Good Teacher, Bad Teacher

You all heard about GOOD COP, BAD COP, if not I will explain it succinctly, it is a tactic used in interrogation or interviews where one plays a good part and the other plays the bad part in that particular interrogation or interview. However, the concept of it in teaching is quite different and has a different impact on an individual's life. 

    Teachers play a huge part in our lives, you hate them, you love them, you forget them (never completely but you get my point). However, there are teachers that you never forget categorizing, they either ruin your life or make you fall in love with the subject, I think the former is more common which is alarming and absolutely defeats the purpose of education. I feel education should not be a burden of assignments and people forcing you to learn till the point you start loathing it. Education must be the willingness to learn on your own and it should make you feel happy rather than feeling miserable and feeling like you are falling in the darkness or the fear of failure consuming and changing you.

    Teachers are the people who decided to educate other people with their knowledge but the perspective of teaching has changed over the period of time, people started taking teaching as a job, and when that happened, teaching in itself lost its essence, its beauty, its pleasure. Yes there are people out there who teach just for the love of it and not for the sake of it and that my friends differentiate GOOD TEACHERS AND BAD TEACHERS, of course, it's derivative and difficult to judge but there are things you can spot easily. I am going to list few points which can help you find a difference between good and bad.

Passion

You can see how passionate a person is about his subject when she/he is always telling you how you can apply it in real life, which shows that person has a greater knowledge of that subject instead of just a superior one. She/he teaches the subject as if they are themselves learning it and finds the subject fascinating on daily basis, you can literally see the happiness on their face while they teach it. Passion plays an important role when someone wants to teach a subject.

Understanding

Subject matter expert is one way to define that person, however, an understanding of the basic level also can work in the favor. I am going to emphasize understanding because that makes them the correct person to make other people understand their subject. Einstein said "If you cannot make your grandmother understand the concept then you yourself did not understand it completely", which struck me on another level. So if a teacher is making a concept easier and telling you in Layman's terms she/he falls in the category of a good one, this suggests they have a good understanding of the subject.

 Empathy

I am worried about this particular point because empathy is something we humans are forgetting and it's worse in teachers. Teachers forget that students don't just study their subject, they study multiple at the same time, they are under a lot of pressure from home, from personal problems, relations, etc and they always seek some kind of empathy from teachers in a form of less stress over the studies. Teachers who hit or scold you if you forget to do your assignment or embarrass you in front of the whole class without even giving you the chance to explain, lack empathy in them and that's a red signal. Look out how a teacher reacts if you seriously have a valid reason for not submitting your assignment. That will help you recognize a good from a bad one.

These are the first few points that you should be able to see in a good teacher. A good one will make your life easy and a bad one will make you miserable to the point where you start hating education. I hope this helps you people, be aware and don't blame the subject if you find it difficult. Most important try to be your own teacher because most of the time you are not lucky to get a good teacher.

Kaustubh Gadkari

MathematicallySane

(I want people to fall in love with education)