- Wed Jul 05, 2023 5:25 pm
#47698
From the experience of my school days, the best teachers combined the following three things...
* Fairness
* Firmness
* Friendliness
...especially in how you deal with pupils/children. Fair in that you treat your students on the same footing, at least initially. Firm in that you lay down what you expect of every pupil, and friendly in that you are approachable by a student at the very least about their class work & bonus points if you can develop rapport's beyond this (without getting too involved). Someone whom is very strict isn't necessarily fair, as they may not be taking into account certain circumstances of a student or students that can be beyond their control, for example. Someone whom is very strict isn't necessarily firm if a student appears to be arbitrarily punished for something they didn't realise was wrong nor were they responsible for, or that new expectations are introduced depending on the teacher's mood. As for friendly, strict teachers rarely are and likely enjoy their aloofness among the students they teach except to possibly pick "pets" which in the longer terms doesn't do such students many favours either in the long term at school or elsewhere. In their teen years, boys & girls are growing up and want to start being treated as grown up with responsibilities that come with it - gradually throw them such bones as they grow and with most students will respond positively & give you respect in return. An important life lesson for them.
Thankfully, the secondary school I went to had very few teachers, maybe two out of about thirty, where the students as a whole had an near universal negative opinion of them. Some of the stories I heard about some sociopathic teachers in Grammar schools however... I put it down to the difference in that if your child is not doing well in their work set by their teacher in Year 9 at a Grammar school, it's almost always implied that it's the child's problem that they're not able to keep up with their peers academically, whereas in a non-selective school if your child is struggling with their school work at the same age, there is more onus on the teacher to see if something else might work for the student given that the teacher in question should, unlike their Grammar counterpart, be teaching to a wide range of student abilities, before the child has the finger pointed at them. In turn, it means that "inadequate" teachers tend to have their school teaching abilities masked better if they're teaching in a Grammar school - only when a significantly large percentage of students in a class start showing problems, compared to students in the same year group being taught by other teachers of the same subject, will any suspicion start to fall on just how good/bad a certain teacher is - and in less popular subjects where they might be the only teacher of a subject in a year group, this can be masked even more.
I suspect that had Ms. Birbalsingh taught at my school during my time there, the nickname she would have got among the students would not have been a pleasant one as almost no one would respect her.
"Grey will never go out of fashion, because it's never been in fashion!"