Traits of a good teacher

As I was sitting in my office today and thinking about my cubicled life, I got bored soon enough.  Mundane thoughts started to dawn in me and I tried my level best to escape from those thoughts and tried to think about something better.  So, instead I decided to figure out who were the best teachers I had in my undergraduate-graduate studies and why were those teachers different from the other ones. Soon I figured out, there are two types of teachers whom I remember the most:  the ones who were very good and the ones who were burdens in my simple life. I will only talk about the traits of the good teachers, I had. The target readers for this write up are the graduate instructors who are planning to teach courses.

I was a mediocre student in a good institute in India. Well, I was one of those students who would rarely go to classes, keep doing the most useless stuffs to kill time and right before the exam, the one who will try to cram through the huge syllabus and leave the rest in the hands of the teacher. So at least for me, the teacher was the absolute controller of my academic life in every sense you can imagine! Just an honest suggestion, don't follow my strategy when you are in college. I did not find enough reasons to show up in classes because I was not motivated enough and I always thought that there were more challenging things to do rather than sit in a class where I will not be able to understand anything after first five minutes, if not right away! No shame in accepting the fact that I was a very bad student. But, are the teachers who gave me good grades are the best ones ? Well, I am grateful to them for reminding me now and then that I was not the worst of the lot but perhaps they were not the absolute best teachers in my opinion.

A good teacher is someone who motivates students every time. He is someone, to whom students can look up to when the chips are down. A student should not expect a teacher to solve all his problems right away but a good teacher would at least implant the belief in the student that every problem up to a certain extent can be solved or it can be broken into simpler pieces which then can be solved. A teacher who gives an honest opinion is expected to be a good teacher. It is not good to mask the inevitable with flowery words giving a student a wrong belief that he can attain a certain level of success when clearly he can not. The truth can be told in a very polite way and finally that is what matters to a student.

In my opinion a teacher is expected to do well in a class if he prepares well beforehand. There is no shame in bringing prepared notes to the lectures. But if the scripts are just a one to one map from the textbook to the notebook and then on to the board with almost zero words exchanged between the teacher and the students, then things can go real bad, really soon! A teacher needs to communicate with the students and explain them the tricky steps with utmost care. A good teacher is someone who will teach the students all the required techniques to solve a problem and then the students need to use those techniques and connect the dots properly. It is same as providing you with all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and you need to place those pieces in the correct order to get the solution. Often you will misplace the pieces and would not reach the correct solution, but there should be just enough motivation to try it once again! It is teacher’s duty to give that motivation to the students.

Teaching is an act that a teacher performs in front of the students. While proving a result, there should be an introduction about the result. Often times, in college I would see a teacher proving an incredibly difficult theorem and consistently losing the audiences with every step he writes down. As a student, I used to think why are we trying to prove such a theorem ? Why is it needed ? Can I ever use this theorem to solve any  problems ? Well, I was naive enough not to ask these questions to the teacher and it was my fault. But in most cases, however complicated the theorem may be, those three questions have definitive answers. And those answers should be in the introduction. After the introduction, comes the usual story building and finally a climax where the result is proved. If a teacher is a good orator, that is an added bonus! He can make a good story out of it and present it in a very nice way to the students.

Does a teacher need to be serious always ? People may have different opinions. My answer to that question is no. There is no harm in cracking one or two witty jokes while teaching a difficult course. It keeps sanity in the class and the students are expected to pay more attention. It should be very clear that the most important people in a class are the students.  They come to the class with inquisitive minds and try to understand what is being taught. I have seen teachers who would make mistakes while proving a theorem and try to explain why they made those mistakes. Usually they will try to explain their thought processes to the students and that actually helps! Also if a mistake is something really silly, then it is an embarrassing situation for the teacher but rather than dealing with it seriously it is better to have a laugh with the students explaining that he did make the mistake and it is just a slip! Finally at the end of the day whatever a teacher delivers to the students should be absolutely correct and of the best quality.

I have seen a lot of teachers who get angry when the students do not show up. There can be multiple reasons for that. The prime reason that comes to my mind is that, the students do not take that particular course seriously. Why do they not take that course seriously ? Either it is a very easy course or the students have no motivation to learn the subject matter. If it is an easy course, teachers can solve interesting problems in the class and gradually increase the difficulty level of the subject matter. I am not saying it will always work, but it might work! It may also give the students enough motivation to learn the subject. Students usually like examples with which they can relate to. I usually do! The second point is if the course is good and the students do not have any motivation to learn, then partially it is the teacher's fault. Either the teacher is not explaining all the steps in detail to the students or he himself is not excited enough to teach the course. A teacher should not expect a student to be self-motivated when he himself is not motivated or excited enough to teach the subject matter. Teaching is tough! Students change from semester to semester, but often the assigned teacher is the same for that particular course. It can become boring for the teacher to teach a course again and again, but the variant responses from the students should keep the teacher motivated enough.   

Can someone become a better teacher with more experience ? Indeed. But I think there is an asymptotic limit to that. In college the good teachers used to take care of the students and teach slowly and motivate us. They used to solve a lot of problems with detailed explanations, no matter how difficult those problems were and tried to give us an idea why we were trying to learn the subject. A good teacher will always polish his skills but he cannot go beyond a particular level. It is a very complex mix of passion, motivation, communication, personality, putting himself in the shoes of the students, kindness, likability, sincerity and many more traits which make a good teacher. And it is not easy to be good in all of these. So, there is a limit up to which one can work on developing some of these skills while the other skills are in born traits which rarely evolve with time. It is just same as this write up. If I have tricked you into reading this far, you would have perhaps realized how bad a writer I am. But perhaps if I read more story books and write a lot, then maybe I can do a bit better. But that will be it for me!

A good teacher is someone who will try to teach a subject effectively to the students rather than showing the students how smart he is. In my opinion setting a difficult question paper in an exam is legitimate only if the teacher has taught the course with as much clarity as possible.  I was fortunate enough to have a few teachers in college who were like that. 

Since I have bored you enough, I should now put an end to this monologue. If these tips help you to teach better, I would consider this write up a success. Adios amigos!    

A simple day -- a story from the past

This was my first blog post which I wrote in April, 2014.

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Well, technically I was never that much into writing. But lately it seemed to me the only thing that I could do patiently is to write something. I tried a few things in life but every time it turned out that I am either mediocre or below average.  But it was always fun to take part in different adventures fully knowing that the final result won't be that different! So with a few failures in my bag from different sectors of life, I decided to try my skills in writing. But then I was challenged with what to write. A number of topics came to my mind: cricket, soccer, films, travel stories, emotions of everyday life, science fictions, short stories (not even trying!), politics, review of literature, history, geography and a few other mostly non-interesting topics. The truth is I could not write even four lines on most of these topics.

Since this is my first post, I thought readers will forgive me for choosing such a simple topic as describing a single day of the place where I live. Currently my nest is in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is a small town in North Carolina and it is amazingly beautiful in spring. Although this year we had an everlasting winter, still we were fortunate to get a few days where we could enjoy the bright sunny weather in Chapel Hill. Last Friday, I was walking down the lane from my apartment to University on a bright sunny day. Students were divided into smaller flocks and they were singing and dancing with the tunes of delightfully soothing country music. I stopped for a while and took a deep breathe to inhale the fresh air as much as I could. It was mystical. There was a small garden at the corner of a small town house. It was filled with different flowers and it was too colorful. There was this unknown tree in the middle of the garden which had small white flowers on it and it gave a different touch to the aesthetic beauty of the garden. I could not stop myself from capturing the moment and took a quick click of the garden. I walked on and it was breezy. After a long winter the leaves on the trees could dance in relief and enjoy the sunny weather for a few days.

It was early April and every frat house on the lane was playing loud music. Kids were out on the lawn and they were playing baseball or soccer with their favorite players' jersey on. They were running around on the lush green meadow and it was special to feel their energy. Somewhere a band was performing and they were singing Annie’s song. The sky was pure blue and thin clouds were scattered here and there on the gigantically endless blue canvass. The market was buzzing with people and after a long time one could see unknowns walk by with a touch of smile on their faces. We were all finally enjoying the spring after a long time.  Small families were out on their bikes and they were all biking down the west side of the town. The biking trail is really good on that part of the town.

As I walked alone down the lane, the Sun started to set on the horizon and it was late evening already. I stumbled upon few known faces and had a small chat for a while. Finally I managed to reach my final destination, my department.  It was a great day and just to enjoy such delightfully everlasting bright sunny weather I want to stay in Chapel Hill forever. In Chapel Hill one could enjoy a lazy afternoon sitting alone on the lawn reading a book and still enjoy the beauty of everyday life. But like every good thing that comes to an end, I will be leaving this place sooner or later. The memories will be in my heart!