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the flow of information and exchange of ideas. The best teachers know how to achieve this balance.

PATIENCE

"God grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference."

The first stanza of the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr is probably never far from a good teacher's mind. The classroom is no place for a control freak; organization and self-discipline are necessary traits, but you will never have complete control of a classroom. Here, patience is more than a virtue, it is an absolute necessity or you will go insane.

Patience also extends to expectations for student performance. A good teacher understands that each student learns at a different pace and within the limits of the school parameters, they attempt to bring students along that may not be the quickest to grasp the concepts being taught. One of the most rewarding feelings as a teacher is watching the light go on in a students eyes after taking a little extra time to help them understand a lesson.

THE WORLD IS A STAGE

It also seems that great teachers just have that little something extra, a little magic that seems to grab your attention and captivate you so that you were hardly aware that what you were doing in that class is learning. I can recall two teachers that had this spark in two completely different subjects. Zabriskey Warren was a math teacher extraordinaire. He would snap his fingers, spin around in front of the class and intersperse his lectures with German exclamations like, "Wunderabar!" after a student had answered a particularly tough question. Frederick Peterson taught English and I can never forget his Shakespeare classes, whether it was his dressing up as one of the witches in Macbeth and cackling, "Double, double, toil and trouble..." or having us recite our chosen soliloquies as he provided the background noises. Thirty years later, I can still recite Romeo's lines when he encountered Juliet's apparently lifeless body though I am far from being a Shakespearian actor.

All these attributes are really only facets of what makes up a great teacher, because like most great things in life, a great teacher is really more than just the sum of their parts. They are a complete package that just comes together in that special person that you one day realize has gotten more out of you in a particular class than you may have believed you had to give when you entered their classroom.

Learn more about this author, I. Michael Akbar.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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