teachers

A thing most of the human race has in common, is the fact that we have all been students, and we still all are students. Not including the informal teachers in everyone's life, over a lifetime people have many many teachers in school and to learn skills. In my lifetime I have had approximately 40 school teachers thus far.

Because everyone has had teachers, I am sure I am not the only one who has thought about what way to approach thought about their teachers. It is respectful to not think about their personal lives, and only care about the information which is being presented to you. You are allowed to hold respect for them, look up to them, or dislike them for their teaching style. It is not thought of as respectful to dislike them for their personality, refer to their personal lives, point out or think about their personal faults or fears or insecurities. Under my experiences, in high school and below, it is not heard of to think of your teachers as human beings, or analyze anything about them. We assume our instructors do not have feelings, do not have lives, do not have views different from what they are told to teach. This being said, is it wrong to think about these things?

Lately, I have been able to view my teachers in a different way than I usually have. More recently, I have the tendency to understand that my teachers are not perfect and just beings, nor is their entire life and love the classroom and the students within it. I find flaws and personal behaviors of teachers very interesting. Most students view these tendencies as reason to like or dislike the teacher, which effects if they want to learn or not, whereas I use it as a way to understand the person who is teaching me, and how it effects their teaching style.

My current math teacher, I before thought was mundane, and overly prone to long pauses between phrases of boring content. I now realize he is purely a perfectionist, making sure every painfully simple statement and equation he writes or says is completely precise. He is also very patient and friendly. I thought he actually enjoyed boring me to death, but all he is trying to do is not move on until everyone understands. Although he enjoys humor from time to time, he does not take kindly to anti-intellectual behavior such as not doing work or not finishing homework. He says "This is unacceptable" and shakes his head during this statement quite often. Unfortunately, I cannot sympathize with his character on this matter because I am student who understands the content of the class with ease. I find it comical to a point where I have to repress signs of comical influence on my face when he gets very serious about people needing to be focused in and about his class. This is because it is hard for me to imagine a universe where that was a class I really had to "buckle down" in. I'm not exactly sure how he can say it with a straight face. Then again, it shows he is taking his class as seriously as his students should that will allow them to pass the class, and I should admire this.

Regarding his sense of humor I have a story of an obnoxious comment I made during class! Scoring 105% on every test in this class, he knows that I understand the concepts without much explanation. One day, as I stared into space during the lecture about congruent triangles, I noticed a term on the projection with a definition that we were expected to copy into our notes which we would at some point use during a test. (Because I never take notes, and because attaching notes to our exams earns a few extra credit points, I have been attaching the same page of notes to every test which I took very close to the beginning of the year. I think I have the formula for the circumference of a circle and the definition of a supplementary angle on this paper.) Out of boredom I read the large projection on the wall which reads "right triangle: a triangle with a right angle". In response to this display I make a face resembling a capital o followed by a period, followed by a lower case o. Then, I almost choked on my own saliva as I fought not to attract so much attention to myself as I resisted the urge to laugh my as off. The teacher dismisses us to a private work time for that night's homework and I raise my hand as he strolls through the classroom. With a determined spirit for my wise-crack, I threw on an intensely quizzical and confused face, and I said the words "Mr. Taylor?" in the whiniest voice I could. When I saw his recognition and attention as he made his was towards me I questioned "What's a right triangle?" with overly believable inflection. I remained in that quizzical expression while he repeated my question and glanced at the projection. I'm not sure if it was my cracking face that gave it away in the unbelieving that he actually thought my question was sincere or the fact that he remembered my usual instant understanding of the curriculum, but he started to smile, realizing my severe sarcasm of the question. I laughed, asking if we had not been using right triangles since the beginning of the course and had I not learned that fact as a 9 year old. He confirmed this fact, but said it might help the students to have the definition.

Another teacher of mine, I before thought was eccentric and comical. I now see that he truly is obnoxious, impatient, and selfish. He takes measures to humiliate students in front of the class to make a cheap joke. He will do anything for the class's laughter and approval. He has no wife, as far as any of us can tell. And he surely has no children, he has spoken of many members of his family. It's not fair to judge or question why this is; it could be regarding fertility, his orientation, his mental stability or personal issues, or his tendencies. I'm not suggesting anything, I don't really have any evidence towards any of those options, but sometimes one wonders. Also, he rarely allows people to go to the bathroom. Ultimately, it depends how much of the class is listening when you ask, because the more people it is, the funnier it seems to him to refuse their request.

Other than this though, I find him quite reasonable. Even though I think it's funny when he tells the class something general on a topic I know quite a bit about, and understands it so briefly and obscured that it is almost wrong, I think he has a way with stories and comedy that engages his students into the class. These stories have nothing to do with the class content, but I won't complain about that. If anything, I respect him for being less uptight about the work he is supposed to be doing.

Point...point...I'm sure I had a point at some point in this point. Er...I mean post.

Right. The question is: How helpful, how important, how appropriate, and how easy is it to see the person behind your teacher?