[geeks] geeks Digest, Vol 86, Issue 11

[Rick Hamell]

> " Teach critical thinking
> " 
> " Teach writing skills and research
> " 
> " Teach to think outside of their specific interest
> " 
> " Teach to see non-obvious correlations between unrelated topics that may 
> " be relevant to their interests.
> " 
> " Give them a way to explore interests that may develop into a hobby or a job.
> " 
> " Provide an alternate avenue if the primary degree doesn't work
> " 
> " Just off the top of my head.
> 
> excellent ideas.  but, <devil's advocate> i wonder - idly - what
> fraction of our student population is capable of learning these
> things, even with a good teaching envrionment?

I've been wondering exactly that myself as I find myself unemployed and 
headed back to school.

One of my ex girl friends has twins, boy and girl. Both children used to 
love going to school. They moved to a different school within the same 
district and found that they no longer liked going to school as this 
school was in a lower income area and generated less motivated teachers. 
Within a couple of weeks their grades were falling, they were 
unmotivated as school. Their mother ended up essentially home schooling 
them after regular school for that school year. The next year they were 
able to move back to the other school district and the trend reversed 
itself 100%.

As for myself, Math has always been a huge weakness. I'm realizing now 
that this trend goes all the way back to 3rd grade and learning 
multiplication tables. We had a substitute teacher that year who 
obviously felt overwhelmed. The next stumbling block was in sixth grade, 
  two different math teachers taught the same pre-Algebra courses. The 
one teacher was loathed (which in itself should be a clue I think,) by 
almost every student. The failure rate of his classes was upwards of 75%.

Yet the other teacher had less then 5% failure rate even though they 
taught off the same curriculum that they jointly developed.

In college, I ended up taking the same math class three times and 
failing every time. The first two times was with the same teacher, a 
tenured professor who hated teaching what he considered basic math and 
came to class with the attitude that most of the class would fail and a 
stack of pre-signed add/drop slips. He was so hated that the school 
would switch his name on curriculum or the teacher was TBD. Otherwise 
his classes would be empty.

Fifteen years later, I'm back to school. While the teacher isn't 
extremely smart, she enjoys what she's doing and I'm finding that there 
is a huge difference in my learning curve. I will admit that I'm much 
more determined to succeed now too, but I can tell a huge difference in 
her teaching style vs. what I was up against before.

The Atlantic Monthly article that was linked seems to allude to this 
too. If the teacher enjoys what they're doing and is happy, that bleeds 
over to the students who do better.

-- 
Rick Hamell

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