What makes a real teacher?

The following is excerpted from the book Myths: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo. How well do you know fact from fiction?

MYTH: Anybody can teach. Teaching is just communicating information, through effective verbal and instructional communication, skills that anybody can learn and master.

TRUTH: While it is true that a part of teaching involves the effective communication of information (knowledge), that is a very small part of what teaching is all about—and probably not the most important. Teaching, at heart, is primarily relational, it more than a meeting of minds, it is a transactional process between persons. Teaching is more than sharing information-it is about inspiring, motivating, awakening, challenging, and creating.

Someone said, “A student is not a glass to be filled, but rather a lamp to be lit.” Teaching skills can be learned, even mastered. And good teachers try to be masters at their craft. But real teachers don’t teach lessons, they teach people. A teacher reaches beyond the surface of instilling ideas to cultivate dreams within students, and, in so doing touches the future. Real teachers don’t just try to create smarter students; they nurture the development of better persons. In a real sense, the best teachers aren’t made, they are called. You can always tell who the “real” teachers are—they never stop teaching, they do so with a passion, and they invest themselves in the lives of their students.

You can order a copy of the book Myth: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo (ISBN 0-9715765-4-8) directly from Educational Consultants.