Loving to Learn: What makes a teacher a really GREAT teacher?

Everyone from parents to politicians have an opinion about improving education. But when it comes to great teachers, it seems students are the experts.

This year, Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) asked local students: What makes a teacher a really GREAT teacher? The question is part of the centre’s annual Loving to Learn Day, an initiative that started in 2006 and has spread to other universities across Canada and as far as Australia.

About 200 students answered the question and Mark Morton, Loving to Learn Day organizer, said: “While students certainly know what they like from an instructor, do they always know what they need? The answer, I think, is that most of them do.”

All of the submissions from students, including the winners, can be found on the Centre for Teaching Excellence website. Morton’s analysis of the student responses can be found on the centre's blog.

Top five responses

So, what do students need from their teachers? The top 5 responses were a teacher who is:

• understanding, caring, and relatable
• supportive and positive academically and personally
• respects and encourages individual differences
• challenges students but knows their limits
• makes learning interesting and fun

The responses were clear that a great teacher is more than one who uses lectures, textbooks, and technology.

First-place winner

 “When we look back on our years of schooling, it will be the teachers who actually cared about us, the ones who inspired us and made us love the subject, whom we will remember as being extraordinary teachers,” says Katie Hobbs, a Kitchener high school student whose entry won first place.

A younger student wrote: “It’s easy for teachers to make students sit in rows, and give identical worksheets to students but a great teacher can inspire learning and inspire creativity,” wrote Nancy Huang, a Waterloo elementary school student.

“Anyone can stand and lecture, and many can perform a good lecture,” wrote Bailey Jacobs, a University of Waterloo student. “But in the presence of a great educator, the students will feel like they are there for a reason and are being held accountable for their success in the class.”