I feel like I can speak for mainly everyone when I say that we all probably have a list of things we wish teachers would understand. I have so many things on my list that I've practically lost count. Here are just a few that I know most of us could agree on.
Putting your students into a group with people they don't know only encourages us to continue being anti-social.
Honestly, putting me into a group with people I am nowhere close to being friends with is basically telling my group and me to do a poor job on our projects. We'll talk for about the first five minutes, the conversation mainly being out who is doing what parts, but after that, we're on our own. We're not going to check up on how each other is doing and we're certainly not going to correct our partner for making a mistake. The project will probably make sense once we're finished, but it wouldn't be as good as it could've been if we were actually comfortable with the people we were working with. I know teachers are only trying to help, but if I'm going to work hard on a project, I want to do it with people who I'm comfortable with.
The ice breakers at the start of a new class definitely don't help us make new friends.
Speaking from my experiences, they actually made me want to never talk to the people in my class ever again. Not because I had to talk to people I didn't know, but because starting up a conversation with said people and giving them a short rundown of my life is probably the most awkward thing I've ever had to do. One, because being obligated to actually start a conversation is hard on its own, most of the time we'll just stand there and ask stupid and basic questions just so that we can avoid the deafening awkward silence. And two, on top of the uncomfortable conversations, we actually have to tell each other a little bit about ourselves which only makes everything ten times more uncomfortable. I mean, why would I want to share what I like and don't like with people who will either judge me or not care in the first place?
When you ask us to tell you what we dislike the most in a classroom and we say "being picked on randomly", we secretly wish you would listen to that.
Although this topic isn't necessarily a bad thing considering most of us probably won't talk in class without a teacher having to pick on us, I do absolutely hate it when a teacher calls on me knowing full well I definitely don't know the answer. Having to stutter and speak in "um's" and "I don't know's" Is probably the most humiliating thing to have to happen to me inside a classroom because I know the rest of the class is internally laughing at me for not knowing the answer. Again, I understand that the only reason teachers do this is to somewhat teach us not to zone out in the middle of class, but it is really necessary to make us look like idiots in front of everyone else?
Why add participation grades to our final grades?
Fortunately, most of the teachers I've ever encountered never really took this seriously and would just give me a 100% even though I literally spent all of the class not speaking a single word. But I know of some teachers who genuinely do take it seriously and will take points off of that grade for every class you don't participate in. I've experienced that and it hurts my pride seeing my grade job just because I didn't participate in the last few classes. Honestly though, is it really that important to participate?
Teachers might drive us crazy and unintentionally make our stress levels go up, but even so, they deserve all the respect this world has to offer. We might hate a lot of the things they make us do, but what we don't focus on is the fact that everything they do is to benefit us. They think of their students first and that's something I'll never forget to appreciate. So like I said, we might not want to follow everything our teachers say, but we should still be thankful for everything they've ever done for us.
