Hello everyone! My name is Graham Hevel and I am a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. My major is Physical Education and I hope once I complete college I will move on to be a teacher at a high school where I want to make all students more physically fit and teach them the importance of Physical Education. I got my inspiration to become a teacher in high school when I found that most of my mentors were teachers and I hope I can become a mentor to my future students. Another aspiration of mine, in addition to teaching, is to be a coach for various athletics at the school.
A Chemistry teacher I had my sophomore year in high school I will always remember. He had qualities to him that I believe most great teachers have and they are passion for their subject area, caring, knowledgeable, and captivates the students. Despite not liking Chemistry very much, I looked forward to his class everyday. He did have some exciting demonstrations to help capture our attention, which then made me think of how he did the demonstration. Just like Mr. Wright in a New York Times YouTube channel, in the first couple of minutes of the video he talks about once he gets the student to keep on asking how or why he knows he will have their attention (New York Times, 2012). He is a fantastic example of what a great teacher is, the way he cannot only reach students on an academic level, but also a personal level.
In our class we watched two examples of teaching on YouTube. The first clip I watched was a scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when an economics teacher is giving a lesson on “Voodoo Economics” (angelabroz87, 2010). While the teacher is giving his lecture students are falling asleep and find more interest in chewing their gum than listening to the teacher. I believe he does a couple things wrong and they are using a monotone voice, not getting the class involved, and throwing a lot of information at his students expecting them to remember it all. However, the second video is from Dead Poets Society and the teacher in the movie Mr. Keating is able to reach his students by getting students to view the material in a different way (love2b1, 2007). He reads Shakespeare to his class, but not in the conventional way. He gives the characters in the book the voices of modern characters, such as characters in movies, that way the students are able to connect with the story even more. This is an example of great teaching when a teacher can take something that students find not interesting and changing the way the material is taught so students become engaged into the lesson.
Thank you for reading!
- Graham Hevel
Citations
New York Times. (2012, December 28). Wright’s Law: A Unique Teacher Imparts
Real Life Lessons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bSu_Snlbsw
love2b1. (2007, April 14). Dead Poets Society-3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EdWgsTUhmI
angelabroz87. (2010, February 7). Boring Economics Teacher.