How To Be A Good Teacher?

by C.V.Rajan

A truly great teacher commands awe from the students and the students keep their awe on the teacher even when they grow up to become great themselves. A good teacher always commands respect from the students. A mediocre teacher demands respect from the students and manages to get it in the short run. A bad teacher never gets respect from students even if he/ she demands it.
How to be a good teacher? This is one topic even a third rate student can write about and any teacher who wants to be good teacher can get a couple of good clues even from such a writing.

(1) Love Your Profession:
No person can ever become a good teacher if he / she ends up in teaching just because he/ she failed miserably in getting any other alternative employment. In India, several post graduate degree holders, who happen to have done their PG course just because they failed to get a job after graduation, come out of the academia better qualified to be more unemployable than before! Many such persons end up in teaching profession by default, though they do not have any flair, liking for the profession nor any capability to become teachers.
It is a curse that the educational system, per se, relies just only on qualifications on paper for employing the teachers and never bothers to ascertain the positive qualities so essentially required for one to become a good teacher. Result? Countless teachers come to the profession without any love for the profession. It is just a job for them to earn their salary.
One can become a good teacher only if one has love for the profession. This love can bring in the earnestness and commitment to acquire all the other skills and qualities needed for the teaching profession.

(2) Know What You Teach:
A blind cannot lead another blind; but many teachers, who are in the dark on the topic they teach, seem to think they can shed light on it! Unless a teacher has grasped the subject he / she teaches thoroughly and can make it understandable from a student's level of grasping, he /she can never become a good teacher.
I vividly remember two of my professors who took classes during the third year of my degree course thirty two years ago. Professor Krishnamoorthy would come to the class empty handed and the subject Atomic physics would just flow from his lips like a torrent, supported by his sketches and derivations on the black board. His thundering voice, his lucid exposition, his willingness to respond to students' queries - every thing is still clearly etched in my memoryalso had Professor Tiruvengadam for the subject of Thermo dynamics. He would come to the class with a bunch of weather-beaten, dog-eared and brownish papers; perhaps they contained notes that he had jotted down during his college days! He would mumble something inaudible to most in the class and ceremoniously write down derivations on the blackboard by copying line by line from his written notes. Those days, some of my classmates had grand plans of stealing his notes from his cup-board, which could render him totally paralyzed and dumb for months, so that we could enjoy leisure hours in the college! Unfortunately we failed to muster enough courage to put our plans into action!

(3) Teach What You Know:
Knowing the subject is one thing and teaching is another. Coming down to the level of the students, explaining the subjects with practical and comprehensible examples, throwing different perspectives on the subject from different angles, providing convincing answers to the probing questions of the students - these are the skills that teachers must possess. Even if they don't have these skills today, they have to necessarily develop them for tomorrow, if at all they want to remain respectable among the student community.

(4) Accept What You don't Know:
This singular quality can make the teacher a good and respectable one, but unfortunately, many teachers do not know of it nor will their prestige ever allow them to accept their ignorance. None can ever claim ultimate mastery of knowledge on any subject. Right under the candle light, there is always a small patch of dark shadow. Present day students are very sharp and some brilliant ones may at times know a couple of things better than a teacher on a subject. If the student, intentionally or unintentionally, throws a probing question for which the teacher has no answer, the best course of action for the teacher is to accept it.
Acceptance of ignorance today at least paves the way for acquiring the missing knowledge tomorrow.

(5) Never be Vindictive:
Strange it may seem, but the reality is, the more a teacher is ignorant and the more he / she lacks teaching skills or self confidence, the more egotistic he/ she becomes! The teachers tends to use their egotism as a shield to cover their weaknesses and they display their egotism by acting tough. Unfortunately, most of the teachers fail miserably in their attempt to hold their honor in this way, but they never learn!. Particularly where such teachers have weapons to play against the students (like internal assessment marks and marks available in their hands in laboratories or in viva voce) they become shamelessly vindictive in punishing the students who "did not behave".
The more a teacher resorts to such ugly tactics, the more he/ she loses respect amidst the students.

(6) Keep the Fire Burning:
This is another difficulty in the profession. One can remain an enthusiastic and a zealous teacher for a few years. But as one grows older in the profession, lethargy and boredom settles in. This is an occupational hazard. Only those who can keep up their zeal for long by constant refurbishment and self-motivation can remain a good teacher for long.
Despite all the technological advances on one side and the overall deteriaration of value sytems on the other side, teaching profession still continues to be treated as a noble profession. If at all the nobility and respect of the profession has fallen in standards, the blame is to be shouldered more by the teachers and the educational system that supports and nurtures mediocrity in teaching profession, than by the student community. All said and done, there is always a soothing stream of good teachers flowing across the educational institutions. This stream has to be nurtured at all costs.