The Bloggers With The Most To Say
Favorite Teachers and Why
This summer, I'm beginning a ridiculous crazy journey as a 2009 Teach for America Corps Member. If you don't know about TFA, it is a non-profit that recruits and trains high achieving college graduates to commit to teaching for two years in urban and rurual, low-income communities to help work towards closing the achievement gap.
I'm in the middle doing a crazy amount of prep reading about everything from Diversity, Community, and Achievement, to Secondary Literacy, to Classroom Management. The texts are littered with real-life examples from former TFA corps members about successes and struggles in their classrooms. The stories extremely helpful in learning how to motivate students to work hard towards achieving huge goals in my classroom, as they take abstract ideas and make them a reality, but they only give a teacher's perspective. To get a student's perspective, I've been trying to think back to what I loved about my favorite teachers, what they did to motivate me, and why they got so much more out of me than other teachers. Unfortunately, I only had so many teachers in my life, which leads me here to all of you:
As someone who will being teaching English, I figured talking to people who choose to spend a large amount of their free time reading and writing online would be an excellent group to survey: Did you have teachers who made a huge impact on your life? What made them different? What made their class different? What kinds of things were you able to achieve with their help? What kinds of actions did they take to help you achieve?
Any comment is helpful. I love hearing about different teaching styles and approaches, even if it wasn't in an English class! Thanks!!
I'm in the middle doing a crazy amount of prep reading about everything from Diversity, Community, and Achievement, to Secondary Literacy, to Classroom Management. The texts are littered with real-life examples from former TFA corps members about successes and struggles in their classrooms. The stories extremely helpful in learning how to motivate students to work hard towards achieving huge goals in my classroom, as they take abstract ideas and make them a reality, but they only give a teacher's perspective. To get a student's perspective, I've been trying to think back to what I loved about my favorite teachers, what they did to motivate me, and why they got so much more out of me than other teachers. Unfortunately, I only had so many teachers in my life, which leads me here to all of you:
As someone who will being teaching English, I figured talking to people who choose to spend a large amount of their free time reading and writing online would be an excellent group to survey: Did you have teachers who made a huge impact on your life? What made them different? What made their class different? What kinds of things were you able to achieve with their help? What kinds of actions did they take to help you achieve?
Any comment is helpful. I love hearing about different teaching styles and approaches, even if it wasn't in an English class! Thanks!!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David Stehle on -
My late CMU prof, Dr. Randy Pausch, is by far my all-time favorite teacher! He is also the person who has taught me more about life and how to live than any other human being on the planet.
His remarkable life, teachings, and his hard fought battle with cancer made national news. But If you don't know who he is, you can read more about him here...http://diamondkt.blogspot.com/2007/11/oprah-made-me-cry.html
He also has a book out. I believe it was on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
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Permalink Reply by David Stehle on
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Yeah, no doubt. I REALLY lucked out!
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Permalink Reply by brandyismagic on
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I think everyone can think of at least one stand out teacher they had. One of my stands outs was my grade 8 English teacher who told me I had a memorable voice when it came to writing. She gave me extra writing projects and when I finished something that I was proud of, she would read it to the class. It pretty much made my life. Plus, she told really great pirate jokes. (And now, as a teacher- pirate jokes are one of my favourite things to start the morning off with.) Good luck and if you ever want to talk teaching further- email me!
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Permalink Reply by Melissa on -
Mr. Ardales...British Lit. He was-and more than likely still is- somewhat abrasive, sarcastic and antagonastic but his love of the written word inspired us. T.S Eliot and Shakespeare was his air and it was his life's goal as a teacher to make it our air as well- to make literature essential to our lives. Always challenging us to think outside the acceptable norm.He never took less than over very best, pushing us to the breaking point to wring potential we didn't know existed. A great teacher...I didn't think so at the time but now I see how lucky I was.
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Permalink Reply by floreta on -
My high-school AP english teacher was my favorite because he challenged us in fun and different ways. He found creative ways to do writing assignments, like performing poetry slams and making a competition out of it. I wrote a bit about it here: http://floretacui.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-writing-history-or-in-whi...
He pushed us each day and just had a kind of whacky personality. The class was never boring, and the class environment/mix of people made it interesting as well.
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Permalink Reply by d.muffin on -
I have two that come to mind. The first was my English Theory prof and he absolutely blew my mind. He was an average teacher but a brilliant person which made learning from him such an honor. Check out his wiki if you're interested!
The second was a prof I had for three separate classes in college, English 101, Southern Fiction, and Faulkner. He was amazing. He had two outfits, either a three piece suit or a leather cowboy hat, harley davidson shirt and jeans. Oh, and he sounded just like Foghorn Leghorn. He just had a way of making an hour and half long class about nothing but life stories and his take on the world, somehow linking the discussion in with the latest reading. He was just a cool cool guy :)
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Permalink Reply by Erin on -
My favorite teachers were the ones who made school/learning about real life. Classes and assignments were about what is going on in the world and how you can affect it, not just out of a book. Class discussions, projects that involved the real world and whats going on now and teachers who actually cared what you did.
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