
What Makes a Great Teacher? - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/01/what-makes-a-great-teacher/7841/
======
tokenadult
Previous submission 605 days ago by the same submitter:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1036509>

(which I mention because some of the discussion last time was interesting, and
because I was curious how the duplicate detector was defeated in this case).

I'm happy to discuss this issue afresh here, as HN's participation has grown
quite a lot since 605 days ago, and teaching is my occupation (in a nonprofit
organization offering supplemental mathematics lessons to advanced young
learners).

My initial comment on the interesting submitted article is that I've always
thought that one huge difference between pupils who grow up to be smart adults
and those who grow up to be struggling adults, especially when siblings in the
same family differ in academic success, is the effectiveness of the teachers
each pupil had. If I consider the case of two pupils who enter a six-year
elementary school in which each grade has five classrooms (basically the
childhood experience my siblings and I had), the unfortunate pupil who gets
the worst teacher in the grade each year for six years in a row will be lucky
to know how to read, while the pupil who gets the best teacher in the grade
each year for six years will likely be able to enter college early. Teachers
make a huge difference. I'm always happy to learn how I can make a bigger
positive difference for the pupils I teach.

~~~
jseliger
_Previous submission 605 days ago by the same submitter:_

Apologies! I actually re-read the article today for a blog post, and as I did
I thought, "This is good stuff for HN." So I submitted it without thinking to
see if I already had.

------
aik
Some of the key points I found interesting:

\- Great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.

\- Great teachers were perpetually looking for ways to improve their
effectiveness.

\- Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly
recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus,
ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they
planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by
working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly,
refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and
budgetary shortfalls.

\- Great teachers frequently check for understanding, and don't make the
rookie mistake of asking "do you understand?"

\- For many highly effective teachers, the measure of a well-executed routine
is that it continues in the teacher’s absence.

\- What predicts success: A history of perseverance, or "grit” — defined as
perseverance and a passion for long-term goals.

\- Success as a teacher: Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction” —
reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more
likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues.
These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and
enthusiasm may spread to their students.”

\- Past performance is a great indicator of future performance.

\- A master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom
effectiveness.

\- Important when measuring success: Were you prepared? Did you achieve your
objective in five minutes (or whatever other time)?

Not mentioned in the article: A great book on this topic is "What the Best
College Teachers Do" by Ken Bain. Ken does his own research into what makes a
great teacher and has some fascinating findings. The huge effort that highly
successful teachers put into their students is just incredible, though
daunting, and gives me a lot of respect for the profession.

~~~
tokenadult
_A master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom
effectiveness._

Yes. The research consistently shows that the typical master's degree
possessed by a K-12 teacher (a degree in "education") adds NIL value to the
teacher's teaching. But most teacher contracts entered into by most school
districts give automatic raises to any teacher who has a master's degree in
any subject. No evaluation of effectiveness is performed, but the master's
degree gives the teacher an automatic raise. That costs school districts all
around the United States billions of dollars in the aggregate, all money that
could be better spent for many other purposes.

Bill Gates has commented on the wasteful spending on bonuses for master's
degrees,

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html> and so has Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan.

[http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-26/news/29286099_1_public...](http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-26/news/29286099_1_public-
school-teachers-chief-state-school-officers-english)

It would be far better to give teachers raises if they do an excellent job of
teaching, whatever degrees they have.

~~~
aik
tokenadult, you're often involved in the conversations on education and math
education, often with insightful comments. I'm just curious -- what is your
viewpoint specifically on how one should measure an "excellent job of
teaching"? Do you think it is possible to form a link between student scores
and teacher effectiveness? Is it possible in particular without incentivizing
behavior that brings teachers to focus on artificial goals (test scores,
money), and off the actual purpose of education (actual student
learning/growth)?

~~~
tokenadult
One thing that would help would be assessment of student learning done by
persons other than the teacher, so the teacher can't give in to temptations to
cheat when students are tested. (This is one reason I encourage my mathematics
students to take the AMC tests and participate in other programs in which they
can perform to show what they do that are not run by me.)

I think a lot more work still needs to be done on "value added," which is why
I especially appreciate the submitted article. I mostly have the good fortune
to teach "ringers"--the kids are already bright in math, and come to me as
clients because the school lessons they receive bore them. A teacher who can
take a child who was never particularly motivated by studying mathematics, and
who has long since been turned off by lousy instruction,

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

which is a challenge I have rarely taken on, and who can motivate that child
to child to excel is a teacher who is worth his or her weight in gold. I've
requested from my friendly public library the book mentioned in the article,
which had not been published at the time of the earlier submission, and I will
try to find out what the book says about incentives that can be put in place
in school systems to help teachers do their very best and to help learners
learn better.

