The Natural Teacher

Is teaching an art or a science? 

I have always believed there was such a thing as a natural teacher, as I was complimented often in my early teaching days by my more experienced peers and told that I make a great teacher because of something innate and instinctive. It seems that the rest of what I needed to know were skills and techniques that could be taught as long as there was a basic foundation present. 

There is so much to learn in the teaching profession to be a successful teacher, from behavior and the latest child development theories, to classroom management. However, that which makes one person good and explaining or imparting information to another person seems to be an inherent quality, or at least is believed to be so by many of the people I have quizzed on the matter. When mulling over this concept this week I asked friends and family members in different professions if they think there is such a thing as a natural teacher or if the skills could merely be taught. Almost everyone I spoke with felt there were some people who were just better at explaining concepts in a way that the student could understand.

 I was told many stories about good and bad teaching/learning experiences in school and workplace settings. Every successful story featured a teacher who was an expert at their subject matter, patient, innovative and excellent at discovering a way to help the student understand the material or concept. Patience and innovation are qualities that one would assume to be “natural” or innate and the ability to effectively communicate concepts could be varying degrees of both learned behavior or natural ability. However, it is interesting to note that the ex-students relating these stories believe these teaching abilities to be innate, whether they were or not. It is also interesting to note that the teachers in the stories who were not effective were believed to not have the natural ability to teach and it was never suggested that perhaps they just needed better training or education. Although this couldn’t really settle the debate for me with any finality (and it wasn’t really a very scientific survey, just a solicitation for anecdotal information and opinion,) it was interesting to see what other people thought about teachers. 

I do think that it takes more than a natural ability to be a successful teacher because there are so many other components involved in the teaching profession and there certainly is plenty of science that is useful in understanding the human brain, methods of teaching, and classroom organization (among other things). I would suggest instead that there is a symbiotic relationship between the artistic, natural abilities (compassion, patience, understanding, artistry, joy in the profession) and the scientific process and information that make effective teachers.