FACTORS IN MAKING A GOOD & BAD TEACHER: A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

                   

Diversity is normal among us. In this embedded diversity, we have our own perceptions of people. For students, it is normal for them to create standards in determining if a teacher is a good or bad teacher. A good teacher is an effective educator while a bad one put his students at stake.

 

The following are some of the factors of what I think make a teacher good—or even great—guided by the acronym TEACH.

 

 

1.      TIMELY. A good teacher is punctual. He does things or he occurs at a needed or useful time. He should be fitting and carries convenience. He recognizes time’s usefulness and he refrains from delaying his job. He prepares his lessons early and relay it to the students within the appropriate schedule. He avoids being late in his every class but sometimes he will dismiss few minutes earlier the officiated schedule if the lessons were successfully finished before the time. He gives his students an enough time to do their requirements and does not give requirements that consume all of their free times. He is never late and tries to be always present to help his student’s need even though it’s already 11 in the evening or he is enjoying a vacation.

                    If a teacher is timely, he is also a motivator who encourages every student to get up from their zones and start walking through their race.

2.      EMPATHETIC. A good teacher can understand the feelings of his students. He is heedful. He does not want to bully anyone. He does not patronize or practice favoritism to a particular student or group of students. He is fair to all. He talks and answers in a professional way—not in a voice of anger or irritation. He let his students suggest and request and tries to consider all of these things. He asks his students about their reasons why they sometimes violate school and classroom rules. He does not punish immediately and gives second chances—or even n chances where n are infinite numbers.

                    By being empathetic, a teacher is the shoes of every student, the shoes that cease the burden of the feet’s palm on walking on the stony land.

3.      ACCURATE. A good teacher is the medium of true information. He does not lie to his students. He does not make a wrong theory just to simplify the lessons narrowly. When he commits mistakes, he asks forgiveness and makes himself clear. He accepts criticism and lessons from his students.

                   He should also be true to himself. He will not represent himself in a way to deceive or boast. He practices low-profile of living and displays himself and all his deeds as good models worth imitating.

                    Through this quality he has, he can be considered as a respectable government with justifiable laws that need to be followed for the correct path to be able to reach the finish line.

4.      CURIOUS. A good teacher does not trust a single textbook to study his lessons. He is a wide reader. He refers to many papers to fully comprehend the lessons to maximize his teaching strategy. He is not close-minded or narrow-minded.

He should also be a researcher and thirsty for knowledge. He wants to uncover things and questions the present information. He shares his questions to his students. By discovering new knowledge, he does not only help his students at the current time but the students in the future—wherever they may are. Through that, he can be called a universal educator.

5.      HIGH-REACHING. As an educator, he does aim at one point. He does not stop in dreaming, not just for himself but also for his students. He wants that his students will reach the highest zenith of success of their possibility. He commits to activities that can put his students to opportunities in and outside the school. He aims to make his students grow in their talents and wishes someday that his students will be more successful than he is. By having this quality, we can consider him as a hero.

                    If a teacher doesn’t have this complete list of qualities, he is neither a good nor bad teacher. However, there are also distinct qualities a teacher has that make him a bad one.

1.      THE UNINTERESTED ON HIS OWN PROFESSION. Sometimes, there are people in academic career that hate or don’t love their jobs. That they just became a teacher because they have no choice as they need employment and money to support themselves and their families. This kind of teachers is obvious. Students just feel this hatred or lack of passion in their jobs. Yes, teaching is a salaried career, but in every career, there should be the underlying passion. Teaching is one of the careers that people need to be passionate about when they pursue it as this profession is the root of all professions and jobs.

2.      UNFRIENDLY. I know some of teachers who are friendly to their students in or out the classroom, and I think I should admire those teachers. Some of the meanings of a friend according to Merriam-Webster’s Students Dictionary are 1.) a person who has a strong liking for and trust in another, 2 .) a person who is not an enemy , and 3.) a person who aids or favors something. There are some of them (teachers) that have had reach the point of being too friendly—in the sense that they are already breaking the gap of the teacher-student relationship. A too friendly teacher will reach the point that he is just talking and talking and talking nonsense things with his students. He makes his students be spoiled brat. He doesn’t scold and punish. He is a ‘tolerator’ of the wrong deeds of the students because he consider them friends(?). What he didn’t understand was that a true friend sometimes becomes a metaphorical enemy to change the attitude or lead the path of his friend. He is not a true friend if he keeps himself to silence. He is not concerned.

                    Teachers, too, should do that because they are also friends of their students. They should be really a friend as being unfriendly leads to consequences such as the students cannot learn enough knowledge and they will learn to disrespect and disobey their teachers.

3.      EXPLOITER. This is the teacher who uses someone or something unfairly for his own advantage. He makes money in classroom, he unjustifiably share his responsibilities to other people like his students, and take advantage of the weaknesses or innocence of his students to make a name for himself or to influence his students’ minds with wrong perceptions and information. This kind of teacher is very dangerous. Instead of producing great minds in the future, they produce law-violating citizens and plague the society.