teacher can vary from year to year because every class is unique, full of unique students with unique needs. What an individual student needed for nine weeks out of the year might be different if a major change (parental jobs, death in the family) happens in the next nine weeks.
Additionally, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on testing, the government could have paid counselors, social workers, healthcare workers, and cooks to care for and feed those children—care that directly impacts student learning.
The unfair and unachievable expectations.
I’ve written before about the expectations for teachers to be everything to everyone, obediently and quietly.
Teachers lament that they want to teach content but because our students need support in other areas before they can learn, we don’t cover content. To address that fact, the expectations on teachers have grown to addressing the student as an entire person, knowing as much as professionally possible to address the way that person can best learn.
Which. . . is admirable. And that goal can perhaps be achieved, but we teachers need the rest of America to have such high expectations for supporting students and their families—financially with decent incomes, adequate healthcare, and available food.
Currently, the expectations for good teachers intensely demand what one person in one classroom can maintain.
Look at this list of suggestions from one page of a professional development book (How To Teach So Students Remember) concerning student engagement:
1. The ability to retrieve information quickly and easily offers students a feeling of self-confidence. How do you reinforce these feelings in every student in your classroom?
2. Some students are naturally slow processors and retrievers. What do you do in your classroom to provide them with the optimal environment for assessment and retrieval?
3. A constant reminder: Does what you are accepting as evidence that your students have enduring understanding match your instructional strategies?
4. Consider the state exam that is given at your school. At which level of Webb’s DOK are the questions?
(Non-teachers, DOK is “depth of knowledge.”)
The expectations are so high that I wonder at the purposefulness: If no one can achieve these goals, does that mean that we have no good teachers?
A few reflections on the above list:
If I have 140 students, how will I reinforce these feelings in every student? What are the outside factors dealing with students’ self-confidence? Are those factors any of my business? Once I discover those feelings, is there somewhere I can turn a student?
How can I support the “slow processors and retrievers” alongside the fast processors? How do I balance instruction between the two speeds, along with the dozens of students in the middle? What happens with my classroom management? Who defines “optimal environment”?
These younger humans (who do not excel at communication just yet) cannot convey the best way to learn, simply because they do not know yet.
When am I supposed to access the depth of knowledge of college-entrance exams (the tests given in my state)? No one provides teachers time for such an analysis. For my students who have no plans to attend college (a perfectly reasonable plan), should I modify the DOK plans? If not, work toward another goal? What about the enduring understanding for non-college bound students?
I’m not trying to be ornery, but we teachers are simply told to achieve miracles like the above list and are given little support. None of those are bad ideas, but our current system is not set up to support teachers in achieving them.
Additionally, the above list might be manageable if it were the only list!
Continued from the same book as above, How To Teach So Students Remember:
Here are some ways to hook students emotionally in the classroom:
• Be sure that your presentation is exciting. Excitatory neurotransmitters are released when we feel excited. Norepinephrine starts a cascade of chemical responses that increase the intensity of the experience and the perception of it.
• Emotions are contagious (Guillory, Hancock, & Kramer, 2011), so act excited yourself. What excites you about what you’re teaching?
• Dress in a costume that will garner students’ attention—whether approvingly or not!
• Play music that fits the theme of what you are teaching. Music has emotional anchors for many of us. It activates various networks in the brains of our students, including higher-level thinking. (Replaying the music that engaged students in a particular topic at assessment time can also enhance recall.)
Teachers might shrug off this list, but do parents, community members, or non-education folks? No one can define a good teacher, so the list to be a good teacher never ends with no regard to personalities, money, or time?
That above list is not straight-forward, either:
I love my content, and I do get excited about it, but not all day, every day of the school year.
The monetary cost is obvious. Schools won’t pay for costumes, and I am not purchasing a costume.
Playing music sounds benign, but it is not. Sometimes, music hinders learning when it overwhelms or distracts learners. Sorting through what will distract some students and will benefit others requires, at the very least, a questionnaire and re-reading of IEPs. Then, what happens when a concerned adult emails me, questioning that a student performed poorly because the music was played during recall?
Finally, the mental expectations along with other requirements of the job overwhelm everyone: Are these lists (only two pages from one book) what people expect of good teachers?
Failed expectations.
The default discussion around education is that we need good teachers, but no one can agree specifically what that would look like. Millions of dollars could not provide clear data for a good teacher.
Too often, the public expects students to learn (and pass tests) despite obstacles beyond teachers’ control. Too often, the public expects miracles from teachers despite teachers clearly explaining that no human can complete these expectations in the current system. Too often, the definition of a good teacher is to be everything to everyone.
A good teacher means nothing and everything, a nothingness phrase that allows the rest of America off the hook for supporting teachers willing to, against all odds, be good teachers.
Start here if you’re looking for the start of this series of posts.
Sources:
Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Basic Books, 2016.
Sprenger, Marilee. How to Teach so Students Remember. ASCD, 2018.