This is quite a hard question to find an answer to, I have been lucky enough to have a wonderful education with many great teachers who were good for many different reasons. They have, almost entirely, all taken great interest in my learning, me as an individual and been interesting and excited to teach me. All had a keen interest in what they were teaching me and loved what they did. All would do anything to help ensure that I, and my classmates, would succeed to the best of our ability. All attempted to engage me and relate to me as best they could to make sure I reached my full potential. And all of the above things make great teachers, they are all qualities which create environments in which students can excel and be the best they can be.
My favourite teacher has all of these qualities and everyone in his class loved his lessons, even though some of them didn't like the subject, but he made the work easy. His name was Mr. Atkinson and he taught me Biology through my GCSE level, so ages 14 to 16. The Biology GCSE was one of the most dreaded exams, two two hour exams at the end of two years of school, they were the most stressful exams of the time. And yet, after a year and a half the whole class was ready to take the exams and felt confident that they would pass. All of us achieved A or A* grades in the end.
His lessons were so engaging that one hour felt like five minutes and a lifetime of discovery all at the same time. He would always bring in something to show us, something we could see, touch, dissect, anything to allow us to actively learn. I distinctly remember one time that we were doing gas exchange in humans and he had a sheep lungs brought in, and every one of us blew up the lungs.
We had to write notes and the only annoying part of that was that the way he taught was so interesting you just wanted to listen. That sounds cheesy, but it's true, everything he said just sounded so exciting and interesting because he was so interested and excited by it. When we finished the syllabus early he asked if we wanted to do a bit of the next level stuff, and we were all enthrall end to know, just to soak up every bit of knowledge he had for us. So he went through some genetic principles and we understood them better than many of the students actually taking that class did. Not because we were more clever than them, but because we all were so interested in what he was saying.
Many from my class were very shy students, me among them, we didn't like asking questions, didn't want to speak up or get in front of everyone. He noticed this and spoke to each of us individually instead to find out where our interests were, in relation to Biology or anything, then he made sure his lessons were centered on them. After a bit of time asking questions on a one to one basis we built up trust with him and suddenly found ourselves perfectly happy asking questions out loud. Within a few weeks we were all active participants in the classroom and were asking questions more than he was teaching. The best part of this was that he was happy to digress to answer the questions that really puzzled us. For example, although we were doing gas exchange he was happy to go into the nervous system when we asked what made us keep breathing.
I think this was the key thing as to why he was the best teacher, because he let us run the pace of the course with our questions and would be happy to switch between topics, rather than say, "we will get to that later" he just would talk about it now instead, equally if it was a totally different subject he would still happily talk about it. This taught us that everything was interconnected and that you can't just categories things because topics do overlap, and I notice that that is forgotten in many school systems.
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