The Number One Rule Of Teaching by Karmela

The Number One Rule Of Teaching by Karmela - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

I’ve realized something incredible. As senior high school students, we’ve spent nearly twelve years in a building obeying and listening to an adult who we strive to please through our essays, homework, and notes. Ha! I’ve sat in a desk for the past twelve years soaking up knowledge from a person I never personally knew and never grew to know better. And despite my occasional irritation with some requests and attitudes from these knowledgeable people, they have made a significant impact on me. I never really minded a teacher’s teaching methods from kindergarten to freshman year of high school. Perhaps I was too naïve. Then during the course of my sophomore year in high school, my ignorance of teaching methods began to dissolve as I entered honor classes and saw the differences between teachers and their own methods of teaching. My senses and awareness finally perceived not only different teaching methods but also their effect on my mind and ability to enjoy reception of knowledge. Now, I can clearly advise a teacher after having out grown my ignorance of different teaching methods.

I had a Spanish teacher in sophomore year who rarely stood up in front of the class and spoke. Every once in a while, he would speak up but not every day or every week. He clearly wrote out assignments from the Spanish textbooks on the whiteboard. That is how I aced my Spanish class. By obediently completing all those assignments and staying quiet. I basically learned from the book and from a Spanish teaching website. This of course, fostered my eventual distaste for textbook work. I grimace and frown and groan through the voice in my head whenever my English teacher tells me to answer questions from the textbook. There is no interaction between the student and the teacher when a textbook is shoved in the student’s face and thus there is no interest in the subject.

If any teacher were to come up to me personally and ask for advice as a teacher, I would plainly say, “Please do not force your students to sit in a desk for an hour or so trying to answer to a textbook while you sit at your desk without a word. You are the teacher and you must teach and not the textbook. Please, make me excited about knowledge because then I won’t forget about it.” Almost all too often, teachers place too much stress on the tools of learning. It’s like a carpenter who is trying to craft a table. He can’t expect the knife or the saw to carve out the table on their own. He must take the knife and saw into his own hand and guide the tools in order that a steady table will be the outcome. So it is with a teacher and a student. Computers, textbooks, and assignments are tools, the carpenter is the teacher, and the student is the table which often reflects the work and talent of its creator.

I don’t suggest that reading books or doing research through the internet is a terrible thing. They are wonderful things. However, they can only do so much. A textbook cannot keep my attention away from my smartphone the way a teacher does. A teacher is more personal and his or her presence is much more demanding than that of a textbook or computer. When teachers stand in the front of the class and try to teach the subject, it is easier for the student to comprehend the lesson. Not to mention, when the teacher and his or her students interact, the class becomes in a word…fun.

In the course of my junior of high school, I was assigned to a new AP English teacher. Throughout the year, he would frequently talk to us as a class. During the first semester, he lectured most of the time and during the second semester, we would have frequent Socratic seminars. We would use textbooks and such and have to read short excerpts from the topics of bravery to gender. And afterward, we would discuss the excerpts as a class. As simple as it was, the class discussions were more than enough. And of course, this teacher would always be involved. It was very rare for him not to be involved in the topics of the day. I believe he was a good teacher.

The involvement of a teacher in his lesson inspires the students in a mysterious way. That is why I would advise my teachers to be involved in their lessons and not force their students to sit in a desk for an hour or longer. When a teacher leaves their students to learn from a textbook, from a website, or from a documentary, the student doesn’t enjoy the lessons or classes as much as he or she could if there was an interactive person teaching the lesson. Teachers often pride themselves by being people of inspiration to the younger generations and they are not wrong to think this. How many stories have we heard of students developing into wise adults because of the influence of their teachers or coaches? Well, a teacher can only inspire by being present in his students’ life which is through that one hour in the classroom where we have the opportunity and ability to soak up free knowledge.