Great Classes are Hard to Come By

Ultimately, how hard I work in school determines the grades I get. Many other variables can come into play such as the difficulty and time of the class, whether I like the class or not, and the mood I am in at the time of the class; but, if I want good grades and if I want to succeed, I have to work hard no matter what the situation is. However, I think the teacher/professor has a massive influence on how well I do in school and how much I enjoy it. Nobody likes a boring teacher, nor do they like one that teaches like he is educating a group of geniuses. The difference between a good teacher and a great teacher is a great teacher knows how to make a class enjoyable and the learning environment strong. The majority of teachers know the material they teach well, but not many teachers are exceptional at making their class fun or easy to learn. Some just flat suck at teaching, and that’s more than just an excuse for why I’m not doing well in the class! When almost everybody in the class is having trouble and complains about the teacher, especially when it’s a class full of 3.5+ gpa students, it’s usually a good idea to listen to the students. All through high school and even some now in college, I have had a whole plethora of teachers: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Some classes are fun, but they do not help broaden my knowledge of what I am supposed to be learning at all. My government class last year was a perfect example. I loved that class and looked forward to it every day, but I honestly cannot tell you one thing that I learned all year. My teacher also taught college classes, so he had that stereotypical form of college teaching of just walking around and talking about his PowerPoint or outline of notes all period. He didn’t give a rip about what we did during his class either. My friends and I played games, listened to music, or had full out deep discussions about what we were going through right in the middle of class. There were always about three or four people that paid attention and took notes; so when it came time for us to turn in our questions, their notes fanned out to the rest of the class and we all passed with A’s. While it looked great on my report card, especially since it was basically like a weighted study hall, it did not help me learn government. My teacher did not create a good atmosphere for learning (though it is hard to make government interesting) nor did he make me want to pay attention or even make me pay attention for that matter. I had another teacher that was very similar; he did not care what we did at all for the most part. The only difference was he did not teach us hardly at all! Government wasn’t much of a problem, but since I want to be an engineer and that class was Engineering Drawing, it was actually important that I learn as much as I can about engineering from that class. So, the end of the year rolled around and I got another 5.0 for the class on my report card, but my knowledge of engineering didn’t reflect my grade. On the flip side, my friend, Jessica, has a teacher that gets so excited about teaching math that she can’t understand what he is talking about. She has to go home and get her dad (who is a very smart Virginia Tech grad by the way) to reteach her everything on many occasions.

Some classes just straight up suck any way you slice it. My calculus class last year was a perfect example. I have always been good at math; I got A’s all through 11th grade, so when I get a C on my report card after the first semester and a 41 on my exam, I was like alrighty then! This is a problem! Granted, part of it was my fault because half the time I was about to fall asleep, but that can be turned around to say that she was a boring teacher and did not make want to learn. She even admitted herself that she made up some of the stuff that she taught us, and a lot of what we learned she did not teach how it was written in the book, so we could not go back and reteach ourselves what we did not understand. Even though I made it out of calculus with a B, I couldn’t stand the class; and it was 47 minutes of torture every single day.

There are some classes, however, that may not have the most exciting material, but the teacher makes it an amazing class. My US History class in my junior year was my favorite class that I’ve ever had. It was so fun because my teacher made it this way. Even though all we did two or three days per week was copy down notes from the overhead and did really long worksheets that took forever to do in which my teacher called “fun sheets,” I still loved the class because my teacher was absolutely hilarious. He would give us speeches right before we took a quiz or a test saying not to cheat that always went something like this: “Do not cheat. If you cheat, I will catch you and you will be labeled a cheater. You will not be able to get a job at Dippin’ Dots. You will not be able to get married, because nobody wants to marry a cheater, and you won’t have any friends on Facebook because nobody wants to be friends with a cheater.” He had many funny expressions and sayings that he used as well. When he was going around collecting homework and somebody didn’t have it, he would say, “…mmmm….filth.” Even when he taught, he made it very entertaining and comical. When teaching us about the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, he took a white board eraser (Monitor) and a folded piece of paper with a water bottle cap on top (Merrimac) and bashed them together saying, “Mmmmm!!!” and “OOOHHH!!!” as he taught us about the famous battle. Some teachers may have made that class excruciatingly boring and a pain to sit through, but he made it fun to learn, and I actually looked forward to going to class every day. My sister is lucky enough to have him this year, and upon learning that she is related to me, he said, “I won’t hold that against you.”

So, my whole point for writing this is to say that any class can be, if not fun, at least a good learning environment that makes you want to go to class even if the material may not be all that exciting. The teacher plays the biggest part in doing so, although the ultimate success you have in the class is how hard you work. It is important for the teacher to make students want to learn and be excited about going to class as well as carrying out their responsibilities by actually teaching the students. The best class is one that I am excited about going to, that I actually want to pay attention in, and that I leave the class having learned the information well.