A Good Teacher...

A good teacher is patient. She believes that every student can successfully accomplish the learning tasks she sets out to teach everyday. A good teacher promotes self-determination in her students by being a self-determined individual herself. She is a type of professional role-model, representing positive values, enthusiasm, and a caring attitude. Inspiration. Each student should feel comfortable to talk to the teacher because they may be having academic or personal difficulties that need to be addressed. Openness. A good teacher may even sense that something is wrong with or upsetting a student and approach them herself. A good teacher is therefore intuitive and confident. Intuition. Flexibility.


A smile is a curve that often sets things straight. A good teacher always smiles because she wants to show that she is content to work with her students. Positivity. Optimism. She achieves the objectives for the day and provides a purpose for learning. She connects the curriculum with the students experiences in order to make the material relevant. 


Week 4 T2P post:
If learners construct knowledge from knowledge they already posses then successful learning will occur as new information is built upon the pre-existing. Teachers should understand how her/his students understand a topic or subject so that she/he can understand the best way to teach or instruct the material. One way to do this is completing a KWL chart as a class. This way students get to engage orally in a discussion and the teacher can gage what the students already know and what they want to learn. Since the teacher is collaborating with the students, mutual assessment is promoted. Paolo Freire suggests that learning is thinking democratically and building upon existing frameworks. I feel that building upon prior learning motivates learners to expand on what they already know, make connections, and think critically. The moral/ethical implication here is that students will feel related to the topic because it is something they are familiar with; they already possess a disposition related to the topic being introduced. This is important because the teacher connects the curriculum with the students experiences in order to make the material relevant. Relevancy allows the students to realize that everything they are learning connects with something already known; therefore understanding that it is important. Making connections with something you already have an idea of or a backing experience to creates a bridge between the old and the new. You can then move on from there to embellish upon previous experiences/ideas, building a foundation and decorating the bridge to become a strong substance of knowledge.