As a Teacher by Summer

As a Teacher by Summer - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

As a Teacher
If roles were to be switched and I was able to become a teacher of any subject, I would teach geometry. I had despised geometry the entire year I took it. I’ve never been very good in any subject pertaining math, but geometry intrigues me. No, it isn’t because of the shapes, but because their are so many different ways to learn it. Since I’m not very good at it at all, I would have to take several classes to first learn it better than my students, then I would have to take classes to be able to teach it. All the stress caused by math would be worth it because I know I would be able to help people, which is my main goal in life. I would try to give my students a different outlook on math.
As a teacher I could change a student's views on school. Hopefully I would be able to only improve how they see school and realize that someone cares. I’ve seen all of my friends come together to help one another on a single assignment, once I seen that I realized that it wasn’t us not grasping the subject that had us all fail that assignment, but rather how it was shown to us. I had actually failed that test, something that my parents despised me for. I didn’t let that grade go into the gradebook, instead an A had taken its place due to extra credit, staying after school to do revisions and working up until I could retake it to understand it better. I wasn’t the only one spending time with the teacher after school to understand things better, but I may have been the one that went to the most people in search of help. During that time frame I had realized that it was neither my fault or the teacher's fault that we weren’t grasping the subject.
Teachers that are there for the may realize something during their career. Not all students can learn the same ways. You have people that can take notes and never study again, others learn through hands on activities, many that will never understand that specific formula, and so on. Therefore, my class wouldn't be based off of a student's GPA, I base them off of how each student learns best and teach the classes in different ways to suite how they learn best. Also, I wouldn't teach geometry based off of the capacity of a student's memory. Testing someone's memory won’t teach them much, no one will remember each formula they are taught in high school, nor will they remember exactly what happened at each battle in the civil war. That’s why I struggled. When I taught open note tests would be a must. On the exam I would allow them all to use a notecard to write anything they needed to know on. We aren’t expected to go through life remembering exactly how to do everything in the one way we were though that doesn't even work for us, I don’t remember formulas easily. I wouldn’t expect them to.
As a geometry teacher I would do my best to change the education system. There’s no doubt that everyone has troubles, that the way people learn varies. As a teacher I would do my best to make insure that no student was ever left behind trying to play catch up. I always got caught in a rush with piles of homework. Just because people cannot remember every detail of every class, doesn’t mean they need to suffer.I believe that spending time to help the students apply the knowledge in fun ways will help them remember it the best. High school students struggle between their classes, work, and other extracurricular activities they are involved in. Math teachers shouldn’t be pushing hours of homework just to practice, they should be making a change to address the students needs. Change is why I would love to become a geometry teacher above all subjects.