Dear Teachers

I just read a wonderful post by Stacey (@bitchwhocodes)
Link: http://bit.ly/9248m

Great read Stacey, I almost fully agree. I was at Seneca College studying Digital Media just last summer, and when i look back It’s easy to see that the majority of what I learned within the realm of Media was self taught.

Students can hope for somebody like yourself to be able to direct them on the right path or shed some light when Google hasn’t given them a straight answer. This sadly isn’t the case for all College’s and wasn’t the case for me, as so, here is an open letter to my teachers from last year, and to all teachers.

Dear Teachers,

I think the saying “Those who can’t do, teach.” is valid to a good number of you, even If you refuse to believe this is the case. As crazy as it may sound, It seems like it has somehow become a standard that you will probably have an instructor (or a handful of instructors) each semester, teaching you material that they themselves do not know.

Most teachers would have considered me a horrible student. I barely attended class, I didn’t always complete my assignments, and when i was there I was reading blogs about ‘Absolute Nothing’ or ‘Real Random Numbers’ rather than paying attention. I admit it, I didn’t care a whole lot for some classes, and I know that showed because I never tried to hide it, for that I apologize. Part truth is that certain things just weren’t interesting to me and I decided my time was better spend elsewhere.

The rest of that truth lies within the fact that i (without any prior knowledge of Php) was able to complete all the assignments for our Php class within a period of two hours on the final day of school. The fact that despite my love for Flash and ActionScript, I skipped an entire semester of a class teaching Flash and ActionScript deciding I would learn more listening to Lee Brimelow in the library. To be honest I could probably continue for a while, but a lot of these problems can’t always be attributed to bad Teachers.

College education caters to the masses, and the masses as it seems aren’t all that interested in learning, or maybe they just weren’t when I was in College.
We all enjoyed College Life; we knocked back a few beers between classes, played some pool, stressed over homework that was due the next day, so I can understand what keeps students there. The underlying issue here is that most students stayed in school because they loved the college environment and drifted through classes, only taking in what they were taught, and to be honest It’s as Stacey said, they would be lucky if they retained even 20%.

So what am I still talking about? Well I’m hoping to impart some advice on what makes a good teacher, from the opinion of somebody that wasn’t one of the masses, somebody that went to school to learn. These words of wisdom are simply the things that have made the good teachers stand out through out my college eduction.

1) You are granted a tremendous power by teaching, a power to influence somebody’s life for better or worse. Use this power wisely, I’ve seen people drop out of school because teachers have suggested it.

2) Please don’t teach to bring home rent, teach because you want to make a difference, and let the money come as way of you trying to make that difference. You will never have the same impact in a job you don’t wake up in the morning excited to do. We see it when you don’t want to be there and as a result we don’t want to be there either.

3) Id rather you not hold our hands and walk with us through the door, instead show us where the doors are and the interested amongst us will walk through them ourselves, chances are the uninterested students will have forgotten where the door was by the time they walked through it anyway.

4) I’ll make this one specific so it’s easier to voice, but it applies in any field. Don’t spend the entire 14 weeks in a semester trying to drill Actionscript into us, as with any language, If we don’t speak it on a day to day basis were going to forget. Rather than trying to teach as much of any subject as possible, show us where we can go to find information ourselves, the people we should know, the events we should be going to and the blogs we should be reading.

5) Please don’t act like your better than us. Some teachers make it a point to show you how awesome they are some will laugh at the idea that a student may know more than they. I’ve had all kinds of teachers, but I will forever remember the ones who put themselves on the same level as us, not only teaching us but learning from us as well.

Sometimes I look back and I’m utterly appauled by some of the people we had as teachers, Microsoft Sam reading the web tutorial version of what you were teaching would have been more informative. That being said going to College was one of the best decisions I could have made, and I have a handful of teachers to thank for all the times they inspired us to be more than we were.

Thanks for reading, hope It made a difference,

-Raz

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