Assalamualaikum and a very good morning to all.

Just as a short brief of

myself, my name is Sarihan binti Mohd Yusof and today Im going to talk about the
qualities of a great teacher. But firstly, what makes a great teacher difer from an
ordinary teacher? Well, from the meaning of great itself, we can actually
understand that there are diferences in the degree of their teachings as a great
teacher will surely attain a higher quality of teaching and again, that is why they are
being called as a great teacher. Basically, Im going to deliver a speech focusing
on three characteristics of a great teacher which are respective, high at expectation
and good at shifting gears.
Ladies and gentleman,
What is most important in becoming a great teacher is that, a teacher must
respect each and every students of his class. We can never gain any respect from
other people if we ourselves failed to respect the others. It is the same concept as
what you give, you get back. The problem that we have nowadays in this
developing world, most of the teachers are being too egoist and they thought that
they are the only one to be respected in a class context and not the students. It is
true that there should always be a gap or barrier between a teacher and his
students but that does not mean that the teacher shouldnt have any respect on the
teacher. This absurd kind of thinking usually caused the class to be less actively
participated by the students and there will never be the feeling of having a second
family in school because, it is said that the school can be the second home for the
students. Usually, when the students are being respected, they will feel more
confident to participate actively in the class. This is because, they will feel that even
they are wrong in certain cases, their opinion will not be objected solely, but it is
just that they need to make a change to make it right.
Moreover, a great teacher must always put a high expectation on his
students. We should never be bias in putting the expectation that each and every
student will always have the chance of become successful not just in exam, but also
in their future life. This attitude is actually a type of extrinsic motivation which can
actually inspire the students to keep on putting their eforts as success will always
come to those who never give up in their life. For example, in a normal class
situation, there will surely be students with diferent level of proficiency. Usually, the
students with a lower proficiency will have the feeling of inferiority complex or the
feeling of fear to try as they always face failures in their life. As a teacher who is
also a spirit booster, we should always give them encourages and support that they
can always be better than the others if they keep on trying and never give up. In a
Malay context of class, we can motivate the students by comparing the story of the
crow or gagak and the stork or bangau. The story of a crow that should always be
followed by the students is that, there is once a crow who is very thirsty. One day,
he saw a bottle with a little amount of water in it. The crow tried to drink from the
bottle but his beak is too short to reach for the water. He decided to put some
pebbles in the bottle, and soon, he can drink the water easily. So, from this story,

we can motivate the students that there will always be hopes or ways to reach our
own success as long as we keep on trying. On the other hand, as for the stork, there
is a Malaysian children song that starts with Bangau oh bangau kenapa engkau
kurus, macam mana aku tak kurus, ikan tak nak timbul. In this song, the crow or
bangau is blaming the others for his own problem that he is thin because of the fish
who didnt want to show up on the surface of the water. In this story, we should
always remind the students that we should never give excuses as it will only benefit
us nothing.
The third quality of a great teacher is that we should be the one to shiftgears for the students in every lesson. If our lesson fails to be understood by the
students in the class, we should be flexible in coming out with other ways to make
them comprehend the lesson. It is the responsible of the teacher to come out with
the various interesting ways in teaching the students as the time flows, the ways of
teaching should also change according to the ways the students are learning in
class. The students from 20 years back might have diferent approaches and ways
of learning because they can learn best by the way of chalk and talk, difer from
the students nowadays who prefer to learn by using the multimedia resources such
as videos and games.
As a conclusion, a great teacher will always be able to change ones future
because he or she is not just changing the students behaviors but also their way of
thinking and learning. Thus, we should always improve ourselves to become the
best teachers for our students.