Mike asked after a rather lengthy blog: Do you remember more from stricter, hard-grading, coercive teachers? Cool, enticing teachers? Any other type of teachers? Have you felt your attitude about certain teachers/teaching styles has shifted since beginning college?
When I think about these questions, the best way for me to answer them is by looking at the science teachers I’ve had over the years. Science is definitely the subject I’ve struggled with all of my academic career, and I’ve experienced many different teaching styles throughout it. In middle school, I was taught Earth Science by a man named Scott who was off the walls and joking around all the time, but had a strict grading policy and hard tests. This was ok, though, because he always found a cool way to help us relate to the information. The same went for my ninth grade Biology teacher. Although the material in both classes was difficult for me, I did well because of the teachers’ styles. When I took chemistry in tenth grade, my teacher had hard tests and graded harshly, but she wasn’t nearly as engaging and just regurgitated information for us. I struggled a great deal in that class. In eleventh and twelfth grade I had the same teacher—Ms. Spring—for courses in environmental studies and geology. Ms. Spring’s grading was very easy, and she was nice and passionate, but not particularly engaging. I did very well in her classes throughout the years. Looking back on it all now, I definitely remember information best from the two teachers that were crazy and engaging but tough graders. If the work was easy, I would have just done what I needed to get an A and then forgotten about it. Instead, I really learned what they taught me.
Question: Should students be allowed to switch out of a class just because they don’t like the teacher, even if there hasn’t been any real problems between the student and teacher?
No comments:
Post a Comment