More on Good Teaching

A teacher friend of mine, Brian Millar of Kamloops, has suggested that my list of good qualities in a teacher lacks something he has seen in surveys:

“The teacher had to be able to admit they made mistakes. Humanness rather than subject knowledge.”

I think he’s right, even though I want my data to come from personal recollections by adults, not any other course. But this does: it tallies with my sense that the good teachers I had level with the students, and do not assume an air of superiority. I just missed putting that in point form at the end.

So here’s my added ninth amendment on good teaching:

9. Does not talk down to the students. For example, admits and corrects any mistakes.

But I disagree that this is an "either/or" proposition in relation to subject knowledge. If a teacher were often making mistakes, then looking them up and correcting them later, I do not think I would have been at all impressed. And the real problem here is teachers who make mistakes, and then do not correct them. Better to correct the mistakes, quickly and clearly. Better still not to make them.

I can recall a specific instance in this regard: a high school teacher I had first for math, then for history. She was a recent arrival from Scotland, and she was teaching us Quebec history, in Quebec, and I felt that having her do this was an appalling waste of my time as a student. She did not know, for example, that the PQ was a left-wing party; she was teaching us that it was right-wing. I corrected her, she looked it up, and praised me next day for speaking up. Okay, that was nice, so far as it went, but she was still wasting our time and committing malpractice as a teacher. Thought so then, think so now.

Subject knowledge matters. You can’t teach what you don’t know.

BM adds the following, again from his knowledge of studies:

“They had to be perceived to be fair. Didn't matter if it was strict or laissez faire - consistency in the rules and not perceived to play favorites.”

I'm of two minds here. Intellectually, this seems to make sense. But in practice, it is not true of my own experience. Perhaps there is a confusion here between "strict" and "academically rigorous." I have found the best teachers to be demanding academically, but not strict. They generally did not give a fig about discipline in class. They cared about work actually produced.

Conversely, when I think back to the teachers I had who were disciplinarians, I conclude that at best I did not find them memorable. My general impression then was that they had a screw loose in some vague way; and I still think so. Not that I ever ran afoul of any of them--I was a model student in disciplinary terms.

I suppose it is possible that a strict disciplinarian may appeal to other students, though. It may be a neutral trait overall, just not for me.

Doe any of my many readers (hi, Bob!) have anything to add?