by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY
Want to know what students want in a teacher? I did too. So I asked them. Be sure to watch the whole thing—the last student really brings the noise. (If your school blocks YouTube, try watching it here.)
That’s as good an argument as I could ever make for asking students what’s wrong with education. Too bad we don’t do that enough. There’s more real advice to be gleaned from those four minutes—for the new and the old teacher—than from a good many of the books published by our ed schools each year.
That’s right. I said it.
Special thanks to Tennyson H.S. students Jose Montoya and Miguel Ojeda for their excellent camerawork.
3 Comments
April 24, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Excellent. Best post on this site yet. Speaking directly to the students-and if we can’t listen-we need to go back to school! Great piece-all.
April 24, 2009 at 5:51 pm
What the students are saying makes so much sense – that they want a real person for a teacher – and yet this is not something that seems to be encouraged among teachers. The idea that a teacher be a friend to a student is often frowned upon. Instead, in order to maintain authority and keep order in the classroom, teachers distance themselves from their students. It’s a tough balance to figure out, but hearing these students speak it seems essential that teachers strip away some of the pretense and relate to their students on a meaningful level (not necessarily always an academic level).
April 25, 2009 at 6:18 am
Great piece- brings up a couple of thoughts: one is that the education system that we work in doesn’t support teachers. I think many times people become teachers for the right reasons but become overwhelmed from day one with all that they are asked to do with far too few resources. For our students to succeed on all fronts, one must put themselves all out for those kids and that takes its toll. People burn out or distance themselves from the students in order to manage. The current education system we have doesn’t even acknowledge the level of support that is necessary for students to survive in our social system.
In addition, I think there are some teachers who just don’t belong in the classroom. They might come in for the wrong reasons: to pay off loans, “in the meantime”, they want summers off, it’s a job… And then there are those who want to “give back” to the community but know nothing about the communities they work in. They have nothing to do with those students’ lives outside of school so they really can’t connect in the classroom.
Our students need allies to help facilitate their empowerment – academic and social. I applaud the film makers for addressing the issue with those whose lives are affected.