Characteristics of a Teacher as an Organiser

1. A good organiser is not an autocrat. He or she does not make all the decisions or try to tell everybody in detail what to do and how and when to do it.
2. A good organiser, however, does not simply behave like any other member of the group, without any special rights, privileges, or powers. The group needs positive leadership in order to function effectively, clarify its purpose and achieve its desired results.
3. A good organiser helps the group and the individuals in it to discover, to formulate, and to clarify their own purposes. He or she will not merely tell the learners that they must learn and do this and do that.
4. A good organiser delegates and distributes responsibility as widely as possible. He or she will try to educate the group to manage its own affairs just as far as it can (this encourages interaction in English). With an immature and inexperienced group a good organiser will function to a considerable extent as a director, because he must function this way for the class to get anywhere. As the class learns how to work together, and as individuals in it learn to steer their own course, the function of the organiser merges more and more into guidance.
5. A good organiser encourages and values initiative. But the initiative is not just drifting and getting off the path. It is initiative that is always within in the framework of the purpose of the class.
6. A good organiser builds on strengths rather that emphasizing weakness. He or she goes on the constant assumption that everyone is capable of some achievement, some contribution, even though that achievement may be very modest, and perhaps very different from what the organiser expected or intended.
7. A good organiser fosters self-criticism and self-evaluation within the group. As leader, as director, as guide, the organiser must often take it upon himself or herself to reveal to the group where they have succeeded and where they have failed. However, he must develop the ability to hold a mirror up to the group do they can see and judge their own accomplishments and failings.
8. A good organiser maintains control, because without control and as controller, and constantly strives to develop within the class its own self-control in terms of its common purpose.

These are some of the operating characteristics of any good organiser. They are the operating characteristics of a first-rate teacher. A teacher organises learning. Thus, a teacher's work is different in many important specific and detailed respects from the work of a factory manager, the head of a business department, or the administrator of a school system. But the teacher, like any other organiser, works primarily with people, and his task and responsibility are to create situations in which people can do their best and achieve their best.