Monday Night Lecture

I believe the role playing exercise was an effective way to help learn about student learning and accountability because it put us students in a somewhat "life like" setting of what each side of this situation would argue in order to have the end result be in their favor. Some of the disadvantages to using a more lecture form of teaching is that the students are not able to interact with other students or the teacher. Also, they aer unable to express their opinion on certain issues because they would just be getting direct information from the teacher. Some advantages to this type of teaching is that it is a very structured environment so the students are able to get the maximum amount of learning time they can receive. I believe that we do spend more time paying attention to the higher achieving students and parents rather than the lower achieving students because we focus on helping these students excel even more rather than helping the lower achieving students catch up to the students with the higher standards.

Passion

A teacher's enthusiasm about a subject can greatly influence their students' feelings about the subject. If you have a teacher that absolutely loves the subject they are teaching and clearly express their passion for the subject, it makes the environment in the classroom more fun, but if you have a teacher that does not like what they are teaching, the class can be boring or dull at times. In high school, my chemistry teacher had a passion for his profession and his subject area. I was never a very good student when it came to any type of science, but he made chemistry so much more fun for me and I learned a lot with him as my teacher, and greatly improved my grade in the subject area. Everyday he would come to class with such enthusiasm and a smile on his face, ready to teach his students something new. He would speak with such interest in the subject, and this passion for chemistry carried on everyday throughout the whole year. I feel that because of this I learned more because he made the class interesting and found a way to get every student engaged in what we were learning.

Authenticity

Sometimes it is difficult to tell if a teacher is being authentic or "fake" when showing compassion for their students or their profession. It is difficult to tell the sincerity of a teacher when they are teaching because some teachers are able to make it look like they enjoy their profession when really they dread going to work everyday. Also, it is hard to determine if a teacher is showing authentic compassion and care for a student. Everyone has always had the feeling that they believe a teacher dislikes them. Is this because the teacher is not being authentic with them? Although most of the time the teacher really does not dislike the student, it may seem this way because of the teacher's authenticity of sincerity towards the student when they are encouraging them or giving them some kind of praise.