Attributes of a Great Teacher

I wrote this down a while ago when I heard a bunch of students complain how bad some of their teachers were. We were discussing how to tag teachers with a set of attributes. I came back home and drew a mind map. A Twitter exchange with a friend reminded me of this list. So I decided to post a bunch of Tweets almost at midnight.

Here they are, in no particular order. Some of the teachers who inspired me had many of these attributes. The greatest one was my grandfather. I had the privilege of watching him closely as I was growing up. He did not have a very high level of education but I have never seen any one with such unparalleled dedication. I don’t know whether they know it or not. But good teachers have a lot of influence on lots of people. In their tenure as a teacher (20-30 years or more) they probably have the potential to  influence 20-50K students directly. When you think about it, you notice how amazing that is. According to Teachers without Borders, there nearly 60million teaches in the world.

Attributes of a great teacher:

• Dedicated
• Motivating
  
• Engaging
  
• Some times Entertaining
  
• Good story teller
  
• Has Knowledge of subject matter
  
• Conversation starter
• Inspires students
• Challenges students to think
  
• Can demystify hard subjects
• Egoless
  
• Innovates in teaching methods
  
• Life-long learner
  
• Has Infinite patience
  
• Not judgemental
• Understands student’s difficulties,
  
• Understands student’s learning styles
• Takes pride in students’ achievements

If I love this profession so much, why did I not take up  teaching profession? I ask myself that question a lot of times. I don’t know the answer. I studied engineering and jumped into a job and never looked back. But the most fun part in all my jobs and all my startups was the opportunity to teach a bit.

Updated 4th Sep

And then, I found this amazing blog post on the Technical Skills Required  of a 21st Century Educator via Teacher’s Learning Journal.

Updated on 23rd March

AOL Search Teacher’s Attributes

Meta

Some times your blog visitors and comments tell you more about the topic you write about. I am always curious about why people read certain entries and where they come from. One way to honor them and say I recognize you is to incorporate their insights and link to them. This is a way to say, I salute you. I am glad you came and made my post a bit richer.  Whenever I have time, I would like to post these under the Updates section of my blog posts.