Educators, paper # 2

When you think about it just from K-12^th grade, we have quite a few different teachers and subjects. The first seven years are just one per year then your last six years you have most likely six different teachers for each period of the day, and that adds up to 43 different educators. So how do you pick out just two to compare or contrast, or how do you pick any if you feel as if every last one of them are just “average”. Throughout the years I have encountered many teachers, I haven’t had 43 in those 13 years, but pretty close. I grew up mostly in Poulsbo, I had only attended a school in Spokane for about 2 years and I can’t remember either of those teachers at all. My memories of classes are quite faint, not many teachers really stood out in anyway and if they did it isn’t because of a whole year filled of different experiences. I never really observed their teaching methods until now, quite a few years later. How was I to pick a couple teachers who made enough of an impression to write about them? When it came down to it I thought of my 8^th grade English/social studies teacher Mrs. B and my 9^th/10^th grade math teacher Mr. D.          

                When I think of a good teacher I think of one that of course gets their point across clearly and affectively but also will make a connection with their students, because they genuinely care about them and their education. Why would you want to spend your life teaching if you truly didn’t care if people learned whatever it may be, I’m sure as an educator you accept that some people just aren’t willing but you try to help them. With that said I think Mrs. B has been a perfect example of an excellent teacher. She is one of the most upbeat and vibrant teachers I have ever encountered. The atmosphere that she had created made her classroom nothing but comfortable. She could almost make you feel as if you were her friend, but of course she kept her teacher boundary. She had been one of my favorite teachers because of these aspects. When it comes to conversation in general I don’t usually feel comfortable and I like to lock up and keep to myself, but she had a way to not only force us to talk but make me feel complacent with her group discussion times. She had shown us she care for us as students and people.

                Not many teachers had taken their class out of the traditional classroom setting, but in Mrs. B’s class at least once a week we got the opportunity to have our group discussions in what was called “the pit” at Poulsbo Junior High (or what is now Poulsbo Middle School). When we had our discussions about whatever our topic was we each had our chance to say something, or we were more like forced to say something. Everyone had their own turns as we passed around the circle Mrs. B’s favorite stuffed monkey called “Moe”. Usually these situations made and still can make me feel very uneasy but with Mrs. B’s comforting personality it made the group feel more at ease and less judgemental than the average classroom aura.

                Many teachers didn’t really send off any sort of vibe to me that they even slightly cared about each individual student and their educations, I get it there are hundreds of students and they all come and go throughout the years, so why should they care? To most it just seemed like it was their 9-5 job, their paycheck and that’s all that mattered. I know this isn’t the nicest thing to say about my many teachers but it is unfortunately how it felt. In some way Mrs. B made me realize teachers really do care though. It may be a strange memory but I still remember I had this light blue shirt I used to wear that had “I need a hug” written on it with the picture of a drawn puppy. My friend who was also in Mrs. B’s class always begged me to wear it, just because at the time she thought it was so cute. Well, one day I was wearing that in class and Mrs. B brought the whole class out onto the balcony to have one BIG group hug just because. With how shy I am it was almost strange but I will never forget it because it made me feel cared about. When she created these small connections it encouraged me to focus on the topic of her class and feel comfortable with my surroundings, which is very important.

                When it comes to bad teachers, they don’t necessarily have to be unknowledgeable about their topics but just about the way they approach teaching them. Mr. D had been a very nice man just like most of the teachers but he didn’t seem to care much about teaching his subject, which was math of different levels. I feel almost unfortunate that I had him two years in a row, almost as if I was missing out on some education I had deserved, the reason I was attending school to begin with. To me there was never a true focus on the math we were supposed to be learning and my time sometimes felt virtually useless.

                Everyone knew how to distract him, just how to hit the perfect buttons for the teenagers. A vast majority of students had only wanted to be at school because of the social aspect and didn’t entirely care about what they were learning. So to those students his class was just the right fit.  Every day was pretty much the same old story, we arrived and then someone would bring up an “interest” in submarines so he would spend his whole day talking about them and same went for football or the navy. That was great if you want to hear about how enthused he is about these subjects and maybe learn a little about them but it was entirely against the purpose of our class time.

                One day we spent our whole class period talking about how Mr. D had been on a crazy long wait list for the brand new tickle me Elmo. He was so enthusiastic about that thing like it brought him back to his childhood and maybe it really did. The day he got his new toy he brought it straight into class to show it off to everyone. So we spent another half of a period just laughing at it watching it roll and laugh over and over again. Little did he know the whole class was laughing so hard because it looked very inappropriate and it was a classroom full of teenagers who can’t control themselves from these thoughts.

                Unfortunately I feel as if Mr. D’s class was when I started to drift away from school. Nobody in high school seemed to care about their education, so why should I? Well, that’s not exactly what I was thinking but I started to feel like what is the point of going to class if we were never going to learn anything. When I was in class I had taught myself everything from the book while he babbled his nonsense. Which I eventually converted my education over to PAL, which was parent assisted learning and basically just homeschooling with a once a week meeting with my advisor.

                Mrs. B and Mr. D are excellent examples to me of teachers who are very friendly but one who can be that as well as keep their class in line and get her points across or in other words a fantastic teacher and the other who can’t quite control himself or his students and doesn’t really teach much of his school subject, which in the end makes him a bad teacher. There have been many situations throughout my school years that I’m sure could classify a teacher one way or another or just as average but with the fact that I have not been paying a lot of attention to them as teachers, not a lot of moments have truly stood out to me like these two classes.