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Essay on How Does One Define a Good Teacher?

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'Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much

arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinions in good men is but

knowledge in the making.' --John Milton

The epigram above goes a long way in providing an answer to this

oft-repeated question. Of course, we must make a distinction between

Aristotle instructing passionate disciples on the definition of happiness

and a humble foreign language teacher attempting to familiarize a horde

of boisterous adolescents to the intricacies of the English interrogative

sentence. Whether adolescents back in the 4th century BC were radically

different in demeanor to today's is for the anthropologists and historians

to decide; in any …show more content…

Enthusiasm

is eerily contagious.

Waiting for my first lecture on "Advanced Word Morphology" last year, I

feared the worst. The lecturer, a plump and immaculately dressed man,

stormed into the room and, from that moment on, never lost our attention.

To think that someone could be so excited about the irregular plurals

in English was a little odd at first, but it nevertheless made us listen

to find out what could induce such animated grimaces and gesticulations.

In the following week, the attendance doubled. The good teacher then, has

a veritable passion for what he teaches or, less romantic but equally

effective, can pretend to be. To assume that a human being can be

veritably fascinated by the prospect of describing a picture in English

would transcend the boundaries of good sense. Once the teacher's enthusiasm

has infused into the pores of his pupils, the more cerebral aspects of his

character come into play. He must possess a sound knowledge of

whatever he teaches and be ready to answer in a clear and persuasive manner

the arguments and opinions that Milton says will inevitably follow. The

teacher-pupil interaction must be symbiotic, not merely a master-slave

relationship with the teacher acting as an all-knowing, infallible tyrant.

Patience is an important asset in a profession where abilities invariably

differ from pupil to pupil and remaining enthusiastic is by no means an

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