Dear Matt,
I had the best AP English 11 teacher in the world! His name is Mr.Betsch, he forces his students to step out of their comfort zones and have opinions and beliefs. Once a week we would read an article or a short story and he wouldn't tell us what to look for he just asked us to think about it with an open mind. Also he never made us feel that an idea was wrong or stupid, he encouraged us to make mistakes beacuse you learn to get up from that and try again. This by no means, is saying that he was not hard on us, because he was. Our essays were meticulously looked at and thought about. He wanted to make us into the best writers we could be which included critiquing our work. The best thing about him was that if a student showed that they put forth an effort he would be there to help them in any way he could, including staying after school, giving up his lunch or prep period. He wanted above all to succeed! The sad thing is that most teachers are not like this because they cannot afford to put this much effort into teaching, because half the time they need to have another job just to make ends meet. We need to start valuing the good teachers or we are going to lose them.
Powerful - I hope we can all aspire to be like Mr. Betsch, but it is so hard! Which post is this for? Changing paradigms? Response to someone else's post or schools kill creativity?
ReplyDeleteI had a teacher like this too. I think its important for teachers to find the 'middle', where he was able to have fun but when it came to doing work he was never easy on us. I think he gained more respect from his students and we learned more from him.
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