What Makes a Great Teacher?

 In 2013, Ayad Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play “Disgraced.” When he was asked during an interview about his play and his other writing, Akhtar, a 44-year-old New Yorker, said, “I’d had a wonderful high school teacher who made me want to be a writer. Everything I do is an homage to her.”

When I heard him say this, a series of images in passed through my head about what his teacher must have been like, how she ran her class, what she must have felt like when she learned her student won the Pulitzer Prize. Through these images, though, I found myself staring at the face of my 7^th grade teacher at Springman Junior High School – Mrs. Stephan.

She was a kind, matronly woman who kept wadded up tissues in the sleeve of her sweater. Her reddish brown hair sat like a beehive on the top of her head. She had a pleasant, understated smile, unusually warm hands and she smelled like the fragrant soap balls my grandparents kept in a seashell dish in their master bedroom.

Ayad Akhtar - (Photo by Nina Subin)

I thought of how through her quiet confidence in me she managed to fill me with more energy and enthusiasm than I thought possible. Granted, I was only 12, my voice cracked with startling regularity. I had not quite discovered deodorant, had persistent acne and was stumbling awkwardly into my early teenage years.

This started me thinking about great teachers. Truthfully, I actually think of this subject often. But let’s just say this comment from Akhtar and my mental tumble back in time to Mrs. Stephan's classroom prompted me again to ask myself the question, “What makes a great teacher?”

Like you, I have my opinions, but I was curious what others thought. To get answers, I posted this question to a few discussion groups on Linked In. It’s a great place, Linked In – full of thoughtful, well-spoken people, I’ve found. I asked the educators, “What qualities make a great teacher?”

I received many replies. Here are a few that I thought hit the mark.

• Professional trainer Jason Sturges of Alexandria, Virginia wrote that great teachers “focus on the participant needs (versus) just getting through the content.”

•  It’s a simple thing, but he’s totally right. How many instructors have you had that seem bent on plowing through the content come hell or high water? I have had more than a few. Great teachers focus on what the students need first. 

• Ann Adler, a learning designer and facilitator from Cumbria, England wrote several things that I loved. She noted that great teachers “understand what it means to be a learner and how to develop learning capability in those they teach”. She also stated that great teachers “draw out, rather than pour in, learning.” 

• I agree completely. You can’t forget what it is to learn and expect to be a great teacher. We can all tell when teachers have lost the desire to learn. They become jaded, lecture and frankly dial it in. Old-school lecturers attempt to generically dump information into our head – with alarming inefficiency.  Great teachers, in contrast, draw out – they draw us out, draw out our energy, our curiosity, our capabilities. 

• Dr. Martin Carnap, a longtime educator and coach in Costa Rica, wrote that you can best define great teachers by focusing on their students. Do the students take initiative during class? Do they make decisions? Do they feel the importance of what they’re doing? Do they look for alternative points of view and modify ideas, focus and strategies? If so, he wrote, you have a great teacher. 

• Well said, Martin. All I can add is that to great teachers, it’s truly all about the students and less about the teachers. Their own ego fades into the background. I wish more of the teachers I had (and continue to have) subscribed to this idea, don’t you?

• Kathy Miller, head of the English Department at Coulsdon Sixth Form College in the UK had many great thoughts, but the two I liked the best were: (1) Be open to and ask for feedback from your students and (2) Love the students- care about them- there are many ways to demonstrate this.

• What can beat this? Teachers, first off, should never stop learning, so feedback is a must no matter how many years they’ve been in the classroom.  In my view, someone who is not open to feedback likely has a distorted sense of his or her own effectiveness or is afraid to hear what he or she already expects or knows.

• Second – we all realize when someone cares about us and when that person does not.  If a teacher cares, you know it right away and you’re very likely to care more about learning. It’s like my friend Tammy Berman told me recently, “Kids won’t care what you know until they know that you care.” I would only add that in addition to kids, we can include adults as well.   

So, was Ayad Akhtar’s teacher all of these things? My bet, quite honestly, is yes. Did she focus on his needs? Did she act as a learner, draw out instead of pour in? Was her ego in check and did she love and care for him as a student?

I would say absolutely. If she hadn’t, would he still have been a writer? Would he have won the Pulitzer Prize? It’s impossible to say, but it’s a question worth considering as we think about the power teachers have and the influence they can have in people’s lives and their importance to the broader success of our society.