Ideal Teacher in Amanda-World

The ideal classroom experience would be an exciting journey through complex worlds of literature, art, history, science and math. Every school would be outfitted with the crème-de-la-crème teachers; the ones who have shown an aptitude for opening new worlds of thought and for fostering an overall desire to learn.

The ideal teacher has an obvious interest and passion in the subject. She takes a long school day and makes it feel like a passing moment. She manipulates complex theories by breaking them down to elemental basics and then builds upon them like a master storyteller. Ideally, she is aware of and sensitive to classroom dynamics. Throughout the lesson, she studies the faces and responses of her students and redirects the teaching accordingly. She is aware when her light-hearted story turns into a mindless tangent, and hops back on track. She understands it is not her job to make students learn, but to create a scholarly environment for those who have the desire.

Ideally, the teacher will transform a basic curriculum into an intricate story of war, alliance, betrayal, greed, and triumph. Ideally, the professor would cause her students to become enraptured in multifaceted debates, all the while instilling how to vigorously disagree with respect. Ideally, she patiently listens to questions and heated statements and responds in such a way to cause students to question the very foundation of their own thought-process.

The ideal teacher offers more than information; she provides opportunities for students to realize the bounds of their currently operating paradigm and nudges them toward a more nuanced way of approaching the world.

Perhaps there is no clear right or wrong when it comes to “good” teaching, but there are some ideals that, at the very least, can become the base standard for reality.

Expectations of perfection are not realistic. Every teacher has an “off” day, sometimes an “off” semester. But it is the skilled and effective teacher who can realign themselves to become the ideal instructor.