What makes for a good teacher?

When it comes to calling out the best and worst public school teachers, there is no concise statewide or national consensus.

Minnesota's Department of Education sets dozens of standards for teachers, while education experts and authors write hundreds of books and pamphlets on the subject every year. The experts say that's because the job of teaching involves a multiplicity of tasks: talking, planning, measuring learning, fitting teaching to learning styles, working with school administrators and other teachers, and keeping parents informed.

But in the end, it may boil down to two questions: What makes a good teacher? And what makes a bad teacher?

Teacher effectiveness is at the center of Gov. Tim Pawlenty's efforts to improve schools through initiatives such as Q Comp to award merit raises. A Star Tribune analysis found that Q Comp appears to reward nearly all the teachers participating in it with more money. Today, the state's legislative auditor is scheduled to release a report analyzing the state Education Department's oversight of Q Comp.

Several teachers, administrators and some students weighed in recently on questions about teacher effectiveness. Their responses tended to fall into four broad categories of expectations of teachers: subject mastery, communication skills, relationships and participation in the school as an enterprise.

When teachers are less than appealing, it's often because they lack the ability to clearly communicate, don't manage their classes well, are unorganized and don't connect with students. "Teaching only for the summers off" is how one teacher described an inadequate colleague.

Barbara Swanson, interim dean of the School of Education at Hamline University in St. Paul, has taught students and then teachers for 40 years. Her first qualification, as with most others, is subject matter mastery, closely followed by the ability to translate that knowledge student-by-student.

Kenneth Dragseth, a former Edina school superintendent who now helps school districts find top leaders, listed being a team player and lifelong learner as important qualities, along with working well with students of all backgrounds.

By contrast, people become poor teachers when they are "unwilling to put in the hard effort it takes to be good," and "rigid and inflexible in dealing with students, staff and parents," Dragseth said.

The view from current teachers is only slightly different. Christine Dease, an art teacher at Woodbury High School and this year's recipient of the local Chamber of Commerce's Secondary Educator of the Year, informally surveyed her colleagues and found they said the top qualification to be the simple enjoyment of being around kids.

View depends on perspective

The view of whether someone is a good teacher may depend on where you sit, Dease said. Some teachers connect very well with students but may not keep up well with the administrative demands of the job; others may not communicate sufficiently with parents.

"Teachers say the best thing they like about school is teaching the kids," Dease said. "If they could do that and nothing else, they would probably stay in teaching longer."

Good teaching is more than transmitting knowledge. It is opening minds to learning, said Joe Nathan, director of the Institute for School Change at the University of Minnesota. It's about helping students to "decide they can learn and accomplish more than they previously thought possible," he said.

Education Minnesota, the union that represents the state's public school teachers, offered a list of attributes similar to the experts and teachers, and added that teachers should be appropriately licensed. The organization also said that teachers who fall short of the necessary attributes should not be labeled "bad" but should be "offered mentoring, professional development, coaching from experienced teachers and administration, or, if all else failed, counseled out of the profession."

The experts agree that teaching has gotten more difficult, with more demands in recent years.

The biggest change in the profession during her career, says Hamline's Swanson, is that there has been much more research and progress in the field. "The profession is now stronger and has gotten better at determining best practices," she said. "I would like to go back and have these standards to which I would hold myself."

Gregory A. Patterson • 612-673-7287