Most teachers enter the profession with high ideals and hopes to inspire a love of learning in all students. These same teachers put great effort into becoming the best educators possible.
What Makes a Teacher Great
The answer to this question is elusive and varies widely from person to person. If there were a formula for becoming a great teacher, it would probably be written about and taught in every school of education. Yet, since every teacher is different, no single formula will work to make every educator someone who can inspire students.
Teach With Your Strengths
Using over forty years of research, the authors found that in every profession, the most successful people are the ones that make the most use of innate talents. Success builds upon success, and it all begins with areas of strength. Successful teachers teach with their strengths and they focus on their talents.
Signature Themes
This book focuses on a concept the authors call signature themes. These are personality strengths that stay with a teacher, year after year. By identifying individual signature themes, the reader can use the themes to enhance everyday teaching practices.
With the purchase of the book Teach With Your Strengths, the buyer receives a code to take an online quiz called the Clifton Strengths Finder. After taking the quiz, the book becomes a reference tool for how to develop the top five identified strengths of talent. It also identifies weak areas and acts as a guide in how to compensate for them.
Focus on Talents
The book advises teachers not to try to fix weaknesses, but instead to ask a colleague to help in those areas using a collaborative work model. The authors urge teachers to focus on what they do well. Beginning with Chapter Four, the authors take each individual talent and elaborate on how to put it to work.
Using signature themes may mean discarding other preconceived ideas about teaching, the authors warn. For instance, the authors state in Chapter One, “Great teachers don’t set high expectations…great teachers set the right expectations for each student.”
At first, this may seem surprising; after all, child psychologists and schools of education encourage teachers to set high expectations. Yet, considering that every student comes into a classroom at a different level, the idea of setting the right expectation makes sense.
This book is no magic bullet for helping a teacher become great, but it certainly will lead the reader down a path of success. By applying the principles of signature themes, all teachers may become their own personal best.
Reference:
Liesveld, Rosanne and Miller, Jo Ann with Robinson, Jennifer. Teach With Your Strengths: How Great Teachers Inspire Their Students. NY: Gallup Press, 2005
ISBN: 1-59562-006-0
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