Characteristics of a Good Teacher

Some who came upon the title of this post probably thought it would be a post on what makes a good teacher. While partially that is true but it is actually a little more personal than you may have expected. One of the assignments of my training for TESOL was to pick the characteristics of the 3 most influential teachers throughout my childhood. The three teachers that I picked differed in age as well as the characteristics I found good.

The first teacher I picked was my first grade teacher who was close to retirement age and what I think made her good was that she respected a student’s individual abilities and didn’t judge the class as a whole. I wrote about my struggles of being left-handed in a right-hand world and thinking that maybe something was wrong with me and I was not normal. She helped me adjust my way of doing things to where I felt as normal as the right-handed people in the class.

The second teacher I picked was a teacher who injected humor and storytelling into his lessons on history. By doing this he made history my favorite subject and still of great interest to me. This characteristic is one characteristic that teachers or teachers- to- be should try to attain in my opinion.

The third teacher I mentioned was a young teacher straight out of college who could understand what kids of our age were going through due to being close to our ages. He had a characteristic that I look for in a leader as well as a teacher. He could relate to students but still had an air of authority which still let the students know he was in charge. So you see this is some of the characteristics that I hope to show during my career as a teacher which will in turn influence my students positively.

I read a story a few days ago about this guy who got fired by a major airline. To get back at them he wrote and distributed a book about how to travel cheaply. He got death threats and all kinds of hassles for the secrets he told about how airlines rip you off. If you want to read about this guy and see what his book is all about Click here to view more details