

Ask HN: What do you think makes a good teacher? - grosales

I just want to know what your opinions on this topic is. I have often heard that many hackers are good teachers so I believe that a good teacher should be passionate about his/her subject.
======
ScottWhigham
As an IT educator and professional for 10+ years, this is actually right up my
alley. I've developed both courses for students of IT and music as well as
several "Train the Trainer" courses.

One thing I will do is to address the term "good teacher". A good teacher is
very different from a "great teacher." I'll simply address good teachers in my
post.

I do chuckle a bit when I read the replies that say, "This - you have to do
this to be a good teacher." It's all so subjective. I've seen good teachers
who were not great enthusiasts, good teachers who didn't give a #### about
their students, and good teachers who lived and breathed the technology, loved
their students, and were good people.

In my opinion being a good teacher requires wanting to be a good teacher,
practicing the techniques of educating the age group you are teaching (there
are massive differences in teaching each age group), and knowing the topic at
hand.

If you actually care about the people you are educating, that is bonus but
there are plenty of good teachers who, at the end of the day, couldn't care
less about this group of students or whether they "get it". To give you an
example, some of the great teachers _know_ that they are great teachers and
know that simply taking a class with them is an honor and they take the
attitude, "If you're taking my class and you don't get it, then something is
wrong with you - not my fault. <hundreds/thousands> have taken this class and
gotten tons out of it and if you don't, too bad."

Just because you are an enthusiast means nothing - I've seen good teachers who
barely know the topic. What they are good at, though, is simplifying complex
topics and helping students understand the topics. The good teacher does not
have to be a guru (and for many people, the more they know, the less of a good
teacher they become because they lose the ability to make it understandable
for the student).

As for passion, passion makes it easier for the student, sure, but it isn't a
requirement to be a good teacher. I've seen lots of good teachers who learn a
subject just so they can keep a job. They don't give a ### about that subject
but, because they want to be good teachers and they work hard at it, they are
good at teaching that topic. Would it be better if they were passionate about
it? Absolutely.

All in all, I think it's a combination of several things to be a good teacher
but passion and guru-ness aren't in that set. I think the want to be a good
teacher is paramount and, along with that want, is a work ethic that drives
you to become and remain a good teacher. Anything above and beyond that only
makes you better.

------
GeneralMaximus
I'm a student, and most of the teachers I deal with at college are _horrible_.
I won't go into things like passion and knowledge, just plain hard facts about
what I _want_ in most teachers.

1\. Don't tell. Anyone can stand in front of a class and _tell_ students stuff
they don't know. A good teacher will always start with a problem, encourage
students to suggest their own solutions and then proceed to tell the class the
actual solution. _Most_ good teachers I have encountered use a variation of
this method to teach. It not only works well, it gives students a sense of
accomplishment.

2\. Let students come to their own conclusions about the subject material
before you correct them. College students are not stupid. I've seen that the
_worst_ teacher will always tell students to "slow down for a moment" just so
he can meticulously read through his shrink-wrapped bullet points. Boredom
ensues.

3\. Ask. Ask many questions. Heck, teach entire chapters as a series of
questions.

EDIT: spelling, grammar, lameness.

~~~
dmhouse
It depends entirely on how many people you're teaching. If you're sitting in a
lecture hall full of 250 students, asking continual questions is just not
going to get any response. No-one wants to embarass themselves in front of an
audience that large. You'll just slow down the lecture while you pause and
listen to a stony 10 second silence every couple of minutes. I've had
lecturers do this, and it's extremely frustrating.

Personally, I don't mind lecturers "telling" the answers straight away.
Obviously give motivation and lead into it rather than just delivering it with
no introduction, but I've found a lot of problems are simply too large or too
non-obvious to take a straw poll from the class.

The best teachers I've had have been:

(i) Really bloody good at their subject. My probability lecturer (the Field's
medallist Tim Gowers), when presenting the proof of Stirling's approximation,
said something along the lines of "now, the normal method for proving this bit
is a bit complicated, and on my cycle in this morning I thought 'There must be
an easier way', when the following struck me. Now, I've never written this
down before, so hopefully it works...", and of course laid out a
simplification of a famous proof that worked perfectly. Inspirational. (See
[http://gowers.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/removing-the-magic-
fr...](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/removing-the-magic-from-
stirlings-formula/))

(ii) Incredible elucidators. The ability to take a complex concept and pick
exactly the right words or metaphors to explain it is a powerful ability.

I feel these criteria are far more important than asking the audience
questions. You need both -- I've been taught by plenty of talented
mathematicians who had no idea how to teach, and certainly a handful of great
teachers who simply didn't have the aptitude to really grasp the more complex
topics.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
Agree. Asking questions in a class of 250 students is counter productive. But,
here in India, it's against regulations in many colleges to have classes
larger than 60 students. So, perspective :)

~~~
pageman
taught 300 students in Kabul, Afghanistan at one go (English Class) - what we
did was we had PowerPoint, we had a microphone (connected to a mixer and JBL
speakers) - and everyone had a sheet so they can follow the lessons, even had
think-pair-share (using the PowerPoint as prompts) - had 5 of these classes
going at the same time in Kabul University and 1 at the Kabul Polytechnic
simultaneously. So you could ask 300 students all at the same time if you set
it up properly :)

------
rabidsnail
A good teacher provides the circumstances for students to teach themselves,
and guides them in the right direction when they need it. I know I learn much
better when I figure something out for myself than when someone just tells it
to me straight.

The Socratic method was a good idea.

------
mmj
Being able to relate with the student.

For instance after I learn a language and am trying to teach someone else the
language I just can't see why the person is having trouble learning a certain
concept of the language. It all seems so simple to me since I've already
learned this language and it's hard for me to be able to empathize with the
learner.

~~~
hackinthebochs
This is the key in my opinion. Just to elaborate a bit: you can think of
knowledge as a mental structure. The good/great teachers are able to empathize
with the students position of not having any of that knowledge, and can
effectively build up the entire structure to make what they learned
meaningful. The poor teachers just teach the final layer and wonder why people
aren't getting it.

~~~
zandor
Couldn't agree more. Great teachers, at least in my opinion, easily recognize
all the common pitfalls where people get stuck and help them accordingly.

------
David
From what I've seen, good teachers are those who A) earn the respect of their
students, and B) understand that different people learn differently.

Respect is important because no student will be engaged in a class with a
teacher of whom he has a low opinion. At best the student will ignore the
teacher and turn to an alternate, respected, source - ie textbook. At worst,
the student will entirely disengage from the subject. To earn respect, I would
suggest first that the teacher respect the student. A student who is respected
will find class more enjoyable and engaging, knowing his ideas mean something.

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences states that there are ~8
different types of intelligences. A student who is exceptional in one of them
will learn best in that one - and will usually be more interested in
information reaching him through it. Out of the blue, it occurred to me that a
file format analogy lends itself perfectly to the situation. A program may be
able to open files of several formats, but it is built around one. This format
will generally produce the best results for the program, even if it can
interact competently with several other formats. Think excel (because I've had
to deal with it recently). You can work with CSV files, certainly, but you can
do much more with xls files. So teach your material in different formats. Have
the content available in both visual and auditory formats as a default, but
whenever possible (and you really want to reach for these!) make it available
in kinesthetic, verbal, musical, and social formats as well. (I've missed a
couple of Gardner's intelligences. But you get the idea.)

Teaching to multiple intelligences will also increase students' respect for
you. If you help them to understand something (by teaching it in a format that
naturally makes more sense to them), they will A) realize that you know what
you're talking about, and B) see that you are a better teacher, likely to
teach them more stuff.

I don't mean to imply that everyone is naturally interested in learning
everything, and it is only the format of the data that is interfering -- but
how much more enjoyable is working with a dataset if you don't have to write a
parser for the input format? ;)

------
mrtron
I like a teacher that understands a huge amount about the subject and has
enough control of the subject matter that they can tie in other material.

The teachers I learned the most from knew so much about the subject that they
could explain things very simply. An example being in high school calculus -
the teacher had a masters in pure math and was able to explain things in such
a way that made everything seem simple.

Recently I started watching <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/geb/VideoLectures/>
after seeing it linked here on HN. During the first lecture the instructor
takes several tangents, and those tangents help clarify the subject matter to
such an extent that I would say that is what makes him a good teacher.

~~~
jtbarrett
Definitely agree, but I've had lecturers who take this too far. My intro.
quantum physics professor was a brilliant and accomplished researcher at the
bleeding edge of this field whose most basic concepts were deeply mysterious
to us students. We appreciated the passion and keep knowledge that informed
each of his tangents, but they were pretty impenetrable and very frequently
distracted from the material at hand. I left the class thinking he was a
brilliant man but fairly poor teacher. Then I had had him the next semester in
thermodynamics and he turned out to be great! Certainly he had plenty of
knowledge of the field, but he kept the class somewhere within the scope of
the syllabus and relayed the foundations to us much more carefully. He focused
on teaching, not the material itself.

The GEB lectures you linked are an interesting example in themselves. The
early tangents that the teachers launch into on their own are certainly
helpful, especially in such a free-form class. But student questions and
tangents soon dominate that class too, to the point that I found it quite
unbearable. When there is interesting material to be discussed they
continually relapse into tired speculations of the "well maybe the universe is
just a giant computer simulation" sort. The last lecture in particular is
completely dominated, and in my opinion ruined, by questions from the most
persistent student. A teacher needs to take charge and keep the class on
track. Perhaps in a real class Justin would have.

------
anshul
The objective measure of a teacher's success must be what the class ended up
learning regardless of what was or wasn't taught and all other random factors
involved.

With that definition in mind, as a former pure math student, the best teaches
I had were those who were

\- oddly enough, good story tellers! By which I mean, they sounded very much
interested in what they were telling me. Their narratives always had at least
a few mini-mysteries going on just like in a good story. They used one thing
leading to another kind of explanations rather than stating unrelated facts
one after the other. The narratives always seemed to have a underlying theme
even when that theme was sort of irrelevant to the lesson at hand.

\- did not answer my question unless they properly understood what I was
asking and why I was asking it. I hate it when I ask X and the teacher answers
Y. The good teachers always went to great lengths to understand my questions.

\- good mentors and guides and could help your career along if you deserved
it. the best ones would go out of the way to make the system reward the
deserving.

I think those were the two crucial factors. I have had awesome teachers on all
sides of the arrogance, style, humourous, lenience, liberal, demanding,
thorough/good enough at the subject matter, popular, good natured/asshole
spectra.

Ummm... Not all the good teachers did this, but I very much liked the ones who
actually tested what I had learnt rather than whether I was paying attention
in the class or taking good notes or pretty much was even present in the class
or not.

------
tokenadult
I like what mathematician Israel M. Gelfand says about the role of a teacher:
"Students have no shortcomings, they have only peculiarities. The job of a
teacher is to turn these peculiarities into advantages."

------
ErrantX
listening is, I think, the most important.

My reasoning is simple. I had a lot of ok teachers who never listened to what
the students had to say: the ones that could sit and _discuss_ a subject with
us might have had less technical knowledge but we definitely learned a lot
more, as a class, with them. I wouldnt be surprised if they probably learnt
stuff from us too.

Passion - yeh agreed. Though on the other hand the best teacher we had was
borderline manic depressive but was great because he took nothing seriously
(and got so bored of the work he taught us lots of cool things: so perhaps
that counts as passion for _some_ of the subject :D)

------
ghotli
While I sometimes hated the teachers that operated this way in retrospect I
think the ones with the highest expectations were the best teachers. I say
that with one exception, if you're going to have high expectations you best
not be dry/boring/lazy about teaching the subject at hand. The best teachers
know their shit, but also have the empathy and personal skills to use well
placed analogies to "bring it down to our level". Perhaps this boils down to
just having a sense of humor.

Strict, High Standards, Understanding/Human.

------
jmatt
This is an interesting question. Great teachers seems to be universally great
across almost all students. So finding what makes them great and spotting it
early (and eventually teaching it) would be great for the society.

I really enjoyed the bill gates Ted talk where he talks about this topic and
(remember?) malaria.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html>

~~~
jmatt
starts at 8:06 (before that it's about malaria)

------
sebg
I've always found that you can draw a box with four squares. On the top are
"can explain material to moms" "can't explain material to moms". On the side
are "clear communicator" and "unclear communicator".

The intersection of "can explain to moms" and "clear communicator" is what
makes a good teacher for me.

In school some TA's could explain to moms but were unclear communicators so
they didn't make good teachers.

In my work there are fantastic communicators in the sales team, but their
grasp of the subject matter is such that they throw around lots of industry
vocabulary but wouldn't be able to explain it to moms. This makes them bad
teachers.

Great teachers/professors always had both great communication and a mastery of
the subject. From my time at MIT the perfect example of this type of
teacher/professors was Walter Lewin for 8.01 classical physics.

I highly recommend watching his lectures at
[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-
IFall1999/Cour...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-
IFall1999/CourseHome/index.htm) (the picture of him on the website says it
all.)

edit: grammar.

------
esila
The ability to bring out the very best in their student(s) through whatever
means. This goes for any mentor, coach, sifu, guru, etc.

The OP sparked a story that Teddy Atlas (boxing trainer for Mike Tyson,
Michael Moore, Golden Gloves champ) once told at a book signing.

While training Michael Moore, he had to gain a certain amount of trust /
respect from him. One particular instance that stood out in his memory was
Michael's fondness of going to the shooting range and firing guns. Teddy never
fired a gun in his life but accompanied him to the range.

At the range, Moore and some of his friends shot at the targets and eventually
started to egg Teddy on. Teddy finally gave in, took the gun, walked right up
to the target, and shot at the bulls-eye at point blank range.

He then turned to Moore and said "THAT's how I fire a gun".

Teddy told the audience he could remember a shift in Moore's behavior and
demeanor when he later trained him - looser, more accepting of Atlas's advice.
Teddy did what he had to do to bring the better boxer out of Moore.

Moral of the story - go shoot guns with your students :)

------
tamas
1) The teacher needs a thorough understanding of the topic being taught. I
regularly use the reverse of this as a litmus while mastering a topic: I did
not understand it deeply enough if I can't explain it to a complete layman so
they can understand it.

2) Having a full duplex interaction. Talking AT people will make them only
bored, but not smart. Watch for reactions, ask questions to force the student
to explore the topic being discussed. If they can't answer, try to find out
where their train of thought stalled, and elaborate. Of course this doesn't
work very well in larger groups of students.

Usually, neither circumstances (smart teacher, small group of students) are
given in compulsory education.

------
brianto2010
I believe that a good teacher, first and foremost, should be very disciplined.
In other words, authoritative and able, but not strict and overbearing. The
teacher must disciplined enough to be able to keep students under control/on
task and not let a class degenerate into a mob of individuals dallying on
irrelevant topics. The teacher must be disciplined enough to be interesting in
order to keep students' attention and keep them happy. The teacher must be
disciplined enough to keep each student _enjoyably_ 'actively participating'
in the class.

Most importantly, the teacher should be disciplined enough to 'sharpen his/her
saw', to be constantly, incessantly learning more of his/her art.

------
zeckalpha
I believe a good teacher is one who adapts their teaching styles to both meet
individual student's learning styles as well as expose them to other learning
styles in order to broaden their learning abilities. A good teacher tells
their students what they are doing and why, so that the student is more
involved with the process and sees where the teacher is coming from. A good
teacher does not believe that notes are effective for all students, same with
daily work, or tests. A good teacher uses pretests to decide what subtopics
they need to focus on or skip, as well as to track individual students
progress. A good teacher does their best to get students invested in the
learning process.

------
learnalist
* Try to be engaging. * Share with the class, not speak down. * Know how to steer the entire class / period / lecture * Confidence * Not re-reading what is in the book / on slides. * Most of the time should be welcoming of questions. * Should be respected by his class. If they are not, I think it makes it harder for them to be a good teacher and for people to see them as a good teacher. Everybody has there own unique role in helping a teacher be good, great or bad.

------
run4yourlives
A good teacher betters the student's ability to learn by themselves.

This involves a great many things, and sadly is contrary to the way 90% of
teachers - not just the pros - are taught to imply knowledge.

That's it, and it's applicable to every situation, from Kindergarten to a
personal mentor. Almost all the other comments here voice preferred methods of
achieving that objective, but the objective remains.

------
sethg
A good teacher is one who can perceive _where the student already is_ (what
skills or interests he or she is bringing into the classroom) and can then lay
out paths from that point to whatever the goal of the class is.

A mediocre teacher knows what he or she wants to teach but doesn't make that
connection with the individual students. The result is someone who teaches a
curriculum, not a person.

------
patcoll
The best teachers teach humility toward the subject matter.

For technology in particular, there is always so much more to learn that by
not having humility there is no incentive to _want_ to learn, which is
arguably the strongest point to make. Teaching is not one-way. Students have
to want to learn just as much as teachers want to teach.

------
TallGuyShort
I had a science teacher that would always find news articles related to what
we were talking about in class. It was really great to see how this weird crap
we talked about in class was actually being used in the real world, and how
people were still studying things we didn't even know about it.

------
zkz
\- passionate about his/her subject \- caring about the people he/she teaches
to

------
MaysonL
Belief that your students can learn to excel, with enough disciplined effort.

Coupled with the ability to convince them of the same thing

------
tetha
I think a good teacher has the goal to make a student better than the teacher,
in whatever ways the student will reach this stage.

~~~
dmhouse
"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary" -- Thomas
Carruthers

------
onedognight
Good students. ;)

------
Mz
The best college professors I have had were working professionals who taught
on the side or people who otherwise still had some hands-on experience with
the subject they were teaching. There's a reason we have the cynical
expression "It's academic" as a means to dismiss something as irrelevant to
the real world. I generally hate wasting my time on "Ivory Tower"/"It's nice
In Theory" type of learning. That stuff not only doesn't prepare you for the
real world, it's counterproductive because it's got you thinking stuff that
doesn't really work and spending time on stuff that doesn't really work...etc.

------
access_denied
Depends also on where you teach - in front of a class? In a video lecture? One
to one? It is certainly a skill to get a mob of teenagers listen to you for
+30 minutes without anyone involved dying (in one way or the other).

