No More Teachers' Dirty Looks!

Someone at UNESCO has actually thought of asking students around the world what makes a good teacher (hat tip to my teacher friend in Kamloops, Brian Millar). The data is limited, and the responses we see were selected by an adult editorial team, but it's a useful first test of my own idea, expressed recently on this blog, that students at the lower levels are competent to assess their own teachers; and to see if my own impressions of what made a good teacher for me are generally shared—even, indeed, across cultures.

In fact, the impressions of these young kids seem mostly pretty sensible. The only comment that raises doubts for me is Albrecht's (10, from the Czech Republic): “A teacher should have an athletic body.”

But to be fair to Albrecht—the same issue comes up in student evaluations of profs at the tertiary level. Profs at RateMyProfessors.com are evaluated on being “hot.” And how foolish is this, really? This is someone we are obliged to stare at for hours, days, weeks on end. Isn't that easier to do if this is a pleasant experience?

The impressions also seem to tally with my own, confirming my nine points on what good teaching involves.

I note, for example, that the responses do not seem to support a disciplinarian approach:

Note Rose, 9:

"You need to be kind, trusting and friendly to me... you must listen and understand us all... never lose your temper or ignore us... I like a smile and a kind word."

Marie-Isabelle, 11, of Ghana agrees:

"A good teacher must reason with children instead of beating them."

So does 11-year-old Jana:

"They shouldn’t be very strict and angry, because it makes children afraid of them and unwilling to go to school."

Catrina of Portugal writes:

"She makes the classes an amusement and not a prison."

Yeah, exactly. That's my own Mr. Moore well-described.

Omar from Morocco makes that same point I do about playing loose with the curriculum:

"A good teacher answers the needs of the pupils and not only the needs of the chosen programme."

Others talk often of the need for education to be holistic, not just in the given subject.

Kabyemela of Tanzania, 13, agrees with me that subject knowledge is important. Other respondents at least hint at it. Nawal writes:

"A good teacher is someone who transmits to the future generation what is the most precious to her: her culture and her education."

Almost everybody talks of the importance of seeing the students as individuals, and of enjoying teaching for its own sake.

The problem is that this is not a random survey—the printed responses have been selected. We do not really know if they reflect the larger body of responses or not.

Still, it is suggestive.