Good Teacher? Good Teaching?

I remembered a question been posed during one of the management meetings on “what other course of action we can undertake to help an under-performing teacher who refuses to acknowledge that there was an issue with the teaching”. I would rather consider the term “good teaching” rather than “good teacher”, because “good teaching” represents what we as teachers are striving to do every day. “Good teacher” implies the judgment of individuals rather than the work itself. Perhaps in respond to the opening question, I think that such under-performing teacher should not be judged by the teacher of himself/herself (through reflection) nor solely by the direct profession developer (through repeated lesson observations). Instead, discreet divisive feedbacks from experienced teachers, students, another people developer as well as the school leaders will help to provide characteristics of “good” of the teacher, providing a clearer picture to say whether the teacher is professional – that is, fully embracing teaching with integrity. Getting such feedbacks will therefore either lend support or acknowledge issues to the teacher, rather than just saying that some teachers have what it takes and others do not. I do acknowledge that there are some teachers who should not be in classrooms, but I take the stance that teachers strive to teach with integrity every day. Teachers are all good teachers some of the time, but all teachers strive to do good teaching all of the time.

I also believe that teaching with integrity requires leadership. That is why as middle managers, we first need to be proficient in the core business of teaching first. We know that some teachers are more developed professionally and more effective instructors. This does not happen just by putting a teacher into the classroom and hoping that the teacher will be able to work and develop their own practice. Often we forgot that the way our students learn best is also the way our teachers/adults best learn! Role modeling is one of the approaches I prefer for my teachers. By observing and relating to the modeling, teachers can then better construct their own professional way through acts of leadership that enable them to establish, refine and extend their classroom practice. Beginning teachers, especially exhibit less confidence and do not have any formed teaching practice. Often as teachers, we know “good teaching” when we see it and when we do not, we may be able to describe the issue, but even the most experienced teacher, middle manager or school leader may find it very hard to describe how to help the teacher to mediate it to become “good teaching”. Good teaching requires personal experiences in identifying, creating, executing, disrupting and reestablishing of practices for the learning outcome of students. Great teachers do this all the time and that is why, they are able to entry into the daily work of classroom to teach and help attain the learning of the students. Good teachers strive to do it and succeed most of the time.

I agree that this is hard work and requires much effort and few of us feel successful all the time or even most of the time. Nevertheless, many of us are drawn by a deep desire to help and make a difference to our students. We should always be reminded of this desire and continue to impact positively upon the students entrusted to our care!