Efficacy

Effective teachers are hard to come by. In my education career, I have gotten pretty lucky with mainly effective teachers. I have also had a fair share of some not so effective teachers.

Mrs. Mueller was a very effective teacher. She was my Speech teacher in high school. She handed out a syllabus (something rarely given out in high school) the first day, and told us what she expected from us. It was clear from the beginning the tasks that we were expected to complete and it was our job to get it done. She did a great job of reminding students to finish projects, but we knew it was our responsibility. She was also effective because she maintained a relationship with each one of her students. She knew at least a little about each one of us in the class. She knew our interests and hobbies, and we knew hers. She told us what not to do and told us what to do to make the classroom an effective place to learn. I appreciated how devoted she was to us and how clear her guidelines were.

My junior year of high school, I took a English composition class. The teacher had been an aid in classrooms for 20 years, but never had a classroom of his own, the year I had him was his first year as a "real teacher." He was getting older and it seemed as though he didn't really want to teach us. Some of the students in the class began to realize how relaxed of a guy he was, so they abused their privileges. Students (including me sometimes!) would come late to class, because we knew that our teacher would never punish us. We would have weekly vocabulary tests, and everyone consistently failed because we would never review in class and there would be no expectations given. This teacher was very ineffective. He wasn't motivated and did not give his students clear expectations. He seemed as though he didn't want to maintain a relationship with us as his students and was unclear about what he expected.

The key to being an effective teacher is balancing expectations with a relationship with students. Mrs. Mueller is an example of a teacher who knew what she wanted from her students. Because she knew what she wanted, and communicated it to us, the year was quite successful.

Creativity and Inventiveness

Creativity and Inventiveness are two qualities that many of my teachers throughout school encouraged. Teachers often times want their students to think "outside of the box." We find the theme of creativity used more often in Art, Music, English and Social Sciences, but harder in Math and Science. It is a teacher's job, teaching a "creative class" or not, to promote inventiveness in each individual student. It's hard to reward creativity because each person's idea of something "creative" is different. I think the basis of creativitiy should deal with whether or not a student is proud of something that they have worked on.

My Paideia professor last year was a teacher who demanded creativity and inventiveness. At first, I struggled in the class. Having a "math brain," I HATED thinking critically about books. (I like X=a definite answer, not some “Well, it could be this, but it may be this too…”) Paideia and my professor taught me to appreciate all the ways of creatively looking at things more in detail. I realized that I could read books and know what they meant. I could even write a 5 page paper on that material. My professor helped me think critically about texts, which is so important. She demanded that we think creatively about material, so we were pushed to present our maximum potential. I hope that some day I can demand creativity from my students just as that professor did for me.