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The art of teaching

Date Posted: Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Author: Liz Jones

 What makes an excellent school? Great grounds, sports fields, computers, hi-tech classrooms, magnificent laboratories? No. All those things help but they don’t necessarily make a good school, let alone an excellent one.  What does is a feeling, a feeling shared by the head, the staff, the students and their families. It’s called confidence – confidence that all the students matter, that most will be motivated, that most will academically grow. While it’s perfectly possible for this feeling to be generated in a brand new school with the latest technology, it’s also possible for it to vibrate in a run down Nissen hut. Trust me, I know. My high school education happened mostly in a Nissen hut with a leaking roof and it never occurred to me I wouldn’t qualify for university.

Ask any alumni of the former Central School or the Technical Institute and they won’t mention equipment or conditions first. They’ll talk about their teachers. s Teachers, then, are the life and blood of any school. A cliché, perhaps but one the community needs to be reminded of. Way back in 1955 a US scholar, Jacques Barzun, once said, “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”  In Bermuda most teachers would agree with that statement both in terms of their remuneration and the treatment they receive from some of the children and parents. But there’s an added complication on the Island – the general loss of faith in the public school system. Over a third of our high school children go to private schools. That’s a staggering figure and a tragic one too since many parents are making enormous financial sacrifices to provide their children with what should be free: a sound primary and high school education. It’s tragic, too, that some students in the public system whose parents cannot afford the private route, are left feeling trapped in an institution they see as necessarily inferior. Whether they are right or wrong, that perception does nothing for confidence or for morale either. 

If public education is going to be successful, teachers have to be given the respect essential for their success.  They need respect from their students, of course, but also from their head teacher, each other, parents, and their community in general.  You may well argue that for teachers to gain respect, they should first of all earn it.  And you’d be right.  So what qualities should teachers have to make that respect forthcoming?  I would say that the single most important quality is energy.  When teachers walk into their classrooms they should exude the sort of energy that communicates to the students “This class is vitally important.  What we’re going to achieve and understand is very important.” It’s also the kind of energy that a repertory actor has to have to survive.  Because teachers are on stage in every class they teach.  Their appearance, their body language, their voices are all scrutinized every minute of the time.  Eavesdrop on a bunch of kids discussing their teachers and you’ll see what I mean.  They may not retain a word of French from their lessons but they’ll remember for ever a teacher who once wore odd socks. (On second thoughts, if you’re a teacher, don’t eavesdrop.  You’ll never have the courage to go back into class again.)  But my main point is that there is nothing so demotivating to students as the lethargic attitude: “OK, we’ve got 40 minutes ahead of us.  This busy work is what you must do to fill the time up.” 

 

The other quality that’s important is the ability to be interesting.  A teacher can be brilliant at a subject but be completely unable to convey it.  There are many reasons for this but a common one is a monotonous voice.  How many of us remember being held captive to the tyranny of a voice droning on for hours and hours?  Not everybody is born with a compelling voice.  Voice training should be mandatory for teachers so that problems in pitch and inflection can be corrected.

All teachers should share those two qualities but in most other respects they ought to be diverse.  Do I mean diversity in race and culture?  Of course.  Multicultural and racial diversity is vital, particularly given Bermuda’s demography. But there should also be diversity in shapes and sizes, age, gender  and temperaments.  “Sizes?” you might ask incredulously.  Yes.  Every school should have at least a couple of men about with the physique of rugby players.  It’s not that I’m in favour of corporal punishment –  anything but.  However, given the discipline problems that haunt us today, I think children could benefit from being confronted by obvious physical strength.  I wouldn’t discriminate against small teachers or against women either, I hasten to add. In fact, one of the most forceful teachers I can remember was a feisty woman who stood just four feet eleven inches high.  But schools should have more men than they currently do because male role models are equally important to both girls and boys, particularly those without a strong father presence.

Why do I talk about diversity in age?  Because too often these days, teachers appointed are in the late twenty to mid thirties age bracket. Schools should benefit from the wisdom and experience of the sixty year olds and the idealism of the twenty year old; they ought to have the best of the old fashioned, together with the best of the new. Contrary to popular educators’ opinion, old fashioned methods are not necessarily bad, just as they’re not necessarily good. And then of course, there should be the ages in between. 

As for temperaments – schools should have the organized types but they should also have the chaotic, albeit creative, types – they’re often the ones who give soul to a school.  The odd cynic is useful as well.  Too many cynics do create a negative atmosphere, but one or two should be mandatory for balance.  However, their cynicism must not be morose; it must have - well, energy and humour too.  Then there should be the flamboyant type as well as the serene, motherly sort. And a battle axe should be mandatory, not just for the sake of discipline but also for the sake of stories. Battle axes are the stuff of school legends.

Must all teachers agree with each other?  Absolutely not.  And they shouldn’t all always agree with the head teacher either.  A good head teacher shouldn’t expect it because there’s nothing’s worse for a school than a bunch of sycophants. Lively, informal debates among staff and students should be a feature of the school.  However, teachers have to be in agreement over three things.  One, is they’ll all commit to knowing a lot about every student they have in their classes. That’s very important. Suppose you’re teaching English to a student whose sentence structure causes you physical pain. It can make all the difference to your approach if you know that same student is a brilliant artist, an excellent sailor or a superb mathematician. Second, they’ll all communicate as much as possible with the parents.  Third, they’ll all support each other in issues of discipline, especially where newcomers to the profession are concerned.  There’ll be none of this, “ Fancy you having problems with J---.  He never gives me any problems.” 

 

A staff like this could instil confidence in its school – whether public or private –in a matter of months. Are there teachers in our education system such as I’ve described. Very probably. But unfortunately too many others do not have the key quality of energy.  That’s not necessarily their fault.  Often they start off with it only to find it steadily depleting while they try to juggle the roles of teacher, psychiatrist, mother, father, Uncle George and Aunty Agatha. In addition to coping with unruly children, they also have to attend administrative meetings plus preparation and marking loads that mean bed before midnight is impossible. The net result is that many teachers either leave the profession, or they stay and develop the ability to disassociate from the students, thus losing even more energy. What little they have left, they expend on dealing with the bureaucracy, which ironically often is put in place to make them more accountable.

If we want public schools we can trust, then we have to understand teachers need time as well as fair remuneration. They need their holidays to prepare, update their knowledge and to recover from the emotional exhaustion of dealing with about 70 students a week. In short, they should have our total support.

        First published in UMUM magazine, January/February 2003

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