What Makes a Great Teacher?

Everyone agrees that great teachers represent the very heart and soul of education, and meaningful school reform cannot happen in America without great teachers in our nation's classrooms. However, not everyone agrees on what makes a great teacher.

For some experts, the great teacher is a harsh taskmaster, one who gives no quarter and expects none in return. For others the great teacher is a caring person and nurturing individual who demonstrates warmth and compassion for each and every student. For most, the truly great teacher will have some of each of these traits - firm yet flexible, callous yet caring, strong but sympathetic.

Ironically, there is no agreement among the gurus of the school reform movement on what exactly a great teacher should look like. The Obama administration's comprehensive and expensive program for education renewal sidesteps the question. The President in his March 10, 2009 address on school reform cited the need for "outstanding teachers" without defining what exactly that word means. "America's future," he said, "depends on its teachers." Agreed.

In the final analysis, a great teacher is a lot like a great work of art - you don't exactly know what one is but you know it when you see it. As a student in high school, I was fortunate to have many good teachers. However, I had one teacher who was truly great. I have been thinking a lot about him lately and about the qualities that made him such an outstanding teacher.

Fr. Anton Renna taught senior English and Humanities for forty-five years at my high school alma mater, Brophy College Prep in Phoenix Arizona. I was fortunate to be one of his students long ago, although it seems like only yesterday. He taught me a lot about literature and a lot more about teaching. It is because of him that I became a teacher.

As a young Jesuit scholastic (Brophy is a Jesuit high school), earned a masters degree in theology and a masters in English. Because he taught in a parochial school he was not required to have a state teaching credential, so he was spared the pain of attending a teacher's college. As far as I know, he never took a course in teaching methods or pedagogy. Yet, he was the most engaging, challenging, and effective teacher I have ever known.

What was it that made Fr. Renna such an awesome teacher? First, he had absolute mastery his subject, English literature. When he introduced us to Beowulf, he did so in the Middle English. When he taught Shakespeare it was as though he had known the bard himself. In this sense, Fr. Renna was the ultimate teacher-scholar, and for this he earned the respect of his students and his colleagues.

In addition, Fr. Renna always insisted on the highest standards for everyone in the classroom, including himself. He got the best out of his students because he invariably gave the best of himself to every lesson plan and every lecture. (Yes, he did lecture, and we listened to every word!) Good enough was never good enough in Fr. Renna's classroom. We knew that if we turned in a paper that did not meet his high expectations, we would do it over until it did. As a result, we all worked harder to do it right the first time.

Father Renna was also a wonderfully creative teacher and always open to knew ideas and ways of doing things. I remember he brought in a Simon and Garfunkel recording one day and played Richard Cory, Paul Simon's musical adaptation of the poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson. He used it to introduce a unit on modern poetry. Yes, we were hooked.

Because he was by nature a highly creative teacher, he also encouraged creativity in his students. We were required to be creative in every aspect of the course, including the fine arts. Fr. Renna sponsored a senior Fine Arts festival every year, and all students were required to submit an original work of art - a sculpture, painting, or musical composition. The results were simply amazing. My own effort, a sculpted wooden model of King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, hung over Fr. Renna's desk in his classroom for many years after I graduated. When I returned to Brophy as a novice teacher five years later, it was still there!

He had other qualities as well. He was a marvelous storyteller. We would sit in class, fascinated as he told a story from Dickens or Poe in a way that made it come alive. He punctuated his stories with humor that made us laugh, and in so doing he made learning fun. Most of us did not realize we were learning. Only later did we realize that the stories and the jokes had a point. And we got it.

Fr. Renna, more than any teacher I have ever known, treated is students with respect. We were not kids. We were young adults, and he treated us that way. As a result, we treated him - and each other - with respect as well. Fr. Renna never had discipline problems in his classroom. We respected him, and ourselves, too much to cause trouble.

But perhaps the most important quality exhibited by Fr. Renna was his absolute passion for his subject and love of the English language. His enthusiasm for literature was contagious, and because of this his students worked harder in his classes than any other.

I learned recently that Fr. Renna retired this year due to failing health after nearly half a century of inspiring students to think for themselves. I am sure that, given a choice, he would rather be teaching his classes and reading from Macbeth. He will be missed by many and fondly remembered by all of us lucky enough to have sat in his classroom.

So what makes a great teacher? I am still not sure, but I do know one when I see one. And Father Anton Renna, S.J., was a truly great teacher.