A Personal Reflection on the Most Important Learned Lesson by Shiferaw

A Personal Reflection on the Most Important Learned Lesson by Shiferaw - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

To remember a lesson from a teacher is to have learned a lesson from a teacher. Throughout my time in primary and secondary school, I have learned many lessons from over two dozen teachers, lessons that are deemed important for success in life. However, the most important lesson that I would learn in school was taught to me in my senior year by my favorite teacher, Mrs. Santiago.
In my senior year of high school, I was in the final year of the International Baccalaureate program, ready to graduate with an IB diploma and a regular high school diploma. However, I had to successfully complete examinations in multiple classes and receive enough credits through those classes in order to graduate. One such class is called Theory of Knowledge. In Theory of Knowledge, students were given the opportunity to learn about the basis of what constitutes knowledge and the fundamental and introductory aspects of philosophy. As I have mentioned above, the teacher of the course, who would become my favorite teacher to this day, is Mrs. Santiago. Mrs. Santiago would instill within us, her students, a love of learning and desire to learn more about philosophy and more about the world through her teaching. One such example of Mrs.Santiago’s teaching is the use of current events. Once a week, Mrs. Santiago would assign us to find a current news story that was occurring during the week and report on the story. For more than six weeks, the class would report on various current events that occurred during those six weeks. However, as the class reported on the current events, Mrs. Santiago would ask the class questions pertaining to the sources used to gather the currents events such as, “Where did you obtain the current event from?” and “How can you corroborate the current event?” If we, as a class, cannot answer all of her questions, then she says that we have failed the current event assignment. Eventually, Mrs. Santiago explained to us the reason for all questions during current event discussion. She wanted to teach us the important lesson of to never take anything at face value. In essence, she was trying to us to corroborate any information we find out in the world.
Thus, to this day, the lesson to never take any piece of information at face value is, in my opinion, the most important lesson I have learned from a teacher because the world contains many people who share information on a daily basis such as the news and media outlets. However, the information they share is usually and most likely biased, leading back to the lesson that we must not take information at face value but investigate for ourselves to learn the truth.