4. Bad Teachers

byZaragozana

380 followers

12 years ago

Bad Teachers

Studies have shown that human beings learn best, whether it’s skills or knowledge, in an environment that encourages questions and does not ridicule or punish ignorance. People also learn better within small groups rather than large, where they can get to know those around them, teachers and students alike, and establish collaborative, rather than competitive, relationships with them.

The modern world being what it is, it’s not always possible to learn something –whether calculus or French- in a small, supportive tutorial group. Universities and schools have many more students than teachers, so classes are necessarily often very big. The key, therefore, to creating a successful learning environment in which students can explore a subject and really learn- is the teacher.

Which brings me to the title of this blog: Bad Teachers.

Bad teachers, she said grimly. We’ve all had them. The memory of those people is perhaps still fresh in your mind even today, so many years later. These were people who had no business teaching or being in any kind of leadership role.

Some of them cowed their students into silence by quashing or discouraging any and all questions, spending the rest of the lesson lecturing in a monotone. They were terrible communicators and educators and, when swathes of their students failed, they never thought that perhaps some of the blame for this lay with themselves. Strangely, neither did the institution they worked for and so these teachers often kept their jobs for decades, killing generations of students’ love of their subject.

Others used their power to make individual students’ lives very difficult, singling them out for unfair treatment, giving them lower grades, making hilarious and public show of the targeted student’s ignorance. The rest of the class knew it was unfair but kept silent, afraid that if they spoke up they would become the focus of the teacher’s bullying, afraid also that they would be given a bad grade.

Other types of teachers didn’t really know their stuff and, desperate to hide that fact and insecure of students whose intellectual abilities and knowledge may be rivaling their own, they bullied people and stifled genuine discussions and intellectual exploration that wandered off the well trodden path- the only one they knew. They had stumbled into teaching not as a sacred vocation but because they weren’t good at anything else. They were never particularly good at the subject they’re teaching either and certainly have no love for it.

And finally you have the teachers who may be good communicators, and also know their material very well, and are passionate about it… but who go into teaching for the wrong reasons. They go into teaching- and it can be at a university or a goat cheese making class- because they really want to be praised and recognized and, well, sort of worshipped. These are the Super Star Teachers (in their eyes) who set themselves up as gurus with a devoted coterie of fawning students and followers.

I am writing this because I recently had an experience in the goat cheese-making world (yes, there is one!) where I encountered someone whom I would rank as a Bad Teacher. I had rung a woman for some information and advice about how to use a cheese starter I’d purchased and emerged from the conversation twenty minutes later with a severe stomachache and headache, not quite knowing what had happened.

I had been given the woman’s phone number by the company that had sold me the cheese starter and knew nothing about her. From the outset the woman- I shall call her Gertrude- directed the conversation away from my simple question ‘Can I use raw goat milk with this starter to make a mother culture? The package says it has to be skimmed.’ She then proceeded to ask me in a remarkably confrontational way why I even wanted to make a mother culture. I replied that I like to know how to make things from scratch. This led into a very weird little exchange about how she also makes ‘everything from scratch’ all her own bread, bagels ‘you name it’. I remember frowning into the phone at that point thinking, ‘Are we having some kind of ‘Make it from scratch Olympics?’

Before long she was questioning me and then sort of ridiculing me over the fact that I have always used a certain simplified cheese starter, instead of one where I add my own rennet, commenting that I ‘should have moved onto mozzarella and hard cheeses by now because chevre is so EASY to make. There’s no skill involved at all.’ (You guessed it; I had told her chevre is the only goat cheese I’ve ever made.)

She was really on a roll now and I was feeling completely thrown off. I hadn’t expected to get into a gladiatorial struggle over ‘Who’s the better homesteader?’ and how much cheese knowledge I have. I don’t claim to be an expert, nor do I wish to be. I just wanted to know if I can use raw full fat goat milk or whether I have to buy skimmed to make the mother culture!

At one point she implied that my knowledge of cheese-making was incredibly limited and patchy and stated firmly, ‘You need to get a cheese making book.’ Suddenly I had that funny feeling I was being sold to.

‘I have a book’ I replied quietly, thinking ‘You’re a cow.’ And, ‘I have to get off this phone.’

Some time later, after she had blathered on further in her uniquely discouraging, belittling, self aggrandizing way, I got off the phone and looked her up online. Ohhhhhh…. She’s a somewhat well known goat cheese-maker! And she has a brand new book out. She teaches goat cheese making classes. She’s not just an average person like me…. She’s A TEACHER.

Ah, well that explains a lot.

So she was a Famous Teacher; she was an Authority; she was a Published Author.In short she was a Goat Cheese-Making Celebrity! And I’d just thought she was going to be a helpful person on the end of the phone. She was annoyed at me because I hadn’t been deferential or humble, because I hadn’t claimed to be completely ignorant, because I asked questions, because I didn’t just accept what she said but asked follow up questions. She felt I was challenging her.

As I sat reading about her I realized that she’s in her sixties and only recently getting some public recognition of her skill and experience, both of which I am in no way belittling because it’s extensive. However, she is using her place as teacher and adviser to bolster what must be a very shaky little ego, or to feed a desire for power over others, rather than warmly encouraging others to journey in cheese making as she has. If she creates the same environment in her classroom as she did on the phone when she was supposedly helping me, God help her students.

Which now brings me with heartfelt gratitude to Wealthy Affiliate and to all the kind, encouraging people here.

If you want an example of a good teacher, go and read Kyle’s comments and replies on the chat sections following those very first WA lessons. You may have just completed those lessons yourself, or you may have done them months or years ago. Go and read how patient and encouraging and polite and validating he is with questions that he’s answered probably literally hundreds of times with new members.

And then there are the Uber Members of WA like Rich and tons of other experienced members who patiently send you a link when you can’t do something and have plaintively posted a request for help.

WA really exemplifies the qualities of an optimum learning environment: although it’s a large institution, it feels intimate. Kyle and Carson have created a civil, supportive, encouraging environment in which it is not just safe to ask questions and display ignorance, it’s actively encouraged as a necessary precursor to learning.

There’s also lots of opportunity for one-on-one tuition and help. The relationships within WA between teachers and students are collaborative and egalitarian- because everyone’s a teacher to everyone else, but we all still have something to learn.

And, unlike in school, failure here at WA is celebrated as a step in the right direction towards success: you ‘failed’ or ‘made a mistake’ because you were trying, so in fact you didn’t fail at all! (If only the wider education system were as able to allow children to fail and learn from their failures, and move on, and not be defined by them!)

In short, this place is an amazing learning environment and every one of you teachers in it is a joy to work with. Thank you!