It seems to me there is a long-running cliche in hollywood movies; it's the inspirational teacher or professor that motivates his student(s) to live up to their potential.
I feel this is trash, the majority of impressions left on me by educational facilitators I have encountered have been negative ones.
Do you agree? Please share your stories of bad experiences, or good ones if you have any.
For myself, there was the verbally abuses elementary school teacher, 'Mr Black'. Mr Black just loved yelling loudly at children, sometimes in front of the class. One day this was me, for something frivolous which I had not even done. It shook my confidence for years. This was probably the worst of many other experiences and I'm sure this is minor compared to some horror stories out there.
I'm a teacher, and some of my colleagues scare the shit out of me. They would pick a random kid, and tease him just for fun. It's a pity. I try as hard as i can to be a good teacher, and those bastards go and ruin the kid's life for a couple of laughs.
I hate teachers. They think they're so damn smart and just say things that make students believe what they say but you can't fool me. The thing they say are of their own opinions and/or what they believe. What they teach us is mostly done by the book. I would have been one of those people who would step up and debate but I was the quiet one who is just putting up with all the shit through elementary through high school days.
In 6th grade middle school, this math teacher kept yelling at me because I couldn't get this one math equation. So she kept yelling at me and everyone is all quiet. All of a sudden, this guy starts to help me out and the teacher still yells at me. Afterwards, she tells me that I have to come after school so that she can tutor me. I think she wants to tutor me so that she won't make a fool out of herself for yelling at me. Fuck everyone in that class and fuck that bitch teacher...
teachers are just normal people who deal with other people who are at a vulnerable stage of their life.
If they are good, they can have a profound and long lasting impact on their student's life. If they are bad, the consequences can be equally profound, with dramatic consequences. Often teachers do not have the education, responsibility and ethics to manage correctly their power.
I have seen many examples, good and bad. Gifted people turned away from their passions by stupid and petty teachers, and lost children rescued by talented teachers. My big worry is that insufficient education is given to teachers before and during their careers. Also, in many countries the teacher status is low in society, which is terrible for their performance. How can you inspire people if you are looked in contempt by society at large? (BTW, I'm not a teacher, but during school it was a past-time of mine to analyze teachers' performance).
In geometry, we had a teacher that really needed to keep his hands off of kids, no matter how innocent his actions may have been. He always rubbed our backs (When there was NOTHING wrong with us, so I know it wasn't for comfort.), and he tickled one girl when she didn't immediately shake his hand on the first day (And she was not happy about it.)
His teaching style was not my favorite either. Sometimes literally, the whole class would have no clue how to do a problem (Maybe we were just stupid, I don't know >_>) and he would assign people to solve the problem when they were the ones who specifically said "I have a question on this problem, can we do it in class?"
Alternately though, my band and physics/chemistry teachers were really really helpful and took a LOT of time out of their lives to help. My calculus teacher was awesome as well, but he had a monotone voice, so I ended up sleeping a lot in that class >_>;;
there are always wonderful teachers who spend a lot of their time into what they're doing to try and make the class seem more fun to their students - among them was my freshman-year english teacher, who inspired me to become an english teacher myself.
But yes, I've had my share of the crappy teachers who think they know everything and generally don't give a damn about their students. Those people are monsters. They ruin lives. They turn education from something that could be enjoyable into something torturous. I despise teachers like these and am livid when I come across people like them. Why do they even become a teacher, I wonder, if they don't enjoy teaching children what they love? I wish they'd just go become sanitation workers or CEOs, or any other job that doesn't destroy lives they way they do.
God I had a few teachers that made me ruined.
one in fifth grade hated all of us "slower" kids and got angry when I just tried to ask for a copy of homework I was absent during.
Also threw chalk at one girl. And made me a lot less confident in my work, as I hated to ask for help from then onward.
>>8
I had a teacher like this, made us sit in the middle of the class away from the other kids. He had the girls desks all together and the boys the same way in little islands. Except us, we had to sit together.
I went to some horrible highschool and I had this horrible chemistry teacher. Firstly, his accent is hard to understand. Secondly, whenever we raised our hands and tell him we don't understand what he just explained, he would say "But I just explained it!". Then that was the end of the conversation.
He knows we aren't good at chemistry but he won't repeat himself twice because of his god dam laziness. Most of the kids in his class ended up failing the New York Chemistry Regents test.
In elementary school we had some horrid reading program. It was designed for kids who knew English as a second language, or were just fucking illiterate. It was called SFA. "success for all". Though it didn't do much for those of us who were already reading beyond our level. We'd have to keep a reading log and record how many pages we read each night, and get it signed by a parent or guardian. Alongside that, there was AR, "accelerated Reading". Each book was assigned a grade level, and we'd have to take tests about the books on the computers for points. We'd have to get a certain number of points each trimester or we'd fail.
I had 2 teachers who took these programs way too fucking seriously.
The first was Mrs. Fleury. If you were reading a book that didn't have an AR mark(a star sticker) on it, she would kick your ass. I remember a friend of mine brought his own copy of Tom Sawyer to read in class, and Fleury told him he couldn't read it because it wasn't an AR book, and therefore a waste of time. I pointed out it WAS an AR book since I had taken the test on it earlier that year, and she said "It doesn't matter, if it doesn't have a sticker, it's not an AR book" It was one of my most FFFFFFFFFFF-- moments in elementary school.
The second teacher was Mr. Nelson. He was a veteran, and harsh, so no one really liked him in the first place. Boys tended to piss on his car. While my mom was out of the state to attend her father's funeral, I had my dad sign my reading log. Nelson thought I forge the signature and gave me detention. Why? He said I didn't have a dad. I've never been more insulted, and I took it as good news when I read in the paper that he committed suicide a couple months back. :3
I think I've been lucky in that I've had more than my fair share of good, decent, sometimes inspirational teachers. I'm in uni now, so I've been through quite a few.
In fact the worst teachers I can remember were all back in primary school. In Year 7, we had this one male teacher who would seem to favour the popular kids and laugh at the nerdier ones (which I was one of). Anyway, this one time he got me to draw his secondhand convertible that he'd just bought. It took me two hours, but I drew it. Later, a "popular" girl asks him for a sheet of paper, because she ruined hers or something. He takes my picture, rubs it out in front of me, and then hands her the sheet. As a twelve year old girl, I was pretty gutted.
>>12
Jerk ass.
I had a teacher who snagged my notebook from me and read it out loud to the class. It was the beginning of some medieval fantasy thing I had been writing instead of notes. Everyone laughed and then he threw it away.
Let's get together and kick our teacher's asses.
I want to be a teacher!
Call me a big dreamer, I might not be the most inspirational... the most magnificent... or the most talented... but the whole reason why I want to become one is because of the students. I had a relatively happy school life, sure I had my ups and downs, but I'd like to somehow make all of my student's lives better somehow... I may be obsessed with history and would gladly teach all those who want to learn it, but my man focus would be trying to help students have the best dang school life possible.
Keep dreaming. When those kids run your nerves to the ground because they don't want to learn, or when they totally and completely disrespect you, or when they have an attitude about everything, or when your pay is about half of what it should be, you'll understand how truly hard being a teacher is.
Now, if you can trudge through all of this and still manage to inspire a couple of children; wonderful, you have just done what about 80% of the educational system fails to do each and every day. Otherwise, be prepared for hell. You are going to have to know much more than the required subject matter, that is for damn sure.
Teachers in the US REALLY don't get paid enough for what they go through.
>>15 Is this really a question of money? What would change if US teachers would be paid 2000$/hour? How would that improve conditions? I'm being serious here.
It would make things worse for students, with most people studying to become teachers just for the paycheck. Fat stacks of cash do not turn a person into someone I want to trust my children with, nor does it effectively alleviate problem-child-related stress. The job should be it's own reward.
No K-12 teacher should earn any more than is necessary to live in a decent neighborhood and support a family with help from a spouse, especially if publicly funded.
>>17
Do doctors take care of your body for "it's own reward"? That kind of thinking is irrational. Plus, my point was not money. Teaching is a hard job. Getting high-quality teachers will take a decent paycheck from a high-quality school. That's just common sense sir. If you just want average education, pay for average education.
MY point was that lower and middle school teachers don't just teach. They babysit. High school's a little different, but that is how it is. And they go through a lot of bullshit. Money was not the central focus. That was just an ending statement.
>Getting high-quality teachers will take a decent paycheck from a high-quality school. That's just common sense sir.
No, it's circular thinking. Of course a high-quality teacher/school will by definition provide a high-quality education. You did not explain anything by saying that, certainly nothing concrete about the US education system.
Let me try to help you provide a meaningful response: Is the problem with US schools the result of teachers low pay? Avoid the knee-jerk "yes" answer, and explain me how for instance doubling the salary will solve the problem. I want to know what a teacher earning double salary, or even earn 2000$/hour will do that otherwise he can't do, and how that solves the issue. Like I said, I was being serious with the question, try to provide a well developed answer.
As a teacher I'm not expecting to live in royalty. I'm already expecting to live in a crappy studio apartment living off paycheck to paycheck. All my life I've had simple wants and needs so I'll be fine like that.
I know I won't be able to reach all the students I want to, but if I can atleast help one, I could die happy. Theres always problematic students, we've all been there or witnessed them... I'll just do my best.
I'll be irrational, unreasonable, and idealistic so long as I'm able to help educate the students in life and academics.
Yup I'm a dreaming moron, but I wouldn't change it for the world
That is because education nowadays does not educate you, and teachers do not teach. If you want real teachers, you have to read philosophy. Start with Platos dialogues (which quite occasionally feature Socrates, the teacher of teachers). Plato himself was a teacher, as was his student, Aristotle, another brilliant mind, and a man that knew it all that there was to be known in his age. You can continue with other philosophers and hopefully you'll find why I said the current education system is garbage. (I didn't mention ancient philosophy for a particular reason other than that these men were also teachers and led a philosophers life. Later philosophers, as Nietzsche points out, did not do this)
Reading and understanding philosophy is quite demanding, and might have severe life-changing effects on you. Or you might get nothing of it.