What makes a good teacher?

Remember those teachers who made the greatest impact on you? It might be your first-grade teacher, high school calculus teacher, or a college professor. What was it about their teaching style that made them stand out from all the other teachers you had? Were they more engaging? Were they well-liked? What made them so memorable?

Let me ask you: What made this person a good teacher?

My guess is there are a lot of different answers. Some might say it was the way they made class material clear and interesting. Others might focus on the fact that they spent a lot of time trying to get to know each student. Still some may find all of these qualities in their “good” teacher. In the end, we can all point to something and say, “That’s it!”

So, if we are able to identify specific qualities that make a teacher “good”, why can’t we just have all teachers adopt those qualities? In thinking about the millions of teachers across the world, I’ve wondered: is anyone capable of becoming a good teacher so long as they know the tricks and techniques? Or is good teaching something innate, reserved for the select few people who have those special qualities from the start?

After a decade of No Child Left Behind testing, researchers found a mountain of data that measured which factors had the greatest impact on student performance. Everything from class size to curriculum was measured, but only one – just one – factor was found to have any significant impact: the teacher!

Interestingly enough, the research indicates that factors such as a graduate school degree, a high SAT score, an extroverted personality, and passing the teacher certification exam on the first try were not indicators or predictors of a good teacher. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested millions in programs to improve teacher quality. It is not surprising that, as someone who lives in a sea of data, Bill Gates made this careful comment: 

“Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching. I’m personally very curious.”  

Having experienced teaching myself, I am more than curious as well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the qualities of a good teacher are often immeasurable. The skills and preparation of one good teacher may be drastically different from another’s. Most agree being a good teacher takes great dedication and drive. Often professional teachers say that you can never truly master teaching – and as soon as you think you did, you should retire.

The trick to teaching may not be known – no secret method to ensuring a student’s success and interest in the classroom. And yet, every summer at Breakthrough Silicon Valley, we find our students more than engaged with our teachers. After just a few days, even the quietest students are dancing in their seats with their hands raised, eagerly hoping to be called on.

Last summer, I had the pleasure of being a teaching fellow for Breakthrough Silicon Valley. During our training days, we had workshops that ranged from effective lesson planning to classroom management. Our training lasted a little over a week and we must have spent well over 90 hours participating in workshops, developing engaging lesson plans, preparing our classrooms, and building relationships with each other as we prepared for our Breakthrough students’ arrival at the beginning of next week.

By the time my students arrived for the start of the 6-week program, I was incredibly tired from training week.  And yet, I remember at the end of that first day of teaching feeling a funny combination of weariness from work, and an immense energy in anticipation for the next day. The teaching day lasted from 7:30am to 6pm and did not end there – as soon as I got home, I had more lessons and activities to prepare for my students.

I never felt like I wanted to take a day off either. I may have needed it physically, but my yearn to see my students again, interact and learn together with them and the rest of my fellow teachers made me more than willing to wake up at 5 in the morning to prepare for another school day.  Each and every day I looked forward to trying new ways of presenting material and seeing my students engage with The Giver, the book we read in my 7^th grade Literature classes. I also could not wait to see my students join in my passion for music in my Music Theory elective.

Outside of the teaching theory workshops and classroom management technique practice, what I really appreciated from our training week was the opportunity to talk and discuss education inequity and the stories of our own educational journeys. All of us teaching fellows came from a variety of backgrounds. Several of us were first-generation college students, much like our Breakthrough students, who are on their path to college. We came from schools as far away as the University of Pennsylvania and Duke to neighborhood schools like Stanford, Santa Clara University, and Bellarmine College Preparatory. We were teaching self-created electives that ranged from Creative Writing and Intro to Film to Basketball and Computer Science. What brought us together was our interest and drive to learn and make an impact in education. What brought us together was not only our interest to learn how to make an impact in education, but our drive to make an impact ourselves.  Our schooling is something of great value to all of us and we celebrated the opportunity to provide students from underserved communities a highly engaging and rigorous academic summer program.

This summer, I have taken a behind-the-scenes role as the Public Relations Intern. I remember walking through the halls on the first day of the summer program, seeing teachers nervous yet excited to find their space in the classroom. Again, at the end of the first day, the teacher interns were filled with a great energy that contradicted their tiredness from long hours of work. One 7^th grade Writing teachers closed saying, “I’m so happy today happened!” as he was walking out to find his ride.  In a charmingly simple and sincere manner, he summarized the way I felt at the end of each school day.

I definitely do not claim to have unlocked the secrets of “good” teaching. But I do believe Breakthrough has cracked the code in many ways. The program brings together high school and college students with a variety of career goals and upbringings to spend a summer with students from underrepresented backgrounds and underserved communities. The connections we built with them in the classroom: the field trips and extracurricular activities we experienced together…they all allowed us to bond and find so many fulfilling moments in our Breakthrough summer.

Breakthrough is finding success with teachers and students, and I, for one, am so much better because of it. I feel I grew so much as a person and learner, and became all the more driven to help create quality educational opportunities for all students. I sincerely hope that one day I too can become one of those memorable teachers to my students.

-Joel Ponce

P.S. If you ever come across this, Bill Gates, I invite you to come see our Breakthrough Silicon Valley teachers in action…since you’re curious.