The Expert Teacher

What really makes an Expert Teacher

“As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated, and a child humanised or dehumanised.” – Haim Ginott.
See Haim Ginott, Between Teacher and Child (New York: Collier Books, 1995)


EXPERT TEACHERS
1) Know subject
2) Experts at learning through guiding classroom interactions
3) Monitoring Individual Learning and providing feedback
4) Attend to heart feelings,emotions of children and interact with them letting them know that you care.
5) Influence outcomes – make students learn.

Hattie sees an expert teacher as having the following characteristics:
• Willingness to learn
• Persistence
• Maturity
• Sensitivity
• Sociability
• Determination/ Commitment
• Reliability
• Teamwork
• Imagination
• Initiative

Some teachers are 1) liked by principle
2) liked by students
3) liked by colleagues
Students want teachers to:
• Keep order
• Explain clearly
• Show enthusiasm for the subject
• Treat them as individuals
• Have a good sense of humour

Students do not respect teachers who:
• Cannot control them
• Bore them
• Put on an act
• Shout at them
• Are sarcastic
• Are different in class than socially
• Make too much fuss about things that happen
• Belittle them
• Punish unfairly
• Reward unfairly


Personal reflection
In my experience the love of children is the most important quality in becoming an expert teacher. Having said this I also know excellent teachers whose profession is born out of a love of ‘the work’ The moral guidance of children through their developmental years is the most fundamental principle in teaching. A teacher who can guide the moral development of a child must firstly work on their own moral development. Teaching is a VOCATION!
It does not matter how we view the word vocation, whether in a religious or in a secular sense, a teacher must have it or he/she is possibly in the wrong profession. The qualities of IMAGINATION, INTUITION or INSPIRATION usually set these apart from the rest. One could regard the profession as a destiny path and certainly one knows when one meets someone who is obviously in the correct destiny position.