Yesterday we went around the circle and named our most influential or inspirational teacher. I had many great teachers, but I found it difficult to name one. The first ones that came to my mind were the few that were negative or difficult or not so inspirational. It was so much easier to remember the ones who influenced me negatively. I had a first grade teacher that told me I was lazy and to read a book if my work was done instead of putting my head down when I had a 104 temperature. I had a physics teacher in eleventh grade who told me I couldn't be a civil engineer because I wasn't good at physics, so for years I stayed away from physics and decided not to major in engineering. In college I found that I liked physics and wasn't too bad at it. I had a crazy AP biology teacher who would tell us all week we were correct and then give us F's on tests of the same material. I remember all their names. Some of the good teachers names have left me.
I chose Mr. Fast because he had a lasting affect on my life. He was a wonderful teacher, what I remembered most was how I was able to use my high school math notes for college calculus. I will never forget how well he prepared me for college. I also remember Twillie Johnson who was the first black teacher I had in second grade. She was also a young woman who cared about us and treated us well.
I said all this to say that as future and current educators we have to be aware of the lasting affects we have on our students lives. The negative effects are often more powerful and easier to remember even if they are fewer than the positive.
We all can think of horror stories. My 4th grade teacher made kids line up in the order of their IOWA test scores. Poor John was at the end of each line. I felt so bad. In 5th grade, Walter and I were slow to catch on to adding and subtracting fractions. Instead of giving me extra help, she made me do the worksheets all over. In the end, I figured it out and taught myself. With all the philosophical talk in this course, I've been wishing my college philosophy professors were better. One lectured in circles on Mondays and Wednesdays and put us in small groups to talk about philosophers on Fridays. It was the blind leading the blind. Useless. Another got a kick out of lecturing above our heads. And he went back over the same material so often that we never got to the Middle Ages, much less modern day philosophy.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the only good to be said from these experiences is that they made us both more determined and confident of our abilities in the end.
The experiences have also galvanized us to do better than what we've seen others do. We are more sensitive and thoughtful of others because of what we've experienced ourselves.