by Firy

Created on: December 11, 2009   Last Updated: December 15, 2009

What makes a great educator?

Can you be in someone's shoes? If you can, then you are a great educator! Being a great educator is more than a Degree in Education. The document in my view only says, "I am aware. I can be awakened." Nothing more. Being a great educator is putting yourself in your student's position, receiving information, as does the student, and implementing it together as necessitated by the situation. Now, the question is, how can you get into the students' position. Surprisingly enough, if you have not found this about teaching by now, an educator has empathy. His or her pain is in not reaching the student and he or she climbs, jumps, dives and ducks for the student's education.

There are several ways the educator can achieve these levels. Learning a little bit or more if possible about the individual students allows the teacher to know whether to dive or duck. I had two educators one from Ireland and another England. The Irish one taught Organic Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the college of Pharmacy and the English one taught Mathematics.

In Chemistry we were learning about the rate of chemical reactions in entropy. The whole concept did not make sense and he could tell by my inquiring look that something was wrong. "Yes, Sethunya!" He said. "I still don't understand what you said about the rate of reactions. Doesn't add up." I was blank. You know the kind of blank that you cannot formulate a question. That kind. He walked away from this desk, towards me and maintained eye-contact. I knew at this point that he wanted me to pay close attention.

"When was the last time you went to a village?"

"A few weeks ago."I responded.

"How busy was it?"He asked

"Oh not too busy. Occasionally I ran into one villager here , another there."I answered

"Then you came back to town. How was the city centre? The bus station?" He inquired

"Oh it was much, much busier. People every where. Hawkers stepping on each other. Conductors fighting over passengers."I said. Still not knowing where he was leading to.

"Aha! "he said, It is the same with molecules. A smaller number of molecules in a chemical reacion is as interaction of fewer people in a village as opposed to people in a city with more people colliding into each other." he explained.

When he finished I said there thinking, "Oh my, I ought to have been really stupid to not have grasped this from the beginning."

 I knew village life.It was easy to understand how people move around there. I knew city life. Nothing

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