Discussion»Questions»Education» Do you think you could emulate the teaching abilities of the person you consider to have been the best educator* you ever had?
Do you think you could emulate the teaching abilities of the person you consider to have been the best educator* you ever had?
*This excludes lessons learned at home and from various family members, close friends, etc. It only focuses on education in a formal schooling environment, thank you.
Yes. That high school teacher (world history) was the first to treat us like adults. Gave us the class expectations and deadlines at the start of the year, then it was up to us to keep to that schedule.
Class time could be used to work on projects, or get help from him, or just to discuss historical or current events.
Of course, it was an advanced class ... so the expectations were signed off by the parents and counselor, before the kids were allowed to take the class.
No. I like to keep my heroes on a pedestal. I would not like to challenge them. I may become talented in areas I admire about them and even exceed them, in Their Eyes.
It is not a goal to be better. It is a goal to learn and apply in an appropriate way.
Adjust to the need. Learn to make it work for the individual to make THEM Personally succeed. I might be good at one thing they aren't . They might blow me out of the water in areas I suck. Focus on what they need. Then, reward with when they succeed. You aren't in the equation. You are there to help them be their personal best.
Personal gratification and glory is much better than comparing you to your teacher.
However, I've wondered if I might be good at teaching very simple arithmetic and maths, because I was always weak at these. That may seem contradictory, but I have over the years encountered many people who are very good at something, but cannot teach it because they consider it easy and cannot understand why others do not.
It was only a sort of lateral thinking that made certain numerical topics click with me by anchoring them in real but fairly unusual things, so I realised the formal teaching methods, and certainly almost all maths text books I have seen, are not necessarily right for all.
Once there, I analysed why I found mathematics difficult, and realised one reason is that many topics are taught as rather abstract concepts with no real definition or purpose.
I should clarify that I believe there is a fundamental difference between the American and British approaches to teaching maths. I have asked of this in the past but no-one seemed able to confirm or correct me: sites like this and Answers suggest to me that US schools teach each maths topic as a separate curriculum subject ("Algebra, must be Monday..."); whereas the UK teaches Mathematics as a set of topics within a single syllabus. The latter should encourage the lateral-thinking I cite above, by making linked topics much closer to each other, even components of entireties, so mutually supportive. It still didn't help me much, though!
I think my most inspiring was my Infants' School teacher, who had some very progressive ideas for the mid-1950s. Mrs. Porter encouraged my unusually early reading skills - sometimes she even lent me her daily newspaper although I could not have understood most of the reported matters.
To end on a lighter note, I recall someone on Answers asking "What would the world be like without trigonometry?". Some clown had replied, "Awesome." Both appeared baffled when I pointed out that whatever "awesome" means, without trigonometry they would not be able to boast of their ignorance on-line - they would not even have the electricity, let alone computers !
