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Had some great teachers in grade school. Played music and had excellent music teachers in all grades through high school, Mr. Holland's Opus types. There are still people like that out there, the system makes it very hard for them as maintaining order in some of the public schools has been difficult.
My middle school gifted teacher was phenomenal. At a time in ones life when everything is changing and becoming more difficult, she was very patient and caring. She really changed the way I would look at things and encouraged my passion in learning.
My middle school Japanese teacher was also really good b/c she would put in the time to make sure everyone was learning. My best friend has various learning disabilities (try learning Japanese when you are dyslexic) and this teacher would put in extra hours to help her pass the class. She had a lot of different teaching mechanisms to get everyone interested and involved. Years later, we still talk about her!
I had some really great teachers in high school. Although I formed many personal relationships with teachers, the best teacher was not one with whom I was particularly close. He is a really nice guy who has a passion in calculus. Of course, he is a HUGE nerd. But, basically after years of teaching in his own manner, he wrote his own textbook, which really broke down the basics. He made me absolutely love math.
My middle school gifted teacher was phenomenal. At a time in ones life when everything is changing and becoming more difficult, she was very patient and caring. She really changed the way I would look at things and encouraged my passion in learning.
My middle school Japanese teacher was also really good b/c she would put in the time to make sure everyone was learning. My best friend has various learning disabilities (try learning Japanese when you are dyslexic) and this teacher would put in extra hours to help her pass the class. She had a lot of different teaching mechanisms to get everyone interested and involved. Years later, we still talk about her!
I had some really great teachers in high school. Although I formed many personal relationships with teachers, the best teacher was not one with whom I was particularly close. He is a really nice guy who has a passion in calculus. Of course, he is a HUGE nerd. But, basically after years of teaching in his own manner, he wrote his own textbook, which really broke down the basics. He made me absolutely love math.
What kind of unique teaching methods did your teachers use that worked for you? I wish teachers would get more prep time so they could continue to help children and still take care of their own family or simply have a life outside of work.
My best teacher ever was easily my eigth grade geometry teacher. He did not teach the curriculum. He was an awful teacher in that sense, but he did teach me how to learn. He completely made me who I am. I am gifted and have always recieved excellent grades and been generally well-liked amongst teachers although I was quite naive and very much a people-pleaser. Now, I am gifted, passionate, motivated, interested, hard-working, curious, and critical and I love it. He taught me to think for myself, analyze objectively, and most of all how to be passionate and self-motivated. At first, his class was tremendously frusturating, as he would simply hand us a stack of challenging homework way beyond our grade level (we were already two years accelerated) and tell us to figure it out. In class, he would begin by writing a problem on the board. We would have to reason through it as a class with no prior lessons while he played devil's advocate. And god, would he make fun of us! He loved teasing and telling us how much better we could be. His contempt for rules and authority was very different from my personality and I hated it at first. But I learned a tremendous amount. He taught us how to teach ourselves, how to be challenged, and how to rise to meet expectations. That was the year I went from good student to good learner. I appreciate him so much, he will never know how much he changed my life. I am frightened when I think where I would be without him.
I want to hear about your experiences with teachers. What made them a good teacher---not only because of the nice things they do but because of the seemingly awful things that they had to do to help you strive and study harder.
Let's hear it....
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From what I remember in highschool, my best teachers were the ones that were feared by most students. I don't know why it worked for me but those teachers got me studying hard and I am so glad that they did not let me slack off. One of them dropped a heavy txt book on someone's desk because that student was falling asleep. Another one refused to let me in his class because I was 3 minutes late. He did not care if you were an honor student or if you were great in class---the late rules applied to everyone. I was so humiliated BUT I learned to arrive EARLY and solve the extra problems on the board, and he helped me get my grades up from a C to an A in Calculus! My gr. 10 world history teacher used to turn beat red all the time when he would yell out across the room to get our attention. I even started having dreams about WWII (a topic we studied), with me dropping water balloons from a fighter plane. His strict, no-nonsense approach to behavior management helped me remember a lot more historical facts than I care to retain. lol. On the other side of the spectrum, I've had exceptionally gentle and easy going teachers nurture my love for arts, drama and music.
Same here. My best teacher had me too afraid to not do my work. She was so fast to call home and a phone call home meant being grounded at the least. Just before I graduated, she asked to see me privately. She sat me down and told me that I'm a why person in a what world. She told me that I have to take the time to understand in order to do. She said that she could take a room full of students, teach them how to do something and I'd be so busy trying to figure out why it worked the way it did that I would never get the assigned task done but she could take that same room of students, explain why things work the way they do and I'd be the only one who would figure out how to do that task. I didn't appreciate what she was telling me until years later when I went to college. She was right. It's understand or bust. It's an A or an E. There's little in between for me. I either get it or I don't and I have to work to get it because there is no in between. I've always wondered how students get C's. I can't do a C. I can do A's or drop the class, lol.
My GPA at graduation from high school was 1.67. For college they were 3.98, 3.87 and 3.57. In my defense, I was working full time that last time around and picked and chose which assignments to put my effort into.
In college my best teachers were the ones who could explain why things worked the way they did. I loved my fluid dynamics instructor, who also happened to be my advisor. He was a nutty bird. My polymer professor was HARD but man did I learn in his class. On a personal level, I didn't like him but he was an expert in what he taught. You had to work to learn in his class because he had a hard time coming down to our level but it was worth the effort.
Funny how many people mention the fear factor. These days that doesn't seem to be as motivating. Half the time, the phone numbers I have for my kids parents/guardians are disconnected or wrong and parents dont call back. If you do get in contact, many admit they have no control over their own children.
The best teacher I ever had was my fifth grade teacher, who also ran the gifted/talented program of which I was a part. She was an excellent teacher for a variety of reasons, including the following:
-She did not expect us to meet standards...she expected us to exceed them.
-She not only wanted her students to BE intelligent, she wanted us to SOUND intelligent...which meant that improper grammar usage was not tolerated. Seriously, you got your name on the board if you uttered the likes of "ain't," "I seen," or "I done." She retired a couple of years ago, and I often wondered if contemporary parents butted heads with her over that one, defending their snowflakes' rights to speak however they preferred...seems likely, although nobody questioned it when I had her (late 80s).
-She required thirty minutes of quiet, independent reading every single day, and played classical music during reading time, with the title of the selection, the name of the composer, and a fact about the composer or piece written on the board.
-She taught every core subject, and incorporated fine arts into every academic subject, math and science included...she did not consider them to be separate.
-She didn't deem things "over our heads." She taught fifth graders the Cornell method of notetaking, which some people were just learning when I got to college.
-She incorporated LOADS of presentations and public speaking practice...important life skills.
-She was years ahead of her time on collaborative student projects and self-directed group work.
Most of what she did with us, I do with my students, now. She rocked.
So, teachers need to be themselves. Not everyone is going to like every teacher. And teacher's aren't perfect either.
I agree with you about teachers needing to be themselves. As a teacher who has started his 21st year teaching in elementary school, I set my classroom procedures and policies, inform my parents about them, and remind my students daily about the high expectations that I have for each and every one of them.
The characteristic that set my best teacher apart was empathy. Growing up in a small town as one of only 4 students of colour in the entire school, being called names was a pretty common occurrence and I was acutely aware of how little the other students knew about difference. All year I dreaded the upcoming To Kill a Mockingbird unit. Having already read the book, I knew that N word was sprinkled throughout and figured it would be a racial slur free-for-all in the school yard. Yikes.
Well when the book was finally introduced, she gave the most amazing, impactful lesson. She followed it up with privately (and in a non-condescending way) asking me if I was comfortable and how I had felt about the lesson. This was a far cry from other teachers, who had, sometimes overhearing me being called names, had encouraged me to “just ignore it” and be the bigger person. Anyhow, the rest of the term was amazing - she made everyone look forward to English class.
She understood that being a good teacher means being able to relate to personal experiences and ideas different from one’s own, and encouraging students to do the same while also being critical thinkers.
Also, +1 for humour! Some of my greatest teachers were funny as hell.
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