I find it common practice to complain about our educators. They are the ones who have burdened us with a multitude of assignments, groups projects, and difficult tests term after term. I think this is especially true about our high school teachers, in retrospect. After all, we oftentimes cannot help comparing them to our college professors, those instructors with the advanced degrees and the extensive specified knowledge.
Of course, I cannot speak for everyone but I would strongly argue the case for the importance of our high school teachers, or at least my high school teachers.
As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say I do not think I would be where I currently am, as an admittedly academically successful college student at UCLA, were it not for my high school teachers.
I do not mean this in some vague, abstract, and idealistic way either. Rather, I can specifically pinpoint the skills and knowledge my various high school teachers passed down to me which I employ nearly every day in college and will perhaps even use in my future career.
The most obvious example which comes to mind for me is in regards to paper-writing. Starting with a drawn-out Huckleberry Finn paper my sophomore year, several of my high school English teachers had us complete tedious outlines as homework credit prior to embarking on our literary papers. At the time, we obviously hated doing these outlines which required so much detail and quote-finding, they sometimes took more time than the actual paper.
Now, however, I do similar outlines with basically every college paper I write regardless of the subject. This allows me to avoid procrastination, to develop my arguments in a relatively organized fashion, and to produce a hopefully coherent paper in the end.
I also think of the intensive annotation assignments we had to complete, also usually in my English classes. Sometimes we had to analyze and annotate even the most seemingly simple sentences line-by-line. These projects usually felt excessive and unnecessary especially as my once-pristine books became practically illegible with my messy handwriting filling up the margins.
Yet, these kinds of assignments forced me to grasp the importance of close-reading, a skill which has been invaluable for me in my college English courses. Moreover, this kind of detailed note-taking practice has helped me navigate intimidating college reading assignments of all kinds.
Finally — and this component is somewhat more abstract — the enormous workloads I received from my high school professors demanded from me critical time management skills, skills which I have thankfully maintained in college. While college has not required of me as many day-to-day deliverable assignments as my high school AP courses, I still receive numerous and long readings I must complete in order to be successful on my tests and papers.
I try to put the same pressure on myself to finish these reading in a thorough and timely manner just as my high school teachers pressured us, via deadlines and homework points, to complete our critical assignments. This has helped me to stay relatively on top of my school work and not feel too overwhelmed come time for midterms and finals.
I, of course, also carry great respect for my college professors and I do not think it necessarily fair to compare them and my high school teachers. I do, however, believe the efforts, and the retained impact, of our high school teachers often go unnoticed. This is quite a shame, in my opinion. Thus, I would like to recognize the significant, and practical, influence my high school teachers did have on me and to credit a large portion of my academic and professional successes to them.
