Find the Weak Spot, Get Creative by Jasmine

Find the Weak Spot, Get Creative by Jasmine - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

We have the strategic learners, the surface learners, and the deep learners. Those who want the grade, those who want to pass, and those who are actually interested in the information provided, but either way a student’s way of learning is their own decision. There are several factors that affect the way a student learns. Believe it or not, a teacher’s attitude and method to teaching plays a huge role. It might be helpful for perspective teachers to understand how a student’s mind functions sometimes.

As students in a fast-growing culture influenced by technology, our minds have been programmed to process information much quicker than generations before us. We cram social media, television, cellphones, and gaming systems into about seven hours of each day of the week. With that being said, we are so accustomed to staring at images and words all day that a PowerPoint with tons of slides that involve notes is not the best approach to teaching. In fact, this is probably the worst method possible to help a student learn. What interests us are new activities or ideas that can challenge what we believe. For example, turn a lesson into a debate which forces each student in the classroom to state a topic and research the background information. Why would they participate? Image. Image plays a much larger role in our lives than most teachers think, especially in a room full of our peers, all determining if we are intelligent or just plain dumb. Besides, arguing is one thing we could always teach ourselves to win at, even if we had no idea what we were talking about.

My primary piece of advice to give to a teacher would be, don’t ever let your inner child fade away. I’m not saying it works to connect and understand every individual in the classroom, but we all like originality, challenges, and creativity. Each of us will find a way to connect our past knowledge, or current interest to what we are learning. This is a natural ability of the brain, because it is how we grow. Find our weak spot through knowledge and let our curiosity do the rest. Make the classroom a place where we can let our individuality run wild and get creative with the way you teach. Don’t come into class with ten thousand slides of notes, expecting us to copy everything down. Keep us hooked, interested, and challenge us enough to the point where we find ourselves pursuing the class just because we want to. Be the professional role model that others can look up to and the disciplined, yet creative teacher that we want to spend the next couple of months being around.