by John Brown

Created on: August 30, 2010

There is a well-known proverb which says: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This is maybe the most precise and comprehensive definition of a good and understanding teacher. But what really makes such a perfect teacher! Below you can find a collective explanatory description of these qualities which are paramount:

1) Learner and leader; imagine a leader who is not a learner, sounds weird, huh? Still we see and hear about such people here and there. They might carry the title of ‘teacher’ as the job requires, it doesn’t suit them though not serving as one. One must be a good learner and seeker of information in the first place before taking the role of a teacher who guides and directs. Even being a teacher, one should not stop learning (even from the students or any possible source of data available).

2) Flexible and curious; you have definitely heard the idiom ‘curiosity killed the cat’, why is that so! Only an unyielding nature like that of cat’s would end up as badly as that. However, there’s one way to neutralize its unwanted consequences; forming a flexible perceptive reaction towards a desire to know and understand. When we see the sign ‘danger’, we’d better be alarmed or something bad might happen. Sometime the flow of water does not lead us to the sea!

3) Patient and creative; in order to accomplish great tasks and to come up with new constructive ideas, a creative mind should be at service. But the creativity itself does not always turn out good and flawless. It takes one to be patient and calm allowing the body of conflicts to get dissolved and then formed at a later stage as the process of mind settles symmetric alignments gradually. This can secure that learning is taking place.

4) Kind and serious; let’s put a motherly love as an example here to see how these two could attribute to a perfect teacher. Think of a caring mother whose love is unquestionable and eternal. Moreover, she is serious enough not to let her child fall or crash on a surface, serious enough to teach her child gently and impressively how to walk and talk. But nobody really likes the idea of a strict teacher who is hard to be made to laugh or even to smile. 

5) Enthusiastic and confident; who is really a confident person, is it a sense of self-security and self-approval? Does that show a tendency towards one’s own crusty ideas and thinking

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