Did you like your teacher?

When I told my brother that next year I'm going to be a high school math teacher, he was like, "daaaaaangggg...." which could either mean something really positive or really negative, but the way he said it I think it was both. I think he meant it in a way that was like daaang that's gonna be really hard and really cool at the same time, which were my thoughts exactly. Then we had this conversation about the teachers that we had in high school (he's only a year older than me), which actually wasn't very long ago.

We talked about both good and bad teachers, and why we thought they were good or bad. My brother started talking about how awesome his Calculus teacher, Ms. Steer, was and I kept asking him why he thought she was so awesome. He said that everyone liked her and respected her, and because of that she had really good control over the classroom. 

Apparently, Ms. Steer very rarely raised her voice, which is something I need to learn how to do since I lose my voice fairly easily. I asked my brother how she was able to do that, and why everyone liked and respected her so much. He couldn't really figure it out for a while, then realized that part of it had to do with the fact that she told stories about her life after every class. Then he narrowed it down to the fact that Ms. Steer just really cared about her students and cared about being there, simple as that. And that's why she got respect and was an awesome teacher.

Then we started talking about our English teacher who we both had, Mr. Dargo. Most people didn't like Mr. Dargo very much and thought he was a pretty bad teacher, and so my brother and I were trying to figure out why. It didn't take us very long to remember that he seemed to kind of hate all of us, which is why we all kind of hated him too. That's probably not a very good relationship to have in the classroom. So since Mr. Dargo didn't care about us, or didn't seem to at least, that made him a bad teacher in our eyes.

But wait, I guess what really matters is how much the students learn, not how much they like the teacher right? If you have a teacher that everyone really likes, but everyone fails their standardized tests, then that's pretty messed up. It's better to have a teacher that everyone hates but makes them learn right? Teaching should be about the transfer of knowledge and skills, not be a popularity contest.

But could students possibly learn less when they dislike their teacher? How much did we learn in Mr. Dargo's class? I don't particularly recall his class being worse off academically than the other English teacher's classes, but could he have done better if we actually liked him? Who knows. 

One thing that I can say with confidence though is that when a student has a teacher he likes, that student will be way more likely to end up liking the subject than if he had a teacher he hated. My biology teacher was a biased, immature, sarcastic, angry lady who clearly picked favorites. I'm not saying this because she had anything against me, in fact I was probably one of her more favored kids, but I really didn't like her because of her poor attitude. So guess what? She killed my interest in biology. 

It's kind of like when you and your girlfriend/boyfriend break up and you end up disliking the music he or she listened to. It doesn't make any logical sense, but it's just something we do anyway. Or at least I did...

Anyway, one of my goals as a math teacher is to make sure my kids know I care about them, and for them to like me. That way, they'll be more likely to enjoy math, and if they enjoy it, they'll be more likely to do well. Makes sense right? We'll see I guess!

Do you guys remember which teachers you liked or disliked? Did the teachers you liked do better in teaching the material? Comment and let me know!