Seek to Inspire by Madison

Seek to Inspire by Madison - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” Spoken insightfully by William Arthur Ward, he sums up my advice to educators in a simple statement. If I could give a teacher one piece of advice to help me learn, I would advise them to be passionate, inspirational, and genuinely excited about what they are teaching.

To improve student learning, teachers should demonstrate a passion for the subject they are teaching by showing a sincere interest in the topic. If they do not care about the material, then why should we as students? For us to understand the material, we need to know that it is important. We need to know that they are not just numbers or words on a page, but ideas that can alter the way we look at the world and ourselves. By being passionate about the material, teachers invite the students to join them, encouraging us to embrace our creative side, explore the information, and make it our own.

To encourage students’ learning, a teacher should seek to inspire his or her students. They should strive to inspire us to learn and explore the information. As William Arthur Ward explains, the greatest teacher is the one who inspires. This inspiration should not be restricted to the teacher’s class or subject matter. Teachers should inspire us as students to change the way we look at and perceive information. By encouraging us to not simply accept the information we are being fed, but instead, question it, we as students learn to use that information to develop our own opinions and ideas. By inspiring their students to learn, explore, and question information teachers can build more intuitive students and improve our overall learning.

Finally, to help students learn, teachers should show genuine excitement for their subject matter. The greatest example I have seen of this is in my high school English teacher. It was my senior English class and all my classmates and I were busy chatting, completely enthralled in our conversations about senior prom and graduation, when my teacher jumped up onto his desk and launched into Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Suddenly, he had everyone’s attention as he continued reciting Hamlet in the most absurd British accent I had ever heard. But what was most amazing about it was that his pure excitement about the Shakespearean play spread throughout the room and soon we were all jumping up on our desks bellowing out the lines in iambic pentameter. Then, all of a sudden, Shakespeare wasn’t so difficult or confusing anymore. English class wasn’t such a bore and my grade began to improve. By simply expressing his excitement and passion for Shakespeare, my English teacher completely changed our attitudes towards learning about and reading Hamlet. His energy spread throughout our classroom, impacting each one of us. By expressing his genuine excitement about the subject matter, my English teacher was able to transform what to some students is the most difficult and boring subject, into something that we were all eager to be a part of and learn about.

Thus, by being passionate, seeking to inspire, and showing genuine excitement about what they are teaching, teachers can encourage students to learn and enjoy learning. So, the best teacher is not always the one who is the most intelligent or most qualified, but the one who seeks to excite and inspire their students.