Final Draft, Paper 2

Shelby Williams

Sonia Begert

English 101

 

I find that many teachers have very different styles of teaching. Whether they get through to their students or not, I believe, is how they teach. If a teacher uses fear of failure to get students to comply, I believe that it COULD be effective… but not memorable. The most important quality a teacher could instill in a student is confidence, whether it is through the material they teach, what attitude they themselves project, or how they interact with their students. Two teachers that really stood out in my mind were Mrs. E and Mrs. P.

Mrs. E was a middle school teacher of mine, and loved all her students. She was kind and insightful, and always thought of brilliant and fun ways to conduct her class. She loved having the student’s converse with her during class, and never, not once, did I hear her give a negative comment. Mrs. P however, was a totally different story. She was a high school English teacher, and most of the time… was not all that kind. She was loud and dictatorial. She liked things done her way, and nothing else would suffice. She liked to give feedback to her students, however, that feedback was hardly ever positive. Most of the students in her class didn’t speak up, for fear of being shot down for their idea, or even made fun of by Mrs. P herself. While Mrs. E encouraged her students to be confident in what they do, Mrs. P found confidence in her students to be annoying.

Mrs. E was a science teacher. The material she taught was fun, amazing, and mind-boggling. She had so much passion for what she was teaching, therefore, that passion was passed down to her students. Her students WANTED to learn! In her essay, Audre Lord’s first words were “I want to read”. That same desire for learning was always passed down to the students in Mrs. E’s classes. Our desire led us to strive to do well, which gave us great grades, and in turn, gave us confidence. We once had an assignment to take one of the planets and either do a travel brochure, a TV ad, or a song about it (keep in mind; this was a middle school science class!). Most of the kids didn’t feel comfortable singing a song in front of the entire class about a planet; I didn’t either! Although, my partner wanted to. And once Mrs. E heard of our plan… she was totally on board. She knew it was probably the hardest of the three assignments, and gave us special help with it. By the time we were done, we had a one and a half page song about Neptune that rhymed and everything! Without Mrs. E’s support of our plans, we would have never been able to go through with it. She gave us encouragement, and positive reinforcement that, in turn, made us confident to get up in front of a class, and sing a song about Neptune.

Mrs. P was an English teacher. The things she taught were pretty basic. This is how you write a paper… this is how you form a paragraph… this is how you grab your reader’s attention, etc. We’ve been learning about that since elementary school! The thing that made her so uninspiring… she didn’t look for ways to spice up her course material. Now, Mrs. P was a teacher who truly did know what she was talking about. But she was mean. She treated the classroom like it was her kingdom, and we were all her mindless servants. Anything she said HAD to be correct. Anything she did HAD to be profound… at least, in her mind it was. She was a teacher who discouraged confidence in everything she said or did. If a student went out on a limb to try something new… it was shot down. She didn’t like ‘new’, she liked ‘her way’. If a student asked a question during class… that student would be mocked by Mrs. P for asking a stupid question. Mrs. P didn’t want confident, self-sufficient students. She is much like how Paolo Freire describes education. He states, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.”   She wanted mindless zombies who would accept her every word to be true, and never do anything unless explicitly instructed to do so.

Mrs. E was always a happy and excited teacher! She loved it when a new group of students walked through her classroom door to be taught by her.  During the time I had her as a teacher, she had family tragedies, deaths, and personal issues in her life. However, not once did it interfere with her teaching. Mr. Keating, a teacher in the movie “Dead Poet’s Society”, reminds me of her. Mr. Keating says, "Carpe diem; seize the day… Make your lives extraordinary.” Mrs. E was always trying to get us to realize our full potential. Mrs. P was a completely different story. If she was having a bad day… then WE, her students, were definitely going to have a bad day. You would know what kind of day it would be by whether or not she was stomping her feet… by how many frustrated exhales she gave… and whether or not she screamed at a kid before the bell even rang. She would then lecture about the thing we were learning about that week, not trying to hide her bad attitude. Her lecture voice would be loud and angry, punctuated by her yelling something to a student who was either falling asleep, or didn’t look like he/she was paying attention. Everyone left the classroom on those days feeling like the world could end, and they’d be happy with that.

Mrs. E kept the interactions between herself and her students to a high at all times. She loved taking the time to talk to her students, find out how their weekends were, or what they were doing over the breaks. She was always invested in her students’ lives, and could always be counted on to lend an ear.  Mrs. P was completely different. She didn’t WANT to know about her students personal lives, but made sure we knew about hers. If one of her students seemed to be struggling in their life, she would tell them that in her classroom, “nothing else matters, now pay attention.” She truly didn’t care, and didn’t want to get involved.

In my time in both Mrs. E’s class and Mrs. P’s class, I learned about two very different teachers, with two very different teaching styles. Mrs. E gave her students confidence through positive encouragement, a very positive attitude, and always showing that she cared. The students that left her classroom were generally much happier than when they entered. In his essay, ‘I Just Wanna Be Average’ part 2, Mike Rose states, "Venal though it may have been, I loved getting good grades from MacFarland." We all felt this way about Mrs. E. However, Mrs. P instilled fear and self-doubt in her students through her every action in the classroom. She didn’t like confident students, as they interfered with her own self-righteous confidence. Students who left HER class were generally upset, angry, and didn’t want to go back tomorrow. Mrs. P wasn’t ever all that interested in her students, or even in teaching. Maryellen Weimer, PhD, states in her essay, ‘Effective Teaching Strategies: Six Keys to Classroom Excellence’ that, “Truly awful teaching in higher education is most often revealed by a sheer lack of interest in and compassion for students and student learning.” Mrs. P demonstrates this perfectly.  See, teachers can influence a lot in a student’s life. The way they act and behave can determine whether there are successful outcomes in their students’ grades or not. I never knew anyone to be failing Mrs. E’s class. Although in Mrs. P’s… students were constantly failing. I think we can clearly see whose method works best here.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited Page

 

Audre Lorde’s essay

Paolo Freire “Banking Education” essay

Dead Poet’s Society, "Carpe diem; seize the day… Make your lives extraordinary.”

 ‘I Just Wanna Be Average’ part 2, "Venal though it may have been, I loved getting good grades from MacFarland."

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/effective-teaching-strategies-six-keys-to-classroom-excellence/ Maryellen Weimer, PhD, states in her essay, ‘Effective Teaching Strategies: Six Keys to Classroom Excellence’ that, “Truly awful teaching in higher education is most often revealed by a sheer lack of interest in and compassion for students and student learning.”