I guess I should explain this headline a bit. Of course, I've had a teacher for every course I've taken. But, in my opinion, a majority of my school instructors didn't deserve the title that they had. For example, my chemistry teacher in high school would put on a video every class that took the entire hour and then pass out a worksheet for us to do for homework.
I remember asking her a question and her referring to the video for guidance. I had to get a tutor outside of class because my teacher wasn't teaching. "Teach" is literally in the name. My question is, why isn't the education system keeping up with the quality of their educators?
After teaching myself from online tutorials and paying a tutor to fill the holes in the curriculum that the teachers neglected, I thought college would be different. I mean, why wouldn't it be? We are paying a lot for an education. However, my first semester in college, I was met by a very aggressive professor who was convinced everyone possessed the same burning passion for political science as she did. A class of 100% lecture, no worksheets, no power points, and no sympathy for the gal who had never heard of significant political leaders of Prussia from the early 1900s. I couldn't name one of them even if my cat's life depended on it.
The two teachers I had that I've actually learned from were both in the science department. In high school, my biology teacher, Ms. Hernandez, truly cared whether her students learned or not. She would teach an active lesson in which we all participated in, then we would have group work, several diagrams about the parts of the body, and then we would go over it the next class and could ask as many questions as we wanted.
She emphasized how important it was to reiterate information in multiple ways in order to cater to those who learned in different ways, such as physical, verbal, and visual. Even though science is in no way part of my major, I can still remember the basics of which she taught me.
My second teacher, Dr. Riggs, also cared about his students. He taught biology of human aging during my first year in college. Sounds like a boring class, but he made it so incredibly interesting. I learned all the stages of aging and how to prevent certain illnesses as I get older.
He engaged students during his lectures and used New York Times articles to refer to recent discoveries. He also had an "S.I." which at my university is a student instructor/tutor who sits in on the class and listens to key points. Twice a week our S.I. would lead a group tutoring session which cleared up any confusion students had during class. Shout out to Dr. Riggs and his "dad" puns about biology.
Teachers should be held to a higher standard since they are responsible for educating future generations. I'm thankful that these two teachers demonstrated a true passion for not only teaching, but also the subject that they taught. If a class is boring, that's one thing. But, when the teacher is too, that's when you lose interest and motivation.
