Teacher Challenge No Single Formula Makes For A Good Teacher But Effective Teaching Includes Common Ingredients

During much of the 1980s, education students at Gonzaga University watched a videotape of teacher Gerry Manfred.

They didn’t always like what they saw.

“He’s the worst teacher in the world. I wouldn’t want him teaching my kid,” was often their reaction.

Manfred believes in discipline, structure and homework. He sometimes yells. He sometimes uses sarcasm.

But Manfred also inspired legions of math students at University High School in the Spokane Valley. Students and graduates repeatedly named him the teacher who influenced them most.

“I wanted to show these prospective teachers that there are many ways” teaching styles can work, said Ken Moll, former chairman of Gonzaga’s Education Department.

Teaching is like religion and politics: Everyone’s got opinions. Strict? Inspiring? Enthusiastic? All are vague, all hard to measure.

Different teaching styles appeal to different students, teachers say, so it’s impossible to say fairly who is or is not excellent.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards wants to raise teaching standards.

“We think we can define (great teaching) by our standards, but that doesn’t mean there is one prescription for what good teachers are. Our standards give you a range of things that show accomplished teaching,” said Joanne Krell, a board spokeswoman.

While few teachers are comfortable talking about incompetent teachers, Krell admitted they’re out there.

“Everybody would like to think they don’t exist. But I think in every profession there are a few incompetent people.”

Cornell University Professor James Gross studied teacher firings in New York and found absurd standards.

“I found examples of things used to determine teachers’ competence that were laughably irrelevant: the appearance of classrooms, blackboards not cleaned, chalk down to quarter of an inch, shades not pulled down to a uniform level.”

In business, Gross said, performance standards are clearer.

“I make these widgets and I’m supposed to make so many an hour. That’s a definiteness that is almost always absent for teachers.”

Ask some educators to define excellent teaching and they hark back to the classic test for pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

Others use effectiveness as a yardstick. If students are learning and test scores are up, then the teacher is a success.

Good teaching may be hard to define, but everyone points to the same elements. Excellent teachers reach out to individual students and find ways to help them learn. They are excited about learning themselves. They create an emotional bond with students that motivates learning.

“It’s the magic that takes place when a teacher believes in a student and in all of the good things a student has in them and when a student believes in a teacher,” said Freeman Schools Superintendent Harry Amend. “And it’s recognizable when you see it.”

The excellent teacher knows that sometimes life interrupts the best plans, said Caroline Bitterwolf, a Moscow, Idaho, fifth-grade teacher and board member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

“Say there’s been a crime in your city and the kids are scared. You have to take time out to meet the students’ needs.”

Excellent teaching involves constant attention to student needs. That includes working daily to adapt a preset course plan to individual students, Bitterwolf said.

“The teacher has to be able to think and take the time - in the class, outside the class, going to work, in the shower - the term we’re using today is ‘reflecting’ about how her students work and what her students need,” Bitterwolf said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: What makes a teacher good? Experts look for these attributes in great teachers: They relate to students in a positive way. They discipline, motivate and inspire, all in a positive way. They know their subject, as well as the personality traits and emotional needs of students. They work hard, spending extra hours at home going over assignments and rereading student papers. They pick up all available clues about their students’ progress. They are lifelong learners, constantly looking for ways to improve. They know their own continued learning makes them better teachers.