Just because a person thinks they know it all, doesnt mean they can teach. In America, the land of the free, gives this privilege every year to many people. They get their Masters or even a PHD degree in college and think they can mold the minds of others.
This is such a farce. The degree may give you the right to become a teacher or even a doctor, but it does not mean you will be a good one. Teaching comes from the heart. If you absolutely love what you are doing it will show in class. It will show in the faces of the students. It will show with the in class discussions with the students. And finally, it will show in the test scores from the class. How the class is doing, in the subject, reflects totally on the teacher. If the whole class is failing, then the teacher has failed as well. So couldnt we say that this kind of teacher has fallen through the cracks? Like so many illiterate people who get all the way through the twelfth grade and still dont know how to read. People learn in different ways. We are all different. Just because I know how to play the piano, doesnt mean that the student next to me in class can play the piano as well, and I do not expect it. We all have different levels of talent and different levels of ability to learn. Some people just get it and everything comes easy. Some people struggle with some things and some with everything. This is where the teacher has to adjust their teaching skills to fit these needs. Everyone can not be taught the same way.
I had this experience in college with the worst teacher that taught Microeconomics and a Psychology class. Yes I was slammed twice.
He introduced himself and bragged for an hour and a half about his vast degrees and his experience in Vietnam and all the places he had seen and basically things I did not need to know. After listening to him I felt like I was in shell shock. I kept asking myself, What does this have to do with this class?He would jump from one subject to another and go off on a tangent. And of course we were all expected to read his mind. He would start a sentence and expect you to finish it. If I wanted to be a physic I would contact Sylvia Brown and become a physic.
I was having a difficult time taking notes, because of this erratic behavior. Even if I taped the class with a tape recorder, he still would not make any sense.
And to top it off he kept saying that he was unemployed. I asked him if he got paid for teaching these classes. He said, yes, he was paid. Well, isn’t that employed? Or maybe by his standards he was under employed. Which proved to me, he did not want to be there.
By the time mid-terms came around, I hated coming to his classes. Then lucky us, he resigned and left us without a teacher and with the whole class failing.
He saw this as no reflection on him and it was obvious he thought he was superior.
The best teachers I have had, I can still remember, even from first grade. They wanted to be there and it showed in their work.
So my point is, just because you have the degree and want to be a teacher, does not mean you will be remembered as one or even a good one. If you are a teacher like the one in my story, you will be remembered as an idiot.
