What Makes a Good Teacher?

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What makes a good teacher? Teachers vary in effectiveness and can be viewed differently by different students depending on that student learning style and how well the teacher can teach to those individual needs. Everyone has had teachers, and everyone understands what it’s like to have a bad teacher and hopefully they have also experienced an outstanding teacher. But how does one judge the performance of a teacher? The student may enjoy a teacher but never learn anything. Most people would judge teachers ability by pedagogy; what the teacher teaches and what the student learns. South Carolina however measures teacher’s pedagogy by the ADEPT Performance Standards for Classroom-Based Teachers. They have ten standards that fit into four categories; Planning, Instruction, Classroom Environment, and Professionalism. The main purpose of having these set standards is not only to increase students’ knowledge and learning capabilities but also to improve on the teachers’ ability to set appropriate goal for students and help them reach those goals. Before a teacher can even think about teaching students they have to plan out everything they are going to do in the classroom. Preparation is the key to effective teaching. If a teacher is not prepared then the students will be easily distracted and less likely to learn. The first ADEPT Performance Standard is long range planning. Effective teachers make long term goals not only for themselves and what they are teaching but for the students they are learning (The Deparment, online). There must be goals in which a student can achieve in the future and to what effectiveness a student can achieve these goals. “Long-range planning requires the teacher to combine knowledge of content, standards, and curriculum with a knowledge of specific learning-teaching contexts and student characteristics” (ADEPT, online). The teacher must assess
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