teacher or educator - Someone who imparts knowledge, skills, or wisdom to others; assesses and praises achievement. Synonyms: instructor, tutor, preceptor, mentor, guide, guru, sage, coach, educationist, educationalist, pedagogue, fellow, lecturer, expositor, exponent, interpreter, prelector, professor, initiator, mystagogue, model, confidant, consultant, adviser. Educator, like [educational] practitioner — one of its most recent synonyms — is typically used instead of "teacher" in order to include principals and other educating professionals who might otherwise feel left out.

What are the most important traits of a great teacher? The first two are knowledge of the subject matter and the ability to communicate it, but those are just the beginning. Here are the next six:

1. Interest. Students need teachers who care about them. Teachers can learn how students spend their out-of-school time, about their likes, dislikes, abilities, family structures, and how they react to relationships, praise, and correction. Interested teachers gather information about their students on a regular basis, and then use that information to plan instructional programs that draw on students' strengths.
2. Understanding. Students need teachers who listen to them, inside and outside of the classroom. Teachers need to empathize with students' intellectual, physical, social, emotional, and aesthetic needs.
3. Fairness. Students expect to be treated fairly. Students need to feel equally important to their teacher and the classroom family. Fair teachers give students opportunities to make choices in the classroom, and to experience success every day.
4. Consistency. Students expect teachers to say what they mean and practice what they say. Teachers and students should create classroom guidelines together, and see that consequences are both meaningful and consistently applied. Inconsistency is important in some things: variety and flexibility are crucial to creativity and growth.
5. Sincerity. Teachers must be genuine. Students should be able to trust their teachers with their opinions and feelings. Sincere teachers stress the importance of maintaining a safe and family atmosphere in the classroom. They realize that many students need a friend and are extremely vulnerable. Sincerity dies with every use of sarcasm.

• "You must train the children to their studies in a playful manner, and without any air of constraint, with the further object of discerning more readily the natural bent of their respective characters."
  Plato (c. 427-347 BCE), Greek philosopher. Socrates, in The Republic, book 7, section 537.
  
  
• "Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these gave only life, those the art of living well."
  Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Greek philosopher.
  
  
• "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
  Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Italian astronomer.
  
  
• "The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple."
  A. Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), U.S. educator, social reformer. Orphic Sayings, "The Teacher" (1840).
  
  
• "What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable, than that of teaching?"
  Harriet Martineau (1802-76), English writer, social critic. Society in America, volume 3, "Occupation" (1837).
  
  
• "To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song."
  Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-81), Swiss philosopher, poet. Journal Intime (1882; translated by Mrs. Humphry Ward, 1892), entry for November 16, 1864.
  
  
• "A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself."
  Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), English economist, critic. "Hartley Coleridge" (1852; reprinted in Literary Studies, volume 1, 1878).
  
  
• "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
  Henry Adams (1838-1918), American historian. The Education of Henry Adams, chapter 20 (1907).
  
  
• "To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed. They will champion the causes of life's underdogs, forging a society without class discrimination. They will supply humanity with music and beauty as it has never been known. They will endure. Towards these ends I pledge my life's work. I will supply the children with tools and knowledge to overcome the obstacles. I will pass on the wisdom of my years and temper it with patience. I shall impact in each child the desire to fulfill his or her dream. I shall teach."
  Henry James (1843-1916), American writer.
  
  
• "No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher."
  Sir William Osler (1849-1919), Canadian physician. Address, October 4, 1911, Glasgow (quoted in: Harvey Cushing, Life of Sir William Osler, volume 2, chapter 31, 1925).
  
  
• "We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master."
  Maria Montessori (1870-1952), Italian educationist. The Absorbent Mind, chapter 1 (1949).
  
  
• "One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
  Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist. The Gifted Child (1943; reproduced in Collected Works, volume 17, paragraph 249, edited by William McGuire, 1954).
  
  
• "A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows."
  George Gurdjieff (c. 1877 - 1949), Greek-Armenian religious teacher, mystic. Quoted in: P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, chapter 2 (1949).
  
  
  
  
  

• "Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism . . . the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young."
  Henry S. Canby (1878-1961), American author, editor. Alma Mater, chapter 5 (1936).
  
  
• "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
  Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born U.S. physicist.
  
  
• "Modern cynics and skeptics . . . see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing."
  John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), 35th President of the United States, from 1961-1963.
  
  
• "Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
  Jacques Barzun (1907-), American scholar. Newsweek (New York, December 5, 1955).
  
  
• "Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement."
  Edward Blishen (1920-), British author. Donkey Work, part 2, chapter 5 (1983).
  
  
• "In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs."
  Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-), American historian. The Image, chapter 2 (1961).
  
  
• "The artist is an educator of artists of the future."
  Saul Steinberg (1914-1999), Romanian-born American artist. See artist.
  
  
• "Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain."
  Fawn M. Brodie (1915-1981), U.S. biographer. Quoted in: Los Angeles Times Home Magazine (February 20, 1977).
  
  
• "A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power."
  Thomas Szasz (1920-), American psychiatrist. The Second Sin, "Education" (1973).
  
  
• "There is no real teacher who in practise does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech."
  Allan Bloom (1930-1992), American educator, author. The Closing of the American Mind, Preface (1987).

Art about teachers:

Thomas Nast (American , 1840-1902), Shall Teachers' Salaries Be Lowered? -- Enemy of the Public Schools: "That's right: reduce them, and they will die out." published in Harper's Weekly, Dec. 19, 1874, wood engraving, image: 27 x 23.8 cm, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA.

Also see art careers, art degree, artist, assessment, Bloom's Taxonomy, effort, motivation, Praxis, realia, standards, Stages of Artistic Development, virtuoso, and webucation.

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