What Makes a Teacher Amazing

As a middle school and high school student, I stayed in tune to what each of my teachers taught, how they taught it, and what made them good or not-so-good at what they did. I took note and even spot checked and found few of my friends took into account our teachers' effectiveness much past "His class stinks" or "She's mean." I assumed my overanalyzation was a result of my overwhelming desire to teach and an attempt to soak up anything that had to do with teaching.

I encountered a wide range of teachers in high school. Some were wonderful; they made learning fun, seemed equitable, and related to us. Others barely knew their content and had no idea how to present it to us. It wasn't until my junior year at my undergraduate alma mater that I finally encountered an amazing teacher.

All 35 students trudged into Dr. M's class on the last Tuesday of January as if the New York state weather turned us into robots. But within simply minutes, we were seated in a circle, all 35 of us, and rehearsing one another's names, one at a time. I recall that we spent all 75 minutes of the first class learning each other's names and faces. Dr. M said she thought it made us closer, and less likely to prejudge our classmates on thoughts we may have. Dr. M couldn't have been more right. We, as a class, were about to delve into highly controversial material, and knowing each other well enough to feel as though we could talk openly, was key.

Dr. M continued her effortless journey of mesmerizing me and did something three weeks into the semester I had never seen before - she didn't say a word. She let the class begin and end the discussion, with deep, meaningful, topics to discuss, and let us take it away. She must have known that we were comfortable and respectful of each other as a result of her icebreaking activities. If she wasn't, she relied on luck, for the class that day forward moved with that same momentum, never stopping, never with a student who failed to participate simply because he or she did not read the material.

The description I have given of Dr. M's classroom pales in comparison to the energy everyone felt upon walking into the room. My experiences with her class did more than offer me facts on African American literature, they showed me what some of my high school teachers lacked all along. Before Dr. M I knew something was missing, but I was at a loss for how to describe it. When you are a teacher, it's not what you know, it's what you do with it. When you teach something, it's not about getting it out, it is about how you get it out. Now, this may seem trite for some, but what Dr. M gave me, aside from a wonderful semester's experience, was the "Ah, I get it!" that sometimes neither students nor teachers ever get. We all need to find that "Ah" to regain our full potential as students and educators alike.