How to decide if Recommender is Teacher or Other?

Hello, so I took part in a summer program at a college and asked the professor that taught us for a letter of rec. Would the professor be a Teacher or Other(in other words, does “Teacher Recommender” mean the person has to be an actual teacher at my high school)

Generally, a teacher is someone who has seen you in a classroom, so this person can technically be a teacher recommender if the summer program was a classroom experience. If you mostly worked in a lab or otherwise did not do typical classwork (discussions, labs, papers, tests, whatever is typical for the subject you studied) or if you did not earn credit, then this would not be a good teacher recommender.

Schools generally prefer teachers to others, so marking this person as a teacher is generally to your benefit. However this person cannot compare you to others in your school, so it would seem that some of the questions might not apply.

If you are really not sure, talk to the school you are applying to.