Patience. For teachers, patience is key. It is the ability to accept delay, trouble or suffering without becoming angry of upset, something that teachers must have. As a teacher, we may not always know the background of the student or what their home life is like, and it things like this, that may affect a child’s behavior in a classroom. Therefore we must be patient when it comes to a child’s behavior and not be too quick in becoming annoyed or upset.

Empathy. This is the ability to understand and share the feelings of someone else. It can be quite a challenging skill to have, although every child is different, thus every child has different feelings. As teachers, we should be a person who a child feels they can come and speak to about anything, so we should be understanding for them and easy for them to discuss any issues with. Therefore empathy is a key ability to have as a teacher.

Self control. Personally I feel that this is one of the key abilities that a teacher must have. it is the ability to control your emotions, behavior and desires. If someone does something to annoy you, it can be very easy to loose your temper, although this is not something that you can do in front of a class full of young students. As teachers we need to be able to control ourselves, so that children are able to look up to us and respect us.

Respect. We as teachers want to gain the childrens respect, and the obvious way for us to do that, is to respect them. We can not demand respect if we show none. Respect is a feeling of admiration for some one else because of their qualities or achievements. Children will come in to classrooms with all different sorts of qualities and achievements, thus we need to learn to value and respect all different sorts of children, as children are all different. If we want to gain their respect, we must show ours.

Fairness. Coming back to the idea that every child is different, as teachers it is crucial that we treat all children the same. No child is above or below another. It is the act of treating people equally, and a classroom must be an equal environment in which kids are aware of that also. There should not be one child who feels that they are in any way below another child, and as teachers, it is our responsibility to create that environment.