If the roles were reversed... by Oluwademilade

If the roles were reversed... by Oluwademilade - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

If the roles were reversed and I was a teacher teaching a class of seniors, I feel as though the best subject there is to teach a teenager going into college and getting ready to face the world would be Literature. Not only is the ability to read fundamental in the real world, but I feel as though a literature teacher has the ability to teach their students various life lessons through the books they chose to discuss. This is something I feel can’t be done in a math or science class. Though the main job of a Literary teacher is of course to make sure their students know how to analyze text, it is not the limit of what a literature teacher can do.
A Literary teacher can introduce their students to new ideas they wouldn’t have even thought of otherwise. For example last year in my Literature class we read the classic novel “Jane Eyre” a story about a lady simply going through the challenges of life. In the story there is a point in which Jane has to chose to go against her morals or be with the man she loves and she choses her morals giving up almost everything for it. I feel as though this is a lesson a lot of seniors or anyone going into the real world needs to hear, you should never go against yours morals for someone or something a lesson I learned thanks to my literature teacher.
Something a former literary teacher taught me was that while experience is the best teacher it doesn’t have to be your experience, and with books you can learn numerous life lessons without having to actually go through them and as a literary teacher I have the power to pick and chose books I feel give fundamental life lessons to teenagers. I believe this would be a good way to teach the teens without coming off as “preachy” something that annoys most teenagers.
Literature teachers are also able to help people figure out what kind of people they are in a way. I believe that what you take from a book says a lot about you, for example after reading Lord of the Flies for my Junior Lit class, the lesson I took from it was not to lose sight of your main goal. I was shocked to see that I was the only one who took that away from the book. Literature teachers are able to help people realize their point of view by giving them essays on the books they read or by having class discussions.
I honestly believe that Literature class is the most important class for a senior, which is why if I had the choice I would chose to be a Literature teacher. Literature class teaches so much more than we realize, teaching us how about life itself without us even knowing that’s what we are learning. A literature teacher with a simple choice in books can decide what lessons a person takes with them into the real world. As a senior right now I feel the stories I’m reading go way beyond school and into life lessons themselves and that is something I’m glad I’m learning in school right now.