Is My Child’s Teacher a Good Teacher?
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Last month, a blogger friend asked me, “How do I know if my child’s teacher is a good teacher? and could you write a post?”
Recently I visited Gold Rush Elementary in Parker, Colorado because my friend, Kristen Hyde teaches there. I wanted to take photos of her phenomenal learning environment. I saw a school who cared more about helping students think and become reflective learners than performing on a test.
I asked Kristen what she thought makes a good teacher. She said, “Does the child like school?My main goal is that all my students LOVE to come to school.”
Isn’t she a good teacher!?
So, without further ado, here’s my list of how a parent can tell if their child’s teacher is good.
(Drum roll, please.)
The most important qualities which describe a
good, great, exceptional, outstanding teacher:
- Loves kids.
Doesn’t this seem like a crazy thing to even mention? The best teachers think all their kids are wonderful in some way – from the rule followers to the booger pickers to the differently abled learners, this teacher loves them all. You’ll hear things like, “Oh, that Josh I just adore, he has trouble focusing but what a great kid.” Or “I’m so amazed at the way Amy thinks about things so deeply.”
- Connects with kids.
This teacher knows her kids – what they like, what they don’t. She or he knows each child’s strengths and weaknesses. She speaks to her students at eye level. She talks with respect to her students. You’ll see a classroom full of students learning, search for the teacher and find she’s on her knees or in a small chair conferring with a student at the student’s eye level. That happened today when I walked into Kristen’s room. It took me a minute to find her because she was kneeling down helping a student. You won’t see a teacher standing over a student talking at the student above his or her eye level.
- Wants to learn more.
A good teacher is teachable, and always trying to learn and grow as a teacher. This teacher takes classes, attends professional development, reads books on teaching, watches other teachers, and never thinks he’s done learning.
You’ll hear something like this, which I overheard today:
“I just applied to for the White Board Training,” said a teacher at Gold Rush to the Building Resource Teacher (BRT). “I don’t know much about it.”
The BRT was shocked. “You use the White Board every day! You use it more than anyone in this school.”
“I just think I’ve been doing the same thing for five years and I could learn more about it.”
Wow.
- Knows what’s she’s teaching (curriculum, standards, goals and expectations) and WHY.
I picked up Kristen’s read aloud book by Ann Martin and asked, “Is this any good?”
She said, “It’s sad, with lots of description, but my kids really need to build their stamina for this kind of writing and not just the kind of writing in a Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Junie B. Jones.” (This is the WHY! Kristen’s reading this book for a specific learning purpose.)
- Creates a positive learning environment classroom. (Behavior, Physical Environment)
Behavior is managed with positive rewards (Kristen does lunch in the classroom with her on Friday) and consequences (no lunch with her) plus a school wide behavior plan. Noise is appropriate learning noise and not chaos with students off-task and misbehaving.
The room shows student learning and group instruction with examples posted on the walls.
- Assess knowledge and uses the information.
This teacher uses informal and formal assessments to determine what to teach next. He considers each child’s assessment and uses this in considering what to teach or not teach next.
Now it’s your turn. What else describes an exceptional teacher?
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These are all great ways to tell if a teacher is good. I also think a good teacher keeps in contact with the parents, and likes to do so and welcomes parent involvement. A good teacher knows that teaching the kids is not just their job, parents MUST take an active role for it to really work.
Great list! I’d just like to add two things:
1. Children’s books are an integral part of the classroom and the curriculum. They’re used not only as learning tools for any and all subjects, but also to help children discover the joy of reading, looking at books, and learning on their own or with a partner. If a teacher doesn’t know a lot about children’s literature, or has no time to research appropriate books for classroom themes, she should not hesitate to seek out help from the school librarian.
2. A great teacher stops, looks, and listens when a teachable moment arises. Instead of worrying about getting through a lesson in a certain amount of time, s/he realizes that it’s more important to use real events to spark meaningful discussions in the classroom.
That’s my two cents. Thanks for getting the conversation going!
I think you are spot-on. I am enjoying this series. I really miss my public school teaching days. It is a profession where there is ALWAYS an opportunity for growth and learning!
I think that you nailed it! Great job!
Although, I will add that perhaps JJ’s teacher is going to do more with those snowmen than you know at this time. You never know. (example: I once turned my hallway into a field of corn. “What did I do with that?” you ask. Well, my children turned it into a ‘crop of contractions’. The yellow part of the corn was the contraction, and the two leaves were the two words that made up the contraction. she’s= she+is) So maybe it’s a field of snowmen, now. But later, it might be something else.
As a teacher, I think your list is almost perfect. The only thing I would add is the thing that parents rarely see which is that a good teacher inspires/motivates other teachers to be good teachers too!