What Makes a Good Teacher
Every day we see candidates vying to join the ranks of our Instructors here at Manhattan GMAT. We’ve exerted considerable effort in trying to identify what makes a teacher great, though we’ll admit that in practice, despite our developed body of insight, we rely substantially on the “you know it when you see it” technique. That’s one reason we fly all candidates to New York for their final round of auditions (approx. 1 out of 5 candidates that’s flown to New York gets an offer, so we spend a lot of time on this process).
The New York Times today published a fascinating article on the efforts to figure out what makes a good teacher and how to develop the qualities/techniques/knowledge necessary. There has long been a disconnect between professional education (i.e. teachers’ education programs) and success in the classroom, and the article details different researchers’ findings on what a ‘good teacher’ should know and should be doing. It’s something that’s overdue – in many aspects we feel that we in the test prep industry may have a leg up on many institutions in terms of focusing on the mechanics of effective teaching. There’s a shout-out in the article to The Equity Project, which was started by Zeke Vanderhoek, who also founded Manhattan GMAT in 2000.