World Teachers’ Day: we couldn’t have asked for a more convenient opportunity to muse on the people who educate and motivate our children everyday! One cannot emphasize enough the importance of a good teacher for a child to grow into a balanced, assertive and self-motivated personality later on in life.
But what are the super powers of a great teacher and tutor? What is it great teachers share in common that makes them role-models for our children, without even realising it? Take a look on our list and feel free to add your insight on what makes a teacher unique!
1. They give pupils something to take home with them and dwell on it, besides homework & tasks.
2. They not only ask questions for their students to answer but rather motivate them to formulate their own questions; especially those that can’t be accessed with just a “yes or no” type of answer.
3. They believe in every one of their pupils. They have high expectations of them. And they try to bring out the best in each one of them, regardless of their backgrounds.
4. They have a talent for listening. They are both the teacher and the psychologist in the classroom and that has a soothing effect on the student’s characters who struggle with prepuberty, puberty and their… discontents. Masters of empathy, they can relate to their classroom hidden energies and unstated “dramas”. Practising compassion, they manage to make kids open up and feel appreciated. On that soil, the process of learning has not a choice but to flourish.
5. They don’t hesitate to admit their ignorance. “I dont’ know” is as legitimate an answer for them as sharing with their students the latest on cyber technology or bio ethics.
6. They are avid story tellers. Having the gift to deliver the lesson of the day through a story means students are more organically involed in the process; thus, really grasp its essense.
7. They inspire learning as a lifelong process. Introducing children to the pure excitement of learning, beyond the success/failure and right/correct binary logic, they do them a sought-after favor, even more relevant in our ever-changing world where new knowledge becomes last day’s news in no time.
8. They are resourceful. They improvise. They turn problems to opportunities, useless objects to handy gadgets, random words to meaningful stories, errors to life messages.
9. They have humor. Seriously, is there any way to learn anything at all from a humorless and tedious teacher or mentor?
10. Above all, they love teaching. And it shows.
Join Nannuka, to find background checked tutors, to help your children with their homework or the mastering of a foreign language and see your little ones thrive!
Are you a tutor? Sign up here and give thousands of families the chance to discover you!