I am often curious how some teachers manage to keep their job when they would never be tolerated in another profession? I have had several classes that have been difficult simply because the teacher has a difficult time being an effective teacher. If you want to know which teachers are the worst or the best you simply need to check out ratemyprofessor.com. For the most part the reviews are honest & accurate.

Unfortunately you can’t always get the best teachers because of your class schedule or because there are some classes only taught by one teacher. I have heard a lot of dumb people that tell students that it’s their fault if a teacher can’t teach. I think this is completely short sighted, if students are not doing well it should be closely linked to the teacher abilities.

I would like to point out a few items the learning model says for the teacher to be responsible for that I have not seen much of:

·         Cultivate a positive attitude

o   I have experienced teachers that like to talk down to their students as if they are dumb, I have experienced teachers who are unkind to members of the class that speak up for themselves, I have experienced teachers who show no interest in the class atmosphere at all.

·         Plan and design learning experiences and facilitate student preparation

o   That’s right teacher actually need to put thought into their lessons. We understand you the teacher know all the content, but please, shooting from the hip is not helping us learn. Facilitating student preparation, I know most of my teachers have a you sink or you swim plan. This is another blog post, but for now, please teachers be clean about your expectations and allow us the opportunity to succeed.

·         Listen to Students

o   If I had a quarter for every time a teacher said “Not right now” I would be a relatively rich student. In my experience 2 out of 10 teachers listen and then do something  about the feedback they get. Please take time to listen to students, not just after the semester is over, ask them every day. We want you to be a better teacher desperately! We want to help to future generations.

·         Provide feedback to students

o   Wow! Have the teachers read this? I would say the majority of my classes I do not get any feedback at all. For the record I don’t consider a nominal grade feedback. I have only had two teachers who gave me good feedback and actually gave me the opportunity to learn from it. Please take a second and write a sentence or two telling us what we got wrong and what we could do to understand better, give us your insight.

I hope that this article has refreshed some knowledge for teacher as to the idea behind learning model. We need the teachers to be guided by divine inspiration to help this University to become great. I only know of one item teachers remember very well “Allow students to be responsible for learning and teaching.” Teachers too often take this to mean, I can sit back and hopefully they will figure it out with the textbook as their guide. Please take your job a little more seriously.