Teaching is not looking at the clock on the wall
Teaching is not given by anyone, and nor is it a matter of luck! The ability to teach may be but teaching itself has greater foundations in working smart or working hard. It is more akin to that great South African golfer, Gary Player’s quote that, “The harder I work, the luckier I get!” Teaching is not about telling students what you know, and then they will know it, but in helping students to learn what you know, by influencing their discovery of what you know, and thereby enabling them to learn even more.
Maya Angelou is an American poet and civil rights activist, renowned for her “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” an autobiography of her younger years, riven with her redemption from all manner of despair by her depth of character and love of literature. She wrote, illuminating much of the philosophy taken into thousands of classrooms each day and every day:
“This is the value of the teacher, who looks at a face and says there’s something behind that and I want to reach that person, I want to influence that person, I want to encourage that person, I want to enrich, I want to call out that person who is behind that face, behind that colour, behind that language, behind that tradition, behind that culture. I believe you can do it. I know what was done for me.”
Accountability for teaching
Ray Petersen r.j.petersen52@gmail.com performance is often based upon classroom observations of teaching, which are perfect if the observer knows what they are doing. But a good teacher doesn’t always make a good observer, or why is an HOD or a Dean a better observer than anyone else. Observations are a ‘snapshot’ of a teacher’s performance, but what most observers miss, due to their lack of training and experience, is the effect of the teacher on the learners. Artificiality of the process, students’ unfamiliarity with the observers, and an instructional only perspective all add to a ‘Sword of Damocles’ effect in most observations.
Institutions do tend to hold teacher’s accountable for poor student performance, ignoring the fact that from the Chancellors down, Deans, Department and Section Heads, Headmasters, Supervisors, bus drivers, previous teachers, parents, siblings and friends all contribute in some way to the learning experience, yet it is invariably the teacher upon whom the sword falls, and why one teacher ahead of another? Who knows? Yet, if a ‘failing’ teacher is identified, what recompense is offered to their students. None, simply an admonition, and an instruction to work harder next semester.
Those same students, more than anyone else, are affected by teaching quality, yet how often, other than in a facile documentary manner, do institutions ask the students about effective teachers, or teaching? Eric Hanushek of Stanford University, writes that “poor teaching can affect a class by as much as a full level of achievement,” while Roberto Mendro, a Dallas (USA) Educational Administrator wrote; “These effects are much larger than expected, and that the least effective teachers have a long-term influence on student achievement that is not fully remediated for up to three years later.” So surely, they need to be heard?
In fact, Pearson Education found that a teacher’s ability to relate to their students, their personality, understanding, knowledge of their learner’s needs, dedication to their teaching, and engagement with their learners in cognitive, emotional and behavioural levels, were the keys to their having quality learning experiences. “The test of a good teacher,” said Alice Wellington Rollins, a hundred years ago, “is not how many questions he can ask his students that they can answer readily, but how many questions he can inspire them to ask him, that he cannot answer readily.”
Effective teachers have transformative powers. They are as much X-factor as superheroes or entertainers. In fact, they are both. They transform classrooms and lives, they inspire passion, fun, joy, play, discovery and excellence because they care, and because for them the most important things about a classroom are the students, and not the clock on the wall.