I have had some great teachers. They were passionate, knowledgeable, and determined to cram that knowledge into our brains in the best ways they could think of. And then I have had others that cared...not as much. There are two examples that come to mind when I think of notable teachers in my life, and they very different people who I have very different opinions of.
The first teacher was my US History teacher my Junior year of High School. His name was Mr. Scalia, and it was his first year teaching at this school (however he had been teaching a while at other high schools and was a professor at Virginia Tech and in Louisiana). He was Cajun, loud, enthusiastic, demanding total attention of his students, and would often go off on hilarious rants at the beginning of class. Once he had accomplished illustrating his tangential points (which were completely engrossing to listen to actually), he started talking about the meat of discussion, and history. He was never afraid to call historical political figures out in history, at one point he had a rant about why General Custer was an "Idiot" (he had been demoted several times for disobeying orders, and at the time he was killed he was doing just that again). He did not tolerate ruffian behavior from his students however, and actually had two students that year forcibly removed from his class and placed elsewhere. Of course, no one minded this, we were happy to just bask in his lectures. When the time for our state test rolled around, he prepared us well and the classes he taught actually had the highest scores out of any in the school, even the AP/Dual Credit kids. He was a fantastic teacher, and I wish to this day I could have another history class with him because of how honest and interesting he made it.
Eventually though, my Junior year comes to an end. I actually was on high school number 5 at the time as a result of being a Military brat, and my credits were all kinds of screwed up. Me and my counselor had worked out my plan for my senior year before, but she moved and a new counselor took her place who helped contribute to my misery for that school year, but that is a different essay. She decided to place me in World Geography, which is a Freshman course, instead of just having me take the course in my credit recovery class that I was in all year. I was mortified that I was going to be the oldest in this class, but I quickly resigned myself to it since I felt I had no other choice in the matter. For six weeks I was in one teachers class who was fair and cared about his subject, but clearly exhausted by the rowdy freshmen. As I was taking this class, I was also taking my Senior history class, and I had them switch me over to an advanced version since I was going to pull my hair out because of my classmates and the boring content. The awful woman in the office finally let me in after I hounded her for weeks, which screwed around my schedule some more and I was in a different World Geography class, this time with Him.
I do not recall his name, lets just call him Mr. Black, like the tar in the cup he would spit his tobacco into. He was a girls tennis coach, he had large bulging eyes, a loud hoarse voice. He was chewing tobacco constantly, and never actually spoke besides screaming at us to shut up. He would prepare a Powerpoint and have another student administer it while we copied down notes. Then he would give us a work sheet, then a quiz. Then the day was over. He demanded total silence all the time, however he never actually taught or engaged us, so of course a bunch of rowdy freshman are not going to care. We had one assistant teacher who came into the class about 2 days a week, and often Mr. Black would just leave and have the other teacher supervise. This teacher was actually a special ed teacher normally and knew how to handle the students better. The best part? He actually explained the content. You could tell that he hated the position he was in, and he had expressed subtle dislike of the man who was supposed to be running the classroom. It was sad though, when Mr. Black left, the students would come to him and have him help us prepare for the tests, explain things, laugh with us. I hope he is doing well.
I think a part of Mr. Blacks problem is that he did not want to be a teacher. I do not believe he went to college for education, he went to school to be a tennis coach. However, the High School I went to demanded that all coaches be teachers, so you had some very unqualified people teaching classes, usually the on-level classes since we were assumed to be stupid and not know the difference anyway. He was forced to sit at a desk and teach a bunch of kids he did not care about, teaching a subject he was indifferent towards, and basically making his students suffer for his own incompetence. A large part of the reason I now abhor the public school system is the fact that people like him are in a way forced to be a part of it. Teachers like Mr. Scalia are a rarity nowadays, apathetic teachers breed apathetic students, who grow more apathetic as they work through the system. New teachers go into the system either idealistic and wanting to cause positive change, only to be startled by how lazy the students and administration are, or people become teachers because they need a job and just don't care, contributing more to the cycle.
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