It seems everyone can remember a good teacher they had, be it that kindergarten “princess” or that math “master” who used to tell jokes in high school. By analyzing my own students’ formal written feedback in the first semester of 1998 (March - June, daily classes) - through the student feedback forms used at Associação Cultural Brasil – Estados Unidos (ACBEU), where I teach (see appendix 1) - I’ve drawn the following impressionistic list of characteristics our students expect their teachers to have, or perhaps how they picture an ideal teacher (although here we will consider closely the foreign language teacher):
1. Friendly and responsible; 2. Funny, but not “clownish”; 3. Dynamic, but not hasty; 4. Creative (uses different tasks, materials and techniques); 5. Patient, but not “slow”; 6. Flexible, but not insecure; 7. Organized, but not overly methodical; 8. Knowledgeable, but not pedantic; 9. “Intelligent” and humble.
The above qualities were ranked according to the analysis of the feedback forms that my students turned in related to my classroom performance. It is necessary to emphasize that this is only a rough picture of the reality of the center since the forms were filled out by my 80 students in that period - which represents around 1% of the students in the institution (and one teacher). Therefore, I decided to do this research in the second semester of the same year with a larger number of students and, consequently, more teachers (it would be impossible to say exactly how many, since the students were supposed to write neither the names of their teachers nor their own).
The main assumption underlying this research was that the students at this center - and from my own experience, I would say that most students in any other setting - give significantly more value to the qualities related to personality than those related to techniques and methodology, although we know it is hard to define exactly where one domain ends and the other begins. As the principal result of this survey, I expected to have a better picture of the relationship between the social/affective components and the professional aspects of language teaching - or perhaps teaching any subject matter - after this survey data were analyzed. That is precisely what is shown here. Check the first link below for the full article.