Think Pad

Looking back on my education, there are plenty of teachers that I felt were effective in getting me to learn material, but I will mention just two. Teacher A was my 8th grade and 10th grade math teacher. He didn’t necessarily make math easier in any way, but he made math much more fun because you looked forward to going to his class. Teacher A always used simple jokes, often requiring a very dry humor, which made me constantly pay attention in class so I could catch his different jokes. He also had the ability to demand respect in his class without ever really enforcing anything. He was simply such an amazing teacher that everyone respected his class and no one ever acted up. Teacher B, my 8th grade science teacher, also had a big impact on my education for the better. I enjoyed going to her classes because she was able to connect with me and a few of my friends on more of a personal level. She took an interest in our lives and made sure we were all on the path toward better futures. She, unlike Teacher A, demanded respect in her classroom in more of an authoritative way. Her students knew that if they acted up, she would not skip a beat to send them to the office, resulting in very few problems. On the other side of the spectrum, there have been a couple of teachers who I feel impacted my education for the worse. Teacher C, my 9th and 12th grade teacher, would be my first example of this kind of teacher. Teacher C made the classroom more of a comedy show than an actual classroom. Because of this constant comedy show, students lost interest in actually learning math, myself included. I never paid attention in that class because his humor was cheesy and made me want to pull my hair out, not learn math. He also did a poor job making himself available for after class tutoring or simply answering a few questions after the bell rang. If I wanted to get a question worked out, it always seemed as if I had to ask it in class. Since I didn’t want to seem stupid, I never asked questions in class, so they were never answered. Another teacher that had a negative effect of my education would be Teacher D, my high school German teacher. As a person, Teacher D was awesome, but as a teacher, she lacked. She connected really well with all of her students because she always had very interesting stories to tell, but she never really taught German. Instead of receiving well planned lessons, we were handed hand-outs and told to translate them. This made every class a joke because everyone simply took the hand-out home and entered it into the computer. Because of Teacher D’s lack of instruction, I never actually learned much German language at all. My set of goals and general plan for effective teaching will be rather simple. My classroom will be a friendly place where students look forward to coming each day. I plan to use humor in moderation, similar to Teacher A, but with better jokes. I also want to get to know my students the best way I can in a similar way as Teacher B. I will also take some positive from my negative learning experiences and try not to repeat the things that teachers C and D did in the classroom. I will hold my classroom to much more of a professional standard than them; and I also plan to make sure I give better instruction than Teacher D. All in all, both the positive and negative experiences I had as a student will have a positive effect on my teaching career.