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Help Me With My English Paper?; Thanks, love you. ^_^
Topic Started: Mar 29 2011, 07:33 AM (313 Views)
JediElderNishmo
I Just Got Nommed
Hey guys, it's been a while since I've talked here but I need help again! I'm doing a paper for my English Final that I will bring to my schoolboard and attempt to change for students like me. I'll start out by saying what it is I am doing.
I am doing a research paper consisting of making a website, making a brochure, and making a video. It's all about How A Teacher's Performance Can Affect A Student. Meaning, if a teacher puts down a student or students, they're less likely to want to do work. A cause and an effect, pretty much.

So what I want, is some personal opinions on this situation or some experiences you all have had that relate to this.

____________________________________________________________________
If you want an example of an experience, I can give an example that happened to me:

I am literally staring right at the teacher who is talking up ahead. We're not taking notes, we're just supposed to be paying attention. Out of nowhere, she looks at me and yells "Tony! Pay attention!!" as if I was looking the opposite direction or something! That Teacher and I have always had a bad relationship...

Another time is when I was really sick and felt dizzy. I almost fell backwards so I went to grab something to keep me from falling. Now, of course, the only thing within my reach was my girlfriend Melodie. So I grabbed onto her shoulder and tried to keep myself up. I got yelled at for putting my hands on her and was told to grab something else next time. I mean, really?

I also got yelled at for touching a chair. They claimed it was PDA... all this by the same teacher.
____________________________________________________________________

Well, go ahead and rant away!!
 
Monstarcookie
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There was a time when I had to do a history paper. I loved my history teacher, he was so awesome and really good at teaching, so I put a lot of effort into making the paper the best it could be. I wrote about Medieval knights, and altho I didn't get a "bad" review (could have used more sources, could have cut down on the info a bit) the thing that kinda hurt me the most was that the only positive thing had to say about my work was that the cover of the paper looked really nice (had drawn it myself). So even tho I was happy to have someone praise me for my drawing skills (something very important to me) the fact that he didn't praise the work itself made me sadfess >:
 
Toegoff
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As a person who did a lot of BSing to get my way through school...this is an issue that MUST be tip toed around. If your teacher feels like he/she is under attack by the presentation, or that you are attacking any of his/her colleagues, you will get slammed in grading.

While it is easy to get passionate about some of those issues, it's like walking on ice. One misstep in your presentation and it is disaster. I would say you must present the topic in an objective way. Ignore how it has affected or hurt you entirely.

To be honest, I would probably avoid this topic as it could come across VERY passive aggressive, but then again, not sure how much work you've already put in.

If you do continue it, do not make it about teachers, also make it about students and their failures. If you do bring up personal stories, you MUST include how you were in the wrong. What you did to make the teacher react to you that way. If your answer is, "I didn't do anything. He just snapped," I would suggest another topic idea.

Many of these teachers are passionate about their profession, or at least want to be. Imagine a person who attacks video games as mindless dribble and violence. You wouldn't read an entire paper (or take it seriously) if it were nothing but 'hate' against gaming, but you might be more interested and more willing to read if the paper showed both sides. How there is a lot of mindless dribble out there, but there is also a lot of good. And it is easy to attack and criticize the negative, often because the critics don't look to or experience the good.
 
JediElderNishmo
I Just Got Nommed
Toegoff
Mar 29 2011, 03:30 PM
As a person who did a lot of BSing to get my way through school...this is an issue that MUST be tip toed around. If your teacher feels like he/she is under attack by the presentation, or that you are attacking any of his/her colleagues, you will get slammed in grading.

While it is easy to get passionate about some of those issues, it's like walking on ice. One misstep in your presentation and it is disaster. I would say you must present the topic in an objective way. Ignore how it has affected or hurt you entirely.

To be honest, I would probably avoid this topic as it could come across VERY passive aggressive, but then again, not sure how much work you've already put in.

If you do continue it, do not make it about teachers, also make it about students and their failures. If you do bring up personal stories, you MUST include how you were in the wrong. What you did to make the teacher react to you that way. If your answer is, "I didn't do anything. He just snapped," I would suggest another topic idea.

Many of these teachers are passionate about their profession, or at least want to be. Imagine a person who attacks video games as mindless dribble and violence. You wouldn't read an entire paper (or take it seriously) if it were nothing but 'hate' against gaming, but you might be more interested and more willing to read if the paper showed both sides. How there is a lot of mindless dribble out there, but there is also a lot of good. And it is easy to attack and criticize the negative, often because the critics don't look to or experience the good.

No no, I understand what you're saying. I was talking to my English teacher about questions to try and look up and a few of them revolved around "Okay, how can I relay information in a non-aggressive way?" because I do get angry about the subject. It's controlling anger that's going to take a while. And of course, "How can I present this to the school board in a professional manner?"

I agree that it is a risky thing to do, and I won't give out names of teachers in my report of course, but the thing is... someone has to stand up for students who really haven't done anything wrong and still get badgered for it. I want to make that stand and make myself heard. What better place to start than school?
 
Toegoff
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Take a look at it from a teacher's point of view. They are human. All day you have annoying kids mouthing off to you while you get paid a pretty low salary. You try to do your best, but teaching some of these kids year after year after year begins to weigh heavy on even on the best minds.

Now some kid *pretends* to be dizzy and falls back just so he can touch his girlfriend. That may not be what happened, but it's reasonable to believe that the teacher could have thought or assumed that. They put up with smart asses and bull shit all day long.

If you want to truly make a stand and truly help students, you can't do it as a student. Your opinion will never be truly taken seriously. You will appear to be of 'victim mentality' and will likely be ignored.

We all get bad teachers...but it doesn't sound like the examples you've given are anything truly outrageous that need to be stopped. Again, it is your report, but I've found school and life in general is simply a LOT easier to get through when you play the game. You can't win, the odds are stacked against you. You will put up with bad teachers, because it trains you to put up with bad bosses, bad managers, and bad customers/clients.

Unless the teacher is doing something truly appalling or outrageous, I suspect the report will hurt you more than help.
 
JediElderNishmo
I Just Got Nommed
Toegoff
Mar 29 2011, 05:35 PM
Take a look at it from a teacher's point of view. They are human. All day you have annoying kids mouthing off to you while you get paid a pretty low salary. You try to do your best, but teaching some of these kids year after year after year begins to weigh heavy on even on the best minds.

Now some kid *pretends* to be dizzy and falls back just so he can touch his girlfriend. That may not be what happened, but it's reasonable to believe that the teacher could have thought or assumed that. They put up with smart asses and bull shit all day long.

If you want to truly make a stand and truly help students, you can't do it as a student. Your opinion will never be truly taken seriously. You will appear to be of 'victim mentality' and will likely be ignored.

We all get bad teachers...but it doesn't sound like the examples you've given are anything truly outrageous that need to be stopped. Again, it is your report, but I've found school and life in general is simply a LOT easier to get through when you play the game. You can't win, the odds are stacked against you. You will put up with bad teachers, because it trains you to put up with bad bosses, bad managers, and bad customers/clients.

Unless the teacher is doing something truly appalling or outrageous, I suspect the report will hurt you more than help.

I understand what you are saying and will take it into consideration. Thank you for your insight into this, Toe. Really appreciate it, actually. It's good when people make me think :P
 
Monstarcookie
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The topic was "How A Teacher's Performance Can Affect A Student". It's easy to add both positive and negative examples of that, without making it out to be an attack against any teacher. It gives an opportunity for teachers to see it from the students point of view too. After all, the students are only teenagers, not yet fully developed people. That's why they go to school. It's easy to say that the students need to think about the teachers and how hard a job they have but the truth is that's very hard when hormones are raging and all you can do is think subjectively. The teaches on the other hand are fully grown, fully developed people, who have a better understanding of how the teen works.

In Europe (at least in Finland) a system has been proposed, which most teachers and bosses should follow, where all negative feedback should include something positive. Studies have shown that giving only negative feedback without giving instructions on how to improve it or adding something positive. For example:

"This wasn't good enough, write more" should be changed into "I really liked this and that part, however I would like to get more information about the third part"

Altho this system is not something everyone HAS to follow, since results have shown that people perform better when given positive feedback too, many teachers and bosses have started to use this system.
 
Magicklorelai
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I Just Got Nommed
I agree with Toegoff that there are a lot of pressures that a teacher is put under on a daily basis, and they're not all from the students; there are other teachers, their employers, the school board, and sometimes worst of all, the parents of their students. There are so many rules to being a teacher that are both explicit and implicit, that it can really degrade someone's appreciation for the job over time. Especially given that there isn't nearly enough funding or resources to teach properly in MANY areas (even just sticking to the US). All for ridiculously low pay.

That said, teachers are in a position of authority over students, and while some of the things that frustrate students are more a result of outside factors, there are also things I've seen teachers do that don't help.

As an example, I had one teacher who really struggled with any student who didn't grasp what she was talking about immediately. If you didn't understand on her first explanation, she got very annoyed with you, and it showed. I saw this discourage a lot of students from asking her for help, and many didn't do well in the class because they didn't feel comfortable approaching the teacher. A student shouldn't feel like they're going to be mocked by the teacher just because they don't understand something.

Another example are the teachers who try to be bestest buddies with their students, who spend more time socializing than they do teaching. I'm all for developing a rapport with students, it helped me through some tougher subjects in fact, but not when it either neglects the rest of the class, or comes at the expense of actually grading someone for the work they do; I had one teacher actually favor some of the students she talked with, adjusting the grade they got because "I know you're smart enough to get it."

Snapping at students doesn't help. I've had more than a few teachers who would single me out if I made a mistake, and given the social environment at the time, being singled out like that not only killed my desire to even try again (The logic at the time being, if I try and fail, I'll get yelled at and it'll give my peers more fuel against me), it broke my trust with the teacher to treat my work fairly.

All that said, I do understand that being a teacher means a lot of work for very little respect, and the pressure cooker is always on. There are still ways to help reduce some of the pressure, though.
 
Willis
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I Just Got Nommed
I have some personal experience with this matter.

Back in middle school I had a French teacher who to this day I still consider to be the worst teacher I have ever seen. Basically you were allowed to speak English for the first few days then after that everything had to be in French, so if you didn't know French you were screwed. You would get asked a question and have a blank expression because you had no idea what to say let alone what she asked and she would treat you like you aren't paying attention. Now he's the real kicker she basically expected us to learn from the book. That's right instead of her teaching we had to go through the book and learn the crap ourselves if she did teach it was in French. I should also mention she would take a whopping 30 minutes each day and leave the class unattended to do god knows what. Needless to say no one liked her though this is an extreme case.

On the reverse end my American history teacher in high school was awesome. Almost every class we had a lecture in which not only did it cover everything we needed to know but a few interesting facts and jokes were thrown in as well. Not only that but the tests came from the lectures almost word for word which meant all you had to do in that class was pay attention and that was all that was expecting from you. That's right a teacher that actually would teach. I liked the class because I actually learned stuff and the teacher would actually take time to answer questions.

In the end what makes a student feel like a teacher is bad is when they feel they get singled out. Basically they'll get told something in the middle of the class which makes them feel the teacher has something against them even though the teacher is trying to help them learn. There's also instances were a student might think a teacher is good because they could just sit in the class and not have to do anything, but in actuality they didn't learn anything in the class.
 
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