TEACHERS STIR VARIED VIEWS

Most students have stories to share about teachers. Parents have heard their children's stories and have compared them to their own school years. Both parents and students form opinions about what makes a successful educator.

According to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, two equally performing Tennessee second-graders can be separated by as many as 50 percentile points on achievement tests by the time they reach fifth grade, solely as a result of being taught by teachers whose effectiveness varies.

Y-Press recently interviewed five students from Speedway Senior High School: Andy Pottenger, 16; Whitney Bradley, 17; Lisa Welch, 16; Ted Bourke, 15; and Sam Watts, 18 -- and three parents -- Susan Pottenger, Karen Welch and Barb Bradley. They discussed what they feel makes an effective teacher.

Good teachers

SAM: I think for them to be a good teacher, they have to encourage the kids to ask questions.

MS. BRADLEY: My best teacher was my junior English teacher. . . . We had to read stories or original novels that probably wouldn't have been what I would've picked to read. But she made it interesting and brought the stories to life.

ANDY: A good teacher gets really into it -- gets materials and some hands-on work. And good teachers, I think, tend to care more about whether you get to know the information instead of turning in homework and stuff.

MS. WELCH: (The) best teacher I ever had was my fourth-grade teacher, and she was a good teacher because she made learning fun. She was always enthusiastic.

WHITNEY: I had one teacher where at the time that I had him I thought that he was incredibly hard and he didn't care about what my grade was. I thought he was just a big freak, pretty much.

And like now that I look back on it, I kind of realize that I learned a lot from that class, and I learned how to study. And he's kind of helped me build my foundation for the subject.

Bad teachers

LISA: Really bad teachers don't seem to listen. They just don't look at you or just go on with the lesson, ignoring you if you look totally lost. . . . And then (they say), 'Here's your assignment, OK, there we go.' And it's hard to learn from someone that you don't have respect for. . . . (I have) a teacher that I thought was gonna be really good 'cause I liked him as a person, you know, but then I got in there and I was like, "Whoa." . . . It just seems like he makes everything up that he tells us. And you can't really have respect for someone that you think that about.

MS. POTTENGER: I remember this one teacher who tried to act real liberal, and he always like sat on the desks. He was kind of like trying to make it too liberal and too open. I thought he was a terrible teacher. He was sort of into himself.

TED: Teachers should have good discipline. Because like if a teacher doesn't have good discipline, then people get out of hand and the subject doesn't get taught.

Age of teacher

WHITNEY: I think that students might connect a little bit better with teachers that are younger just because they are just out of college. They haven't been out of high school that long. They know how it kind of is for us all still. But that might make them more lenient to the kind of stuff that you shouldn't be lenient on.

MS. BRADLEY: If the older teachers can keep their thumb on the pulse of kids and what's important to them, I think they'll be OK.

TED: Age doesn't really matter to me as long as they know what they're talking about.

MS. WELCH: I've seen very young teachers that have the respect of high school kids -- I think that they're capable of that. I think a lot of it is their personality.

Personal vs. impersonal style

MS. BRADLEY: I think it's extremely important to have a good working relationship with the teacher -- a good rapport, I guess would be the word, to be able to talk to them if you think you need to, and for them to be able to call you if there is a problem.

LISA: I think a close relationship is better because they get to know you as a person and what you need as a student, and you get to know them as a teacher and the way that they teach so that you understand them better.

MS. WELCH: A caring teacher means a lot. And I think that is probably something that you need to look for.

Disciplined vs.

relaxed classroom

MS. WELCH: When (a child is) in elementary school, you want a teacher that's warm and fuzzy and affectionate. Whereas the older that they get, you want a teacher that is going to prepare them for the real world. So you need somebody that's not quite so warm and fuzzy anymore.

SAM: I think especially at the high school level, I've found that if you have respect for the teacher, and the class as a whole has respect for the teacher, then discipline isn't a problem. But you know, if the kids feel like they can just push right over the teacher, then the teacher is not in control.

REPORTERS: Gracie Shockley, 13; Kaitlin Stallings, 12; and George Watson, 14.