How to be a great teacher? Lessons Learned from Teacher Panel

How to be a great teacher? Lessons Learned from Teacher Panel

By Evdoxia Gounelas
EDI 600 Psychological Foundation of Education
School of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
September 15, 2008

Following a very positive first class with Dr. Boyanton last week, I was excited and motivated to revisit her classroom again today. The way in which the course seems to unfold so far shows a great amount of creativity on the part of Dr. Boyanton, because I did not anticipate the type of discussion that we had in today’s session. We were told that a bunch of panelists were going to be joining our classroom towards the second part of the class, but we found out that the panelists were not strangers but students from our own classroom. We were able to learn a reasonable amount of information about teaching from practical experience of our classmates. There is much to be learned about teaching from the textbook itself, but face-to-face discussion about real life experience within the classroom is invaluable, and Dr. Boyanton’s class allowed us that opportunity.

The panel discussion was very helpful in that it gave me insight as to what typical classrooms were like, within the private education as well as the public education sectors. It also showed that many teachers experienced similar issues within their classrooms, across all subjects, abilities and ages of students. Many questions that were directed to the panelists by the students were questions that I also had myself. One person, for example, asked the question of what does one teacher do when it seems the lesson is not getting through to the students, and/or when it seems that students within a classroom that you are teaching to have lost your attention. Do you continue to try to teach the lesson? The overwhelming response by the panelists seemed to indicate that a certain time-out was needed in order to give the students a rest and then attempt to regain their attention about finishing up the lesson at another point in time.

One of my anticipations as a prospective new teacher is that there will be times that I may not be able to manage the classroom, or that there will be days when children just won’t be able to give me their full attention, for one reason or another; I always wondered if other people in my position also are concerned about the same things. Along that same theme, someone asked the panelists what it was like to be a substitute teacher and if there were any challenges of being taken seriously by students because she was not full-time faculty with a steady classroom. The panelist answered that, by the third year of working within the same school, she, as a substitute, was considered to be a teacher, just like the other faculty members, but that initially she had to be strict with the students in order to gain their respect and attention. Again, with this information coming from a live person who has had the experience, the insight was helpful and the feedback was realistic. It would have been great to elaborate on this question even further, I thought.

As the panelists revealed thoughts on how to overcome some classroom difficulties, in my mind I envisioned on how I would be able to apply some of these suggestions to my own experience within the afterschool program where I currently work. Trying to hold the students’ attention and get them to participate in certain activities, after a long day of regular school classes, can sometimes be a challenging task. Dealing with behavior problems are also common issues within such an environment, even though it is not a traditional classroom setting. The children are usually tired by the time they finish with their regular classes, and it is sometimes a challenge to keep them interested and active, not allowing them to get lazy (they cannot go to the program and do nothing -- they are always engaged in some type of game or activity, until their parents come to pick them up by 6:30pm).

Being a great teacher, or even a great afterschool coordinator, is something that would happen gradually, in my point of view, and not necessarily instantaneously, for the simple reason that we, in becoming better at what we do career-wise, will learn a great deal through trial and error, and our every experience. For teachers, I think that most, especially those who are relatively new in the field, are always seeking ways to improve in some way. I cannot imagine that a person is able to be simply born as a great teacher, although I always believed that being able to be a successful teacher takes a certain personality and certain interests. A great teacher needs to have a combination of qualities, including a general love of and care for children, love of teaching and knowledge, and appreciation of all types of children and learning styles. A great teacher needs to be able to identify learning problems quickly, get to know and understand each student, as well as potential conflicts within her teaching style. A great teacher would be able to manage her classroom, and make her students successful in terms of promoting self-confidence and academically. In learning about what works and what does not work with regard to teaching children is also one stepping stone on the road to becoming a great teacher, together with compassion and the ability to give attention and guidance to all students.