It’s no doubt that everyone wants to get an A in every class, to become that doctor that saved lives, or that lawyer who rescues people from prosecutors, or just about any career that entices them, but to achieve those goals, we need teachers.
I’m not going to tell you they’re here to help us learn and accomplish our goals with flying colors. It’s a hope, but not necessarily true. I will tell you that they’re here to be our mentors. They are people who decide if we’re ready to advance just by the foundation of their consistent preparation. So, what does this mean? It means they train us, we either pass or fail, and we accept the outcome.
As blunt as it seems, it’s true, and to some degree, they understand the significance behind their judgement. A grade can easily define someone’s future. They won’t lie and say they haven’t failed kids before, but in every teacher’s heart, they want their students to pass. I doubt they want to see our faces every year.
However, though they do want their students to achieve everything that’s possible, they can also forget how to teach. Teaching isn’t just summarizing the material in lectures, doing some sample problems, and giving homework. The core reason why teachers have to teach is to make sure the students know exactly what their doing.
As a student myself, lectures are nonstop talking, active listening, and undeviated focus. It can be difficult especially when you have to be on campus by 7am on a Thursday after you came home from lab at 10pm the night before. I bet that out of all the students in a lecture hall, maybe about 20% actually understood everything the teacher said on that Thursday morning.
The responsibility of the student is defined by its own meaning. According to the Oxford Dictionary: “Denoting someone who is studying in order to enter a particular profession”. Our priority as a student is to study and achieve the grades necessary for our career. Therefore, it is implied we need prodigious understanding in these subjects. There is only so much a student can teach themselves. This goes back to the teachers. If they only ‘teach’ the material by talking, sample problems, and homework in a matter of an hour and thirty minutes, how much can a student really learn? Even the slightest misuse of a word can lead to tremendous consequences. There needs to be a better way for students to understand the course material without losing any benefits!
You all might say one-on-one tutoring. Ha! Let me tell you how that goes. You enter the room, you show the tutor your problems, and when you do the work and something is wrong, they either don’t know what your doing or they will teach a different way. However, when they teach you a different way it can become even more confusing!
There needs to be a better way for students to comprehend all this information under a reasonable time-range. I admit, no one is perfect, but the amount of time a student learns through studying on their own should be equivalent to the same amount of time a teacher puts in to make sure every one of their students understand.
This is every student’s reality! Students who try their best need all the help they can get! This is our future. It is what we make it after all, but we need teachers to look beyond the grades and set their feet in our shoes.
A student’s responsibility requires listening and understanding. Now, it’s our teachers who need to go back in time and relive these exact feelings, in that exact moment, before they became who they are today. Did they find it easy? How did they learn better? Whose teaching methods did they idolize? It all comes down to them and then us. Nobody wants to fail. We all want to achieve!