College Faculties Do Contain Poor Teachers

All educators would agree that there are clearly issues with the education system in the United States. But, I think the issues is one of more political nature not are individual teachers. In my opinion, for every teacher that gives their students those worksheets every night, like Wolk talks, there is a teacher that really tries to provide meaningful homework. It the government standards that are making the fill in the blank educations, not the particular teachers. Maybe Wolk isn’t trying to blame the particular teacher, but the system, yet there seems to be a couple point in the article where I think his frustration and anger is misdirected. Some of this misdirected anger could be from Wolk’s personal experience with education. Everyone has a unique and individualize experience with the education and the teacher that you personally have. For some people this experience is positive while other times people experience is more negative. This makes in hard to make generalization about education, cause it impossible for one person to experience what goes on in every classroom in

“If you want a good education, you need to have good teachers,” states William Deresiewicz, author of Spirit Guides (1). His article, published in Slate Magazine, was written with the purpose of redefining what college teaching is and the elements that constitute a good teacher. In order to promote his ideas and fulfill his purpose, Deresiewicz supports an enthymeme founded on the claim that teachers should challenge and care about their students, because that is what their students truly want and need (2,3).

Initially, the author begins by summarizing a story featured on the news. A simple thought, college level professors come evaluate teachers at a high school and then give tips to improve the learning environment. The only issue though, is that after the first round of workshops, the professors were fired and sent home. The story claims that the issue with this project was that the professors themselves were poor teachers.

Students in AP courses typically are required to write more essays and solve through provoking problems that normal students typically do not do (Grove). These various skills that are developed, such as the critical thinking and high-level calculating, help to pave the road for success with students (Davis). Gaining these essential skills while in high school helps to shape healthy habits in students and prepare them for their future in college. For example, AP courses contain different levels of rigor and commitment than a normal course offers a student, which offers students a glance at college work and expectations (Grove). Therefore, the student will be better prepared for the workload and level of intensity that exists in a college atmosphere. Participation in an AP course can help to develop essential skills that students will need later in their academic lives once they reach

Wow, is all I could think as I read this statement in the article. To expect great work, educators must provide students with the necessary skills to produce great work. The example of a teacher assigning a complex paper on the first day of school without guidance, and expecting the students to submit quality work was an awesome example to drive this point home. This statement made me reflect on my instructional processes. I remember having a teacher in high school that was guilty of this offense. She had the reputation of being the tough teacher, but really her instructional methods didn’t support the high expectations that she had for the students in her class. Therefore, students never meet her expectation, but it was because of her lack of instruction. Moving forward, I will now assess my teaching more closely. I refuse to be the teacher that assigns challenging work, and not teaching challenging

In the essay “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Mike Rose explains how the failure of students is all revolved around the teachers, when the fault should be put on everybody.

They have found that the teachers only go over what they really want to go over and leave out a lot of the important details. “Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next text.”(pg.12) College professors want the students to know most of the material; or of at least heard of most of it before they get to college. “History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of english literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school.”(pg.12)

Another problem that inhabits the educational system is teachers who are unprepared to prepare students for the many standardized test that are given. An example would be that the average teacher in Finland must go through a grueling curriculum in order to become teachers (Schneider, and Christison 30-32). This shows that we lack in preparing our teachers to teach. This of course also leads to unpreparedness from students, to low test grades and a loss of interest. Teachers should become more flexible in the way they teach, allowing creativity and a way for the student to gain feedback from the teacher to want to learn more of the subject (Slon 47-49).

-Students are working in groups with different levels of understanding. Their peers will mentor them and hold them accountable to their work.

I’ve seen several times in my classes from high school how teachers didn’t show any care to wether a student succeed or not. Some teachers even said rude comments and it made the students felt discourage. Without realizing it, teachers are the reason why students is failing. Many teachers didn’t realized that the way they taught students, had ruined students. There are kids who studied days and nights for a test, but still failed when it’s test time. Why? Because the materials they studied were nothing related to the test. Teachers didn’t realized their teaching style were wrong. They always said that it is the students fault that they failed, but it’s

Students are often told that the path to success tends to be a lonely one because only they can get themselves there. For the most part that is true, they must be self-motivated and passionate about their future, but along the way they get to meet special people that want to see them to accomplish their goals. From an early age the relationship built between students and teachers has molded and impacted the student’s life. The relationship they have with a teacher can define the attitude that student has with the subject being taught. A lot of emphasis is put on students when they fail a course and they question their effort. Although, the root of the problem is not always the student, but the method the instructor is using to teach the student.

In the practice of teaching, it is the responsibility of a teacher not only to teach students subject matter, but to teach students in order to enable them to grow and develop as a person. While it is essential for students to have an understanding of academic material, it is also equally as important that when students finish their education they have skills to use in

Our student-focused educational philosophy makes it possible for you to earn your degree and still balance the demands of your life.

Authoritative teachers will often “try to catch their students being good” and will reinforce the good behavior, rather than focusing on the bad. (Iannelli, 2004). It is critical that teachers praise their students for their efforts. A teacher can teach the entire classroom by recognizing one child’s positive action. Children desire praise and they will learn appropriate behavior when their fellow students receive praise. When teachers focus on bad behavior and make an example of a particular student to the entire classroom, it only makes the child that is being reprimanded feel alienated, ashamed, embarrassed, or possibly revengeful.

Teaching is a very rewarding career if you learn and understand how to work with the diversity of the classrooms we teach in. As teachers, we need to be more vigilant of where are students come from. Before we can teach we need to know who we are teaching and what background, knowledge, and customs they bring with them to the classroom. We must also be aware of the factors that are relevant to the academic achievement of the students we currently teach. There are many of these factors, but I want to focus on two; teacher quality and low teacher expectations.