Four Qualities A Teacher Needs to Succeed

Although much of an education major’s college experience will be learning how to become an effective teacher, there are just some qualities that cannot be taught. There are qualities that are innate or otherwise learned through trial and error; qualities that make a teacher truly effective in the eyes of both their peers and their students. But while everyone agrees that there are certain qualities that make a teacher great, few people seem to have settled on a precise list of them. Should teachers be laid-back or on-task? Maintain a professional air or become friendly with your students? Adhere to the tried-and-true or try something unexpected? Lecture or be hands-on? The answers vary wildly, with most responses coming from people’s own experiences with their own teachers. As for my own personal beliefs, there are four qualities I believe a teacher needs to be successful: approachability, flexibility, passion and management skills.

Now, when I say approachability is an important quality for a teacher to have, I don’t mean approaching your teacher by the water cooler and starting sports talk. When a teacher is approachable, they make themselves available to their students, both in the classroom and after school, and students feel comfortable coming to them with problems or questions. Having confidence that your teacher will listen to what you have to say and help you to the best of their ability is a major factor in student success. I should know—I’ve been in that situation before.

In junior year of high school I was taking Physics I, and had resigned myself to loathing every minute of it. I’d never been particularly good with math or science, and the idea of a class that combined math with science was terrifying. My physics teacher never allowed me the chance to doubt myself. He made it clear to his students from day one that it was never an inconvenience to come to him with homework or test help. No matter how many times I showed up in his doorway after school or during study period, he never acted exasperated with my need to hear concepts again and again, and patiently guided me through equations until I could do them for myself. His approachability, in turn, drove me to succeed on my own: I wanted to show my physics teacher that his time and patience hadn't gone to waste. In the end I wound up with a B for the year, and signed up for Physics II without hesitation.

          

  It isn't approachability alone that makes a teacher great. After all, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. No matter how many times you explain a concept to a student, if they don’t understand it they’re only going to get frustrated. In such cases, you need to be flexible. A flexible teacher can adjust their lesson plan or style based on the atmosphere of the class or the needs of an individual student. Students come in all styles of learners, and what works best for ninety-nine students might fail on one. And one student shouldn't be left behind simply because their way of thinking is different.

           

Let’s go back to 11^th grade Physics I for a moment. I’ve always been a very visual learner—that is, if I can see something at work I can understand it. This comes into play with concepts as well: if I can see something happening in my mind’s eye I can better comprehending information. Part of the reason why math and science were always much more difficult for me was that I couldn’t always visual how a theory was supposed to work out, something that became very frustrating when it came to physics. My physics teacher, realizing my difficulty with theoretical concepts, would sketch out examples of physics at work to better help my understanding. Thus, a lesson on torque became “a guy stuck out on a scaffold”, and physics at sea became “Tugboat Willy”. A flexible teacher will know how to incorporate not just lectures and readings, but other resources such as online sites and guest speakers to reinforce what their students are learning, and to better help students understand the subject. To adapt to a specific student’s needs is the mark of a teacher who cares about both their subject and their student.

            

Passion is the third key quality of a teacher. Passion—loving what you teach and loving to teach—seems like such an obvious quality that it shouldn’t even belong on this list. But all-too-often I’ve seen teachers who are so burned out or so disinterested in the subject that they’re teaching that it becomes a detriment to their students. These are the teachers who have so little interest in being in school that their students soon adopt the same attitude, and performance as a whole suffers for it. If a teacher has no passion for math or history or art, how they supposed to awake a love of learning in their students? Passion is perhaps the most vital of a teacher’s innate qualities, because if they are teaching without passion they are robbing their students of a chance to learn to love a subject. I may be an education history major now, but if my AP History teacher hadn’t shown me what it was like to love history I might be on a very different path in my life. My physics teacher loved his subject and helped me learned to love it too.

           

Oftentimes the discussion of the qualities a teacher must possess revolves around their inner qualities, what they bring with them to the field. What’s less often discussed—but no less important—are the qualities teachers learn as they adapt in their classroom. One of these learned qualities is how to be a good manager. A teacher who lets their classroom run wild will never earn the respect of their students, as much as an overly-strict teacher will never earn their students love. All my favorite teachers could calm a rowdy class with a word, revealing just how much respect their students had for them. A teacher needs to know how to manage time and their students effectively, keeping discussions and work on task without coming off as overbearing. In addition, a teacher needs to learn not only how to manage their classroom, but how to work with parents and other teachers as well. A teacher with good management skills can handle controversy in and out of the classroom, a skill that is especially needed in diverse subjects like English and History. My 12^th grade English teacher often allowed her students to debate over topics like censorship and feminism because she knew how to mediate strong-willed teenagers. But she didn’t come into the profession knowing how to act as a mediator—this is a quality teachers have to foster through trial-and-error.

There is no right or wrong answer to what sort of qualities a teacher should have. A teacher has to be many things—informative, engaging, trustworthy, authoritative, focused—and to describe some qualities as better than others is a mistake, because teachers are just as diverse as their students in how they approach the classroom. Nevertheless there are certain aspects to any good teacher, qualities they possess that put them head-and-shoulders above the crowd: approachability, flexibility, passion and management skills. The mark of an excellent teacher isn’t just someone who possesses these qualities, but who uses them effectively to better their classroom environment and their students.