Good Teacher, Bad Teacher

In our global classrooms, there are good teachers and bad teachers.  Adults worldwide have been exposed to both types of teachers. Many survived, but some have been scarred beyond recovery creating individuals who resent anyone within the teaching profession.  However, no matter the times or the location, the teaching profession will always exist and it is good that others can learn from the actions of those before, with the hope of making things better for both students and teachers.  According to Bertram & Bailey, 2009, a good teacher is one who motivates and sustains students’ interests, uses active learning techniques, who facilitates and encourage learning. I am sure that our good teachers will endorse this definition and may want to add more to the statement.

After much discussion with children and adults, I have formulated two edited set of lists displaying the attributes of good/bad teachers.

Good teachers always:

1.      Manage the class with equality and fairness.

2.      Come prepared for class.

3.      Dress appropriately for class/work.

4.      Create extra time to help weaker students.

5.      Look out for the welfare of students

6.      Timely mark assignments and give feedback.

7.      Compliment and motivate students to learn and attend school.

8.      Fair in assessment and evaluation.

9.      Are compassionate and human

10.  Are fair in punishment and rewards.

11.  Remember that the students will become adults and replace their position in the world.

12.  Create interesting innovations for students to learn

13.  Cooperate with administration no matter the storms that are stirred.

Bad teachers:

1.      Insult the students on a regular basis.

2.      Never apologise for anything.

3.      Never make the students comfortable

4.      Bully students after classes.

5.      Always give assignments and never mark them

6.      Are always late for class with unlimited excuses

7.      Do not care about what they wear to class/work.

8.      Never allow students to contribute to the lesson

9.      Are merciless in punishment to students

10.  Are highly critical of school, work and students.

11.  Are fearful of teacher evaluation and assessment.

12.  Show no interest in upgrading either skills or qualifications.

This listing is not about placing labels on persons; rather it is to remind us of weakness and strengths within classroom.  If any “bad” teacher sees this listing, instead of being offended, take the necessary steps to avoid being a bad teacher and be a good one.  For those who are good, please remember that there is always room for improvement.  Therefore, let us all be good teachers and be exemplars to all our students.

Jamaican Easter Tradition

      For those who do not know about the Jamaican Easter, it is not really like the Americanized version of
Easter Bunnies and eggs.  Being a predominantly a Christian country, we recognize the importance of the period in that Christ's Crucifixion is remembered.  Some go as far as designing their church programme to help our younger children have a visual understanding of the significance of the Easter Celebrations.
   
      Annually, this celebration is accompanied my the eating of bun and cheese along with the playful activity of kite flying.  Each year the bakeries, both established and private, put out a huge spread of beautifully packaged buns.  This buns are usually filled with raisins and fruits (cherries) with a magnificent glaze coated to attract even the religious skeptic to pay the extra cash to partake of the sweet tongue jerker of a pastry cocktail. However this is not complete without the lovely cheese!
   
      The cheese play a vital role with the bun.  The combination is like honey and milk in heaven.  Just simply divine! The combination should not be taken without drinks and most of all, one should be seated to enjoy this delight.  It is best eaten on the outside when the Easter breeze blows.  It makes the perfect setting for the true Jamaican Easter holidays.

   
     As for the Easter breeze, that is never wasted.  Annually , as soon as the month of March turns the corner, the kite makers, both professional and amateur commence their construction of kites of various colours and sizes.   The Jamaican kites are always impressive and due to the creativity, these kite makers have a chance to show off their skills in the annual kite flying competition.
   

      There are no age limits to the kite flyers in Jamaica.  The eager young ones are always anxious in displaying their designs.  The aging "big-kids" are more interested in the ingenuity of their  paper aircraft.  In-other-words, there are no age limits nor social barriers for the kite flyers on this special time of year.  As for those who have no interests in the public showing, the kite flyers make their way to various community centers and playing fields to hoist their kites in the air.  One cannot help but to hear the zingers on the kites and due to the pitch, one can have an idea of the size kites in the sky.  Sometimes in the dead of night the zinger from a large kite can be heard in the dark skies.   This usually becomes a topic of nocturnal conversation especially for the senior men of the house-holds and corner shops.
 
     It is an amazing sight to see the Jamaican skies and dinner tables at Easter time.  It is certainly a treat both in the stomach and in the Caribbean blue skies.  Its one thing that is clear, this tradition will not die for it is an occasion other than Christmas that our Jamaican families come together and have some good fun in the season of Easter.

How to Get Our Students to Be Interested in School?

That is a question that is being asked with more frequency lately.  There are students who seem not to have a serious interest in learning in schools.  What seems to be evident is high school students, who appear to be distracted with gadgets such as smart phones and tablets, which seem to dominate their attention.  Many individuals from their mid-thirties upwards have observed the interests of the students and spoke about the times when game shops and VHS were considered to be the great evils against the classrooms diverting their study time to more play.

Now, in the 21^st century, students have small and portable devices that have created a new wave of interests for the learner.  Unfortunately, many of our traditional institutions have missed the boat to utilize these devices within the classrooms that can make learning just as exciting as the applications that have captured students’ imaginations.  There are schools which still have the hard and fast 20^th century rule of absolutely no cell phones however, if a senior person asks a child for information on content, it is the same device being used to extract the much needed information.  Talking about behind times!

Traditional classroom teaching methods will not be as effective as before.  The minds of these teenagers come with a kind of intelligence not seen before.  If a man of 40 years has trouble getting into the settings of a smartphone, he can simply ask a teen or a child to find the same and in 5 seconds the settings are found.  There is absolutely no way our students can remain 100% percent focused on class work.  We adults never could maintain such an action but if we were to trade places with these students with the hand-held technology, I think we would have taken over the world!

  Our schools collectively need to devise a plan to completely utilize the various hand held devices as positive tools for learning.  Flip charts and simple wall projection are not enough anymore.  Instead of having students over-running the library and resource centre all the time, the actual classroom can house all the information extracted.  Our teachers need retraining in this new virtual classroom.  Not only the classroom facilitator will be able to extract relevant content for the moment but continually use them and other evolving devices within the various subject areas that will add to developing innovations by teachers to help with the facilitation of learning.

Our schools administration need to be in the malls, shops and even the transportation centres and see how students devote great attention to their devices.  Making the monumental shift  in the classroom from analogue thinking to digital teaching will add a dimension of learning that is needed in our classrooms.  Our students today possess a learning style different from our own; therefore we should meet their demands in how they want to learn, thus holding their interests in the classroom.