The role of teachers, especially good ones, in the lives of students can’t be overemphasized. They are responsible for moulding and also a guide to students. How successful a student can be is a function of how impactful his/her teachers are.
Your attitude in and outside the class can influence your students positively. Some teachers teach and relate to students as if they are forced into the profession: they bully, harass, and even maltreat students. But this kind of teacher should know that a child not well taught is a child lost.
One of the reasons why the standard of education has fallen in some nations is because of the inadequate of good teachers in such nations. Imagine a situation whereby some teachers encourage their students to engage in examination malpractice. This implies that a low-quality teacher will produce low-quality students and vice versa.
Read: What good teachers do when a student fails
Listed below are the qualities a good teacher should possess for him/her to be a successful teacher:
- Teachers should judge their success by the success of their students
- Teachers should be impacted more by their character and commitment than by their communication
- Teachers exist to serve the students
- Any teacher could become a master teacher
- Teachers should be more student-oriented than subject-oriented: the ability to build students’ mental muscle and also communicate the subject with the student’s needs and interests in mind
- Alter your style regularly according to each situation: you should be able to know when your student is bored
- Teachers should have self-esteem and high emotional intelligence
- Teachers must know how to excel by using their strengths to overcome their weaknesses
- Teachers should have good expectations of their students
- Teachers must be caring and hardworking
- They must be able to cause their students to learn
- They must understand the concept of irreducible minimum: this is the smallest unit of information necessary for a given class to gain an acceptable understanding of a given subject
- They must teach to the point of applying the content
- A good teacher must show empathy
- A good teacher must be positively minded about his student, and shouldn’t see any student as a write-off.
Whenever I look back and think through the number of teachers I have passed through, I discover that I love teachers who are accommodating, ready to listen to my questions, interested in my future and are an authority in their field (ability to impact the needed knowledge).
