What Makes a Great Teacher?

I’m honored to be featured in Ben Orlin’s post “What Makes a Great Teacher?”

Ben, the author of “Math With Bad Drawings“ and “Change is the Only Constant” (one of the books I read in 2019) asked four teachers to respond to a fan’s inquiry. Here’s what I had to say.

I’m reluctant to use the phrase “Bad Teacher.” Faced with hundreds of interactions and decisions every day, we all have good and bad moments. Those moments accumulate over a semester, a year, a career, and in most cases yield a net positive result I’d say.

But you can tell a lot about a teacher by how they respond when students don’t succeed. Some will say, “What’s wrong with you?” Others will ask, “What’s wrong with me?”

I really enjoyed thinking about the question, and the different and diverse insights of Fawn Nguyen, Jo Morgan, and Marian Dingle were wonderful. As were Ben’s trademark illustrations of our responses! He nailed mine. Be sure to check out the entire post for yourself at Ben’s blog.