Let’s Talk About Good Teaching
One of the key ingredients in a quality education is effective teachers. A great teacher comes in many shapes and sizes and has the ability to engage young people in a process of learning that many parents, civic leaders and other role models cannot. We asked our Youth Advisory Council to investigate what makes a great teacher by interviewing one at their own school, and YAC member Eva Gallegos-Pèrez came back to us with her thoughts.
I never thought about the various aspects of being a teacher until I had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite teachers — Scot Hovan. Mr. Hovan is currently a physics teacher at Mahtomedi High School in Minnesota and has been teaching for seventeen years. When I asked Mr. Hovan about how meaningful his job was to him, he answered:
“One of the great things about teaching is that I really get to work with people who are questioning and wondering about the world. I like teaching because it’s different; even the same lesson from one period to another can go very differently because of the people who are in the room at the time. I like the fact that in physics there is a community of people who are constantly working to get better. By getting to know these people and working with them, I can become more effective. What I really like about a physics class is when students feel that they can describe things that they see, they can make predictions about what will come based on measurements and equations that they have created, [and] just to be able to make them comprehend science and how it works a little better.”
His answer made me perceive his passion towards teaching, and for the first time I felt fortunate to have a teacher like him. We went on to talk about what he believed was a good teacher and, showing the motivation of his career, he answered:
“I think a good teacher needs to be organized so that they don’t spend all their time looking for things. They need to know their context knowledge so that they feel comfortable not just teaching material but also answering questions that students might ask that could be extensions of the material. Good teachers need to know the research in the field, where students historically have struggled and, as a response, what has been shown to be successful in addressing those struggles. Finally, I think that the teacher has to be aware of the environment and creating a classroom that is safe for everybody to make mistakes and wonder without being ridiculed or teased because they are not sure … A good teacher should make sure that the environment is one that promotes learning.”
But I did not only interview Mr. Hovan for his astonishing views of good teaching. Mr. Hovan has done more than that for his students, so I asked him about what he has done outside of his teaching requirements. His answer showed something unique that I had never thought a teacher would do:
“Our budget for the school district is tight … When I arrived to the school I was a little disappointed with the amount of equipment that we had in the physics department and since then I have worked to get better equipment. The great thing is that we have a great local area education foundation to which I have written numerous grants to request a variety of equipment: force sensors, motion sensors, and all different kind of equipment. I also applied for a grant outside the school district to a company called Quest and was able to get a grant for netbook computers so that my students could take and analyze data on the computers instead of doing it by hand … Likewise, I have been able to participate in national and local physic teachers meetings where I get to meet other teachers who are doing good work and who can teach me a lot of ideas that I can bring to my own classroom.”
And he talked about one of those experiences/ideas:
“Since I put so much emphasis on group work, it is only fair that I try to help my students to be more successful with working in groups. Most times I think that students are told ‘Okay do this assignment in groups’ and that’s all they are told … However, as a teacher, if I really want my students to be successful on working in groups I have to give them some strategies to make that happen. Monsignor, a professor at Kate Western Missouri University in Ohio, introduced me into a list of ten small-group social skills … I was interested in seeing if I could implement them with my students. And I do. I introduce them to the students, we talk about them, they are quizzed on them so I know they know what they are, and throughout the year they reflect on how well they are using those skills by giving specific examples of where they were successful and specific strategies for ways to improve the skills that they feel weak at that time.”
The interview left me amazed and I was glad to see that Mr. Hovan went beyond just teaching, since I’m looking forward to a teaching career myself. We ended the interview with a wonderful thought that Mr. Hovan presented to me, which I believe many future and current teachers should take into consideration:
“Teaching is the most important thing we can do. It is not a very glorified profession, since a lot of media aren’t very nice to teachers, but I think it is the most important thing we can do and I am very glad to do it.”
