What Are The Characteristics Of A Quality Teacher?

Most educators, parents, students, and teachers  know that a "quality teacher" is important to a student's academic achievement.  However, the term "quality teacher" means different things to different people.  For example Mayor Bloomberg thinks a "quality teacher" is a low salaried temporary instructor who will leave the teaching profession before they earn a pension.  For education reformers like the misguided "Bill Gates" its the teacher that uses the "drill and kill" method to achieve good results on "high stakes testing".  For education reformers like Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and Dennis Walcott it's those teachers that are willing to toe the administrative line without complaint or be fired.  Of course the majority of us know what the characteristics of a "quality teacher" is.

What are the characteristics of a "quality teacher"?  They are listed below.

• A personal and emotional connection with the students.
• A deep knowledge of curriculum.
• Good classroom management skills.
• Repeated and demostrated student academic achievement.
• Respected by the students. as knowledgeable and caring about them.

However, our nation's politicians, lead by Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin has falsely defined a "quality teacher" as a "newbie" from alternate teacher certification programs such as the "two year wonders" from Teach For America and the "one and done" Teaching Follows program. How can "newbies" be considered "quality teachers"?  Easy, if there is enough political pressure by school districts who practice "education on the cheap" policy and try to fool the parents by hiring inexpensive teachers with little or no classroom experience as "quality teachers".  This absurdity is taken to the extreme in Chicago where many teachers lost their job as schools closed but the Chicago school system encouraged the schools to hire "newbie teachers" from Teach For America while senior teachers went on the unemployment lines.  If  Mayor Bloomberg had his way, the same would be true in New York City.

Our children deserve "quality teachers" along with small classes sizes, adequate resources, and supportive administration to academically succeed  To falsely claim that recruiting college graduates with 3.0 grade point averages who are clueless about what it takes to be a good teacher and for most is simply a "stepping stone" to bigger and better positions is not what's best for the children.  This leads to a sub-par education and an unstable school environment due to staff turnover. 

The fallacy that "newbie teachers", especially from alternate certification programs like Teach For America, are "quality teachers" must be exposed as a fraud on our children.  A "quality teacher" is a teacher that meets the characteristics I have outlined and we all know to be true.