Quality

I've written about good teachers and bad teachers before, but I stumbled across this site where real live kids offer their opinions. To me, they seem very reasonable.

It appears the worst kind of teacher, from a kid's-eye-view, is the one who doesn't care about kids:

My 6th grade teacher liked to start off his lesson by publicly humiliating the students who'd made mistake on their homework assignments. He'd then give us an activity to do for the lesson and rather than teach us or even explain the activity to us, he'd sit in the back of the room and read comics.

I often wonder why that sort of person would choose to be a teacher, yet I've seen many such people grace the ancient wooden chairs that fill our fair city.

Good teachers, according to these comments, are the ones who care, who take time to explain, who have passion for what they teach, and who, often as not, can manage to amuse while teaching.

Well, I think the most important quality a teacher should have is a real, visible passion for the subject they teach. Honestly, in my experience, even if you have a teacher that isn't that likeable a person, it's still hard not to have a good time in their class if they get excited about the subject. That excitement is just catching.

It sort of behooves us to love what we teach, otherwise why on earth did we choose to teach it? I love English, I love books, and every book I force my hapless kids to read is one that I love. I don't actually demand that they love it too, as long as they read it.

I don't believe in doing cutesy activities just for the sake of making them cutesy, but as much as I hate math, I fully expect good math teachers to love it. That's their tough luck, they chose math, and now they have no choice.

What makes a good or bad teacher? Are the kids right? Are they out of their minds? Well, of course they are. As kids, that's more or less their job.

Still, you have to wonder--what do they say about us?