Azul Terronez: What Makes a Good Teacher

Great?
at TEDxSantoDomingo (Transcript)
I’m obsessed with the question: “What makes a good teacher great?” I’ve collected
26,000 responses to this question, in eight different schools, from the poorest schools in
Los Angeles, to suburban schools in Texas, to elite private schools abroad. And after 24
years of teaching students, I’m still perplexed by this question.

Today, I’m going to teach you the lessons I learned from those thousands of students,
and learn what I found out from them if we just listen to students. The thing about it is
that during my time of asking kids this question, I realized that we don’t ask this
question for a particular reason: schools are afraid. Based on fear, they don’t really want
to know what kids think. Partially because they don’t think kids will take it serious. I’m
going to share with you one of the most profound quotes, answers to this question that
I’ve ever received.

[A great teacher eats apples]

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t this prove my point? “Great teachers eat
apples.” When I first saw this, I dismissed it as silliness, but it appeared again and again.
So I thought, “There’s got to be something to this, but what are they trying to tell me?”

So one day, I decided I would start eating apples. I ate them in the morning, at lunch,
during class, in the hall. Kids began to give me apples. They’d see me eating them and
say, “You’re eating an apple!”

“I know!”

They would smile, and I would smile back. It wasn’t until I understood that kids wanted
to see me as somebody who is willing to receive a gift from them, that the apple was a
symbol for our relationship. There was goodness in that, and trust. But for a long time, I
wasn’t listening and I hadn’t understood this.

[A great teacher is chill]

They have their own language. When they say, “A great teacher is chill,” what they
really mean is: “Don’t take it too serious. Be calm in all situations. Don’t get
overwhelmed.” They have a way of speaking to us about what they really want to tell
us, but we have to listen. Right?

I’m the father of two grown kids. They’re out of school now and in college. But when
they were at home and they were teenagers, I had to learn a whole new language. When
they would come home from school, I might ask them: “How was your day?” and they
would say, “Fine,” which usually meant: “It was not bad. It was pretty good. Nothing
happened eventful. I probably learned something. Maybe I didn’t.”

But if they came home and said, “Fine,” what they meant was: “It wasn’t really great,
but don’t ask me, because you wouldn’t understand anyways.” If I asked them how their
day was and they said “OK,” what they were trying to tell me was: “It wasn’t good at
all, and you should probably ask me more questions, but don’t expect me to answer.”

Kids have their own language; they have their own way of thinking. They want us to
think like them and understand what’s inside of their head. They have so many ways of
thinking that things are great. They want us to see their world inside of them. But they
don’t want us to act like them; they want us to be calm and protect them and keep them
safe.

Kids have a way of communicating, and adults just haven’t spent the time listening. But
what if we did? What if we really listen deeply to students? One of the things I noticed
after all the years of collecting these responses is that there is patterns that emerge.
When I asked the question of what makes a good teacher great, oftentimes I heard, “A
great teacher loves to teach”, 70 percent of the time, the quote or the answer that
followed was: “A great teacher loves to learn.” The reason this is significant is they
don’t see this happening. They don’t see teachers learning in front of them. They see
them teaching, but they wish they would learn along with them.

Think about it. Principals hire teachers to be content experts, to have all of the
knowledge, not to be learners. But what if they did? What if you showed up in the
classroom, and the teacher had something prepared, said, “I don’t know exactly what
we’re going to do today, but I can’t wait to learn with you.”

Or that they saw their teacher struggle through something they didn’t actually know and
then eventually discover the answer. Kids want to be inspired by this idea that learning
is important. But they don’t see it in schools.

[A great teacher isn’t a teacher]

When I saw this quote: “A great teacher isn’t a teacher,” I actually was a little bit
offended. “What do you mean?! I’m a teacher!” They’re like, “We know.” What they
were trying to tell me is: a great teacher isn’t in the classroom. Think about it. Think
about a time that you have some enduring understanding, a time when you learned
something that you still remember and you use to this day, like throwing a baseball or
riding a bike, I remember learning to ride a bike from my mom when I was five years
old. She took off the training wheels of my bike, she got behind me, and began to push.
And we ran, and we ran, until she finally let go, and I began to ride a bike. That’s what I
did; that’s how I learned to ride a bike. I can still ride a bike to this day from that
moment.

But can you imagine if I tried to learn to bike from my mom in a classroom, what it
would look like?

[Copy this Bike riding 101]

“Son, first, you need to learn all the parts of a bike. There’s the pedals and the crank,
and there’s a chain that turns the wheel. You have to have a significant force; once the
force has enough momentum, you can keep your balance. That’s how a bike works. I
want you to learn all the parts, be able to label them and draw them. Then you’re going
to learn and write a research paper about the history of bike riding. All the important
elements, the adventure, the development of bikes. And at the end of that, you’re going
to take a final examination. If you pass and get an A, you can ride a bike.”

At five years old, I think I would’ve said, “Never mind, I’ll just walk.” This is exactly
what we do to children. We put them in a classroom and tell them, “This is what I want
you to learn. It’s important. Do it.” And kids know that it’s not true, that we don’t really
value learning this way. So no wonder they’re disruptive, or bored, or disengaged. Kids
want us to be teachers that aren’t teachers.

I want to tell you a story about Yvette. “A great teacher understands that they have a life
outside of school.” They really do. They want us to know that their life in school is way
more different than the life outside of school. I just thought, “Well, how hard is your
life? Your job is to do school; my job is to teach.”

Yvette was a tough student. She was feisty, and she had an infamous reputation. She
walked around with a jacket to prove it. Whenever she walked around, the kids would
follow. She would come in and sit in the front row and lean just so that she can have eye
contact to intimidate me. She would call me “mister” and not even use my full name.
When she’d get up to go to the bathroom, all the girls would follow. Eventually, I
learned from Yvette what she needed to learn. And I thought I became pretty good at
what I was doing. I noticed one day, she stopped turning in her homework. She had
become a great leader in the classroom: she turned in her homework, she participated in
class; she actually was quite good.

So when this happened, I was surprised. So I went up to her and said, “Yvette, I’m very
disappointed in you.” She said, “I know mister; I’m sorry.”

“I expect it turned in tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came, and just a few sheets of unfinished work were turned in. I also went
up to her and said, “Yvette, this is disappointing.”

She said, “I normally do my homework in the bathroom because it’s the quietest place
in my house, but this week the electricity was turned off, and it’s dark in there I had a
candle, but it burned out. And I’m sorry.” She gazed down, not her prideful self.

I had missed the point. I had not listened when she said, “I’m trying, mister.” I heard the
words, but I didn’t listen. Great teachers notice when there’s a struggle. They don’t
make assumptions about what kids can and cannot do. They wait and watch, and they
rescue them when they’re stuck. Good teachers hear them, but they don’t listen. I’ll
never forget Yvette, and I’m grateful because whenever I see an answer of a student like
that, I remember her, and I listen.

[A great teacher sings]

This was the most perplexing answer I think I ever received. It happened every year for
ten years; at least one student would put this: “A great teacher sings.” What are they
talking about? I can’t sing. So I started thinking, “Wait a second! What do they mean?”
It wasn’t until Danny turned it in as one of his responses. He was the class clown.
You know he was the one that when we took the class picture, he put ear fingers behind
your head. He would make faces at me during lectures so I would laugh. Everything
was a joke to Danny. So, when he turned in his responses, and they were all serious and
actually really good, I was surprised when this showed up in the middle. But I knew
there was something to it; I just didn’t know what.

So the next day, I put the agenda on the board, listing all the activities of the day, the
expectations, and the homework. And instead of actually reading them, very seriously, I
sang, in an operatic style, big as I could. The eyes of the students were wide, their
mouths dropped. But you know what happened at the end of that? I expected pointing
and laughing. But the classroom erupted in cheers and applause.

There was a standing ovation; I could not believe it. At the end of class, they walked
out, gave me high fives and handshakes, and here came Danny. He walked in, and he
leaned in, and patted me on the shoulder, and said, “I told you a great teacher sings.”

Great teachers make themselves humble before their students. They take risks. They put
aside their fear to try. They trust that they are going to be supported if they fail. But they
don’t see this; they see experts, remember? Content experts. What if we hire teachers
not to be deep understanders of content, knowledge keepers, but deep understanders of
students? How our schools would change and transform? But it’s no wonder students
don’t care or that teachers don’t really listen.
Because they have never been taught. But what if we did listen? You see, we spend
three years of a student’s life, teaching students to read. About 12 years of those
students’ lives, teaching them to write. Maybe if they’re lucky, they get a semester or
half a year learning to public speak. But they get virtual zero years of formal listening
instruction.

Zero. Think about it. When was the last time you were at a dinner party, and someone
asked a question: “So what do you do for a living?” and the response was, “Oh, I’m a
listening teacher. I teach advanced listening at the high school events, listening
communications, or beginning listener for elementary?” We don’t hear this. Because we
just don’t believe that in schools it’s important, though in the world, listening is one of
the number one skills essential for business and life.

And we just don’t teach it. We need to listen to our students. In our classrooms are the
future The Maya Angelous, the Mother Theresas, the Elon Musks of the world. And can
you imagine if we took the time to ask those students, “What would make a good
teacher great?” and then we actually listened, we could transform schools and
education.

Thank you.