Fortunately, the flip side is also true, “If the teacher has a good relationship with the pupils then their interest for the subject taught is greater, and if the teacher exerts a large influence on what happens in class, the pupils learn more.”

According to a new study, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a teacher to fundamentally change a disrupted relationship with students once it occurs. It is therefore best for teachers to build a good relationship based on a large degree of influence (teacher dominance versus submissiveness) and proximity (teacher cooperation versus opposition) with a class right from day one.

A joint report by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and Utrecht University concludes, “The relationship between a teacher and class is important for the learning achievement of pupils and their pleasure in learning.” Dutch researcher Tim Mainhard discovered, “Teacher-class relationships are very stable over the course of a school year. Consequently if teachers get off to a bad start, it is almost impossible to put things right.” If, however, a single poor lesson occurs when the relationship is good, the situation often returns to normal over the course of a week.

My Teacher, My Hero strives to give thanks to inspirational teachers across the country and inspire new teachers to join the profession. We hope to help raise the status of teachers in our society and recognize the integral role that they play in shaping our future. With your help, we feel that we can shift our society’s perception of the teaching profession towards recognizing educators for the important role that they play. Further, we hope to inspire a generation of young, intelligent, and passionate people to take pride in their desire to teach.

Great teachers set high expectations and clear objectives; are prepared, organized subject-matter experts; engage and relate to students; and consistently show they care about the young people they teach.  But how does a school know they are hiring teachers with the skills to help all students succeed?

Turns out, they don’t.  Sadly, only about 1 in 4 teachers hired have the essential “it” teaching qualities.  A New Yorker article on education hiring reports on research by Thomas J. Kane, an economist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth.  They conclude that schools would probably have to test four candidates to find one good teacher.  Furthermore, teacher test scores, graduate degrees, and teaching certifications have little connection to student achievement.

The article also features the dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, Bob Pianta, whose team “developed a system for evaluating various competencies relating to student-teacher interaction. Among them is regard for student perspective; that is, a teacher’s knack for allowing students some flexibility in how they become engaged in the classroom.”

This evaluation tool, known as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, has been tested in several large studies to assess classroom quality in preschool through twelfth grade. Measurements focus on the quality of teachers’ emotional, organizational, and instructional interactions with students.

In an ideal world, schools would spend time evaluating teachers. Then retain, support, train, and mentor those that meet the criteria.  A win-win since “success in raising their students’ academic performances [pdf]” is the key reason teachers state for remaining in the profession.

Education.com sums up teacher quality and student achievement as follows. “A growing body of research shows that student achievement is more heavily influenced by teacher quality than by students’ race, class, prior academic record, or school a student attends… and the most significant gains in student achievement will likely be realized when students receive instruction from good teachers over consecutive years.”