I always thought teachers are very important whenever I learn something, even small things.
When I was a school student, I was not so interested in all the school subjects and depending on the teacher, my score results changed.
In most of teacher's classes I got bored and getting sleepy or started thinking other things, or got nervous from pressure.
I don't know why but taking group lessons which has over 30 students was often hard to concentrate while teacher is teaching unless teacher tells interesting stories.
There was only one impressive teacher who grabbed children's attention through the way how she taught with her talking, tone of voice, explanation and expression.
Her name is Mrs. Kurakazu.
Mrs. Kurakazu was kind of a manly middle aged woman who was very passionate , had enormous sense of humor, and was giving a lot of love to kids, also she had a strict part and sweet part well balanced , and her original teaching way was kind of unique and it was like a miracle to me all the kids including me in the class enjoyed listening and following her.
Sadly , she had to leave to other school after taught us 1 year for my class when I was 5 th grade of elementary school.
All the kids in the class missed her.
Usually kids in our class at that time were never into any teachers until we met her.
and after she left, and a new teacher came up to our class when we became 6th grade, we all were back to not so into the class again.
I had never met a teacher like Mrs. Kurakazu in my whole life.
I was thinking about what was the difference between this teacher and other teachers in the school ?
1. I could feel her love to kids through her teaching.
2. Passion for teaching.
3. Expressive while telling stories with a lot of gestures.
4. Have a sense of humor and made kids laugh a lot.
5. Have good impact of tone of voice with clear explanation.
6. Was treating all the kids fairly.
School teachers taught about 40 students each class, so the teaching is the presentation style by standing in front of students using blackboard or white board.
I felt she was very unique and had full of energy and had a big impact since I saw she was introduced as a new teacher in the morning meeting at play ground where there were all the schools students.
Keeping one's original style of teaching and passion and love, these may be the most important points to teach.
Mrs. Kurakazu was an excellent teacher for elementary school kids.
I think if one can teach well to many children, they can also teach well to beginner level students as well.
For this kind of presentation style of teaching, I'm easy to get sleepy while listening, because it's all one way talking from the teacher, so unless the teacher has strong impact and grabs my attention, I can not concentrate the class even though I tried to focus the class.
Private lesson teacher
For about private lesson type of teaching, it would be a different story.
I'm not sure Mrs. Kurakazu was also an excellent teacher for private lesson because I think she had never done it.
There are people who are more comfortable to teach with private lesson which is conversation style than group lesson which is presentation style.
My mother and my brother were never good teachers for me, who is a really slow learner because they were impatient.
Usually they got upset while teaching me because I didn't understand.
They were both very smart and could easy to pick up things, so they didn't understand the person like me.
My step father was the only person who was very patient to teach my mathematics study, lol , however I still could not understand.
Teaching to turtle ( slow learner ) type of students like me and beginner level students are difficult especially for people who can not imagine the feeling of beginners.
Maybe this is why many genius / talented people who can pick up things fast are never good teachers for beginner students unless they analyse how to teach and research the students situation and feeling ?
My impression is that many of them are not patient to teach beginner level students and especially for slow learners.
There was a time I was working for a English language school as a secretary in Japan, my main work was to explain the benefits of our school, why our lauguage school is good to visitors who are interested in learning English .
In their school method, one of the most important things was the number of the students in each class.
They limited total of 3 students each class, and including a teacher it will be 4 people and they used the discussion style with round table and chairs .
This is because when we talk with people, less than 4 people is the most well balanced to have conversation, if there is more than 5 people, someone has to have far distance to communicate.
and students don't get bored and can focus the lesson .
Personally, I also took the lesson, and felt 3 students , one teacher total of 4 people in the class was really fun, well focused without getting pressure or bored.
There was also private lesson in the school, but for me private lesson made me feel pressure, and I sometimes needed a break time like I can get a rest while other students were answering the teacher's questions.
But in the private lesson, teacher's all focus came to only to me , and this made me feel a little pressure.
In the English language school, all the teachers there were native English speakers who were university graduate, who were from USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
I have noticed that many teachers looked bored to teach to the lowest level class who needs to learn from ABC.
I found it shows personality.
There is a quote which says,
"There are no great coaches who were the best legendary player. "
There are exceptions of course, but in general I agree with this quote .
I don't know whose quote this was .
I won't say it for sure, but I sometimes thought genius players rarely become great coaches/teachers, because they don't understand the feeling of the students who are not easy to pick up things , and very slow to get it.
For example,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a genius composer, but he only taught students who were talented , and declined to teach all the beginners and children.
He even ran away when he heard that a young teenager named Beethoven was looking for him to study with him. ( I guess he didn't know Beethoven's bright future ).
Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin both were not teaching beginner level students. ( Chopin might have had one or two, but in general I've read that he taught intermediate to top level students ).
Especially Liszt seems to have been impatient.
In order to teach slow learner type of students and turn them into master level professional specialist , teacher needs to have had an experience of being a complete beginner, a time when they may have struggled to progress, so they can understand and help these kinds of students.
However most of geniuses were not experiencing the struggle of learning so I suppose they don't understand the feeling of this situation.
On the other hand, people who are more of the effort type who learned step by step rather than people who have natural talent may be more understanding the beginner's feeling and situation because they had experienced the similar feeling and the situation.
and if they can understand the feeling and situation of the students, they can teach using step by step method for even small things.
I think great teacher is one who can pull out the students ability well no matter the level.
Originally everyone has the ability to improve and achieve their goal if they have their own mind power and passion. but depending on who they are taught by, can influence their ability to improve well or not.
How important it is to choose a good teacher.