teachers & teaching methods that stick
Jan. 6th, 2003 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlock"I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada."
- Britney Spears, Pop Singer
School: Well, had first day of winter quarter today. No PoliSci, but there was Psyche 1, English/writing 2, and Lit:Shakespeare.
I think my lit teacher's gonna be good. She seems nice, approachable, looks to be intelligent. Probably is fun in class.
My EWRT-2 teacher I'm not sure about-- she was very softspoken; had a hard time getting a solid first impression of her. But I think I'm going to like her cirriculum, so that's good.
Now, my Psyche teach-- I know I'm going to like him. I already do. He came in with a very Season1 Giles-y suit jacket, but when he opened his mouth that impression faded fast. He's a loud, confident speaker, and has the kind of sense of humor I enjoy listening to in conversation. I think his class will be hard, and I can tell already he's going to be quite strict to his rules, but he doesn't have a lot of rules so it won't be a big thing to adhere to them. He's the kind of teacher who doesn't take shit from his students, but talks/lectures in a way that makes his students like him. If he's the same the rest of the quarter that he was this morning, I'm going to have a lot of fun in his class.
He actually reminds me of an older, male verison of my 11th grade English teacher (who quite being a lawyer a mere two years before). I've noticed stuff like this before-- the teachers that impress me the most on day or hour 1 usually end up being my favorite throughout. And they're all of similar type: quick, witty, knowledgable, strict, thorough, funny, and v. much in control of the classroom.
I had an AP english teacher last year that-- for however nice, smart, and well-trained she was-- had no concept of how to run a classroom. We walked all over her. Some teachers seem to have this impression that "Oh, you're the AP students, you really must care about learning." Well, yeah, we like to learn. But we were also a bunnch of bored teenagers, and no matter how much we liked analyzing literature and arguing about it, there was no way the collective "we" wasn't going to talk our way out of doing anything hard if we had the chance. And our teacher spent so much time talkign about what we were GOING to do, that we never got around to DOING anything.
At first it was kinda fun, not doing much in class, but soon it just got boring. AP English became my super-easy class, in everything except the reading assignment.
This teacher had her own teen children (one of which I was sorta aquaintance-friends with), so you'd think that raising them and years of teaching would give her some insight into how to handle a classroom. But she was terrible. And it's really sad to know that you have a wonderfully kind & fair person who loves their job, when really they suck at doing it. It was one of the few times I've had a bad teacher who was bad because she was too nice, not because she was mean or unfair.
What do guys think makes a good teacher? For the ones who are long graduated-- do you remember what it was that made the good teachers stick out in your mind, over the bad teachers?
- Britney Spears, Pop Singer
School: Well, had first day of winter quarter today. No PoliSci, but there was Psyche 1, English/writing 2, and Lit:Shakespeare.
I think my lit teacher's gonna be good. She seems nice, approachable, looks to be intelligent. Probably is fun in class.
My EWRT-2 teacher I'm not sure about-- she was very softspoken; had a hard time getting a solid first impression of her. But I think I'm going to like her cirriculum, so that's good.
Now, my Psyche teach-- I know I'm going to like him. I already do. He came in with a very Season1 Giles-y suit jacket, but when he opened his mouth that impression faded fast. He's a loud, confident speaker, and has the kind of sense of humor I enjoy listening to in conversation. I think his class will be hard, and I can tell already he's going to be quite strict to his rules, but he doesn't have a lot of rules so it won't be a big thing to adhere to them. He's the kind of teacher who doesn't take shit from his students, but talks/lectures in a way that makes his students like him. If he's the same the rest of the quarter that he was this morning, I'm going to have a lot of fun in his class.
He actually reminds me of an older, male verison of my 11th grade English teacher (who quite being a lawyer a mere two years before). I've noticed stuff like this before-- the teachers that impress me the most on day or hour 1 usually end up being my favorite throughout. And they're all of similar type: quick, witty, knowledgable, strict, thorough, funny, and v. much in control of the classroom.
I had an AP english teacher last year that-- for however nice, smart, and well-trained she was-- had no concept of how to run a classroom. We walked all over her. Some teachers seem to have this impression that "Oh, you're the AP students, you really must care about learning." Well, yeah, we like to learn. But we were also a bunnch of bored teenagers, and no matter how much we liked analyzing literature and arguing about it, there was no way the collective "we" wasn't going to talk our way out of doing anything hard if we had the chance. And our teacher spent so much time talkign about what we were GOING to do, that we never got around to DOING anything.
At first it was kinda fun, not doing much in class, but soon it just got boring. AP English became my super-easy class, in everything except the reading assignment.
This teacher had her own teen children (one of which I was sorta aquaintance-friends with), so you'd think that raising them and years of teaching would give her some insight into how to handle a classroom. But she was terrible. And it's really sad to know that you have a wonderfully kind & fair person who loves their job, when really they suck at doing it. It was one of the few times I've had a bad teacher who was bad because she was too nice, not because she was mean or unfair.
What do guys think makes a good teacher? For the ones who are long graduated-- do you remember what it was that made the good teachers stick out in your mind, over the bad teachers?
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Re:
Date: 2003-01-06 06:34 pm (UTC)AP English 4 (before that we had Honors English--all of which were harder for me, with tougher teachers) was the first class where I used book notes instead of reading. My preferred source was www.pinkmonkey.com. Very good place. I didn't use it all the time, just on half of Crime & Punishment and most of Jane Eyre. I actually forced msyelf through Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Ethan Frome, and a few others (Wuthering Heights being the least annoying of them, but still not my type.) The only books I read & enjoyed in that class were the ones for my book reports-- 1984 and Frankenstein.
I also think that breaking the information down into simpler pieces, then building it all back up again to see the full picture makes education more easy for students to learn.
That method usually works well. The teacher has to interest me in material that I'm reading in order for me to learn it, and the best teachers I've had did that. my 11th grade Honors English teacher was the hardest I'd had, but I learned more about writing essays, analyzing literature, debating it, and how to appreciate it in that one year than I think I learned in all the three other years put together (though my 10th grade teacher was no slouch either, he just didn't teach as much over all.)
I wish you good luck in this quarter!
Thank you! I have political science tomorrow in addition to those classes above, and I'm looking forward to it.