High School Student Chinese + Jewish Male Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: My friends and I don’t necessarily seek out connection with our teachers at school, and some might say we even actively avoid it, but then again, that is kind of normal for students. I feel perhaps a little more common ground between me and my teachers than the majority of kids, because I enjoy writing and performing and learning and creating and many of the things that teachers do every day. I’ve even considered becoming a teacher myself in time, although that’s way too far off to be certain. The reality is that most often times it’s a love-hate relationship that sits between me and my teachers, for at the same time that I admire what they stand for and share so many interests with them, actually being a student in any public school sort of drives you crazy, as you probably know. Worksheets and standardized tests and long essays... I see these traditional methods of dealing with a large number of kids at once like a type of education mass-production, with all the same compromises and artificial feelings of a literal factory, and an obstacle to being able to relate to anyone who works as part of this institution, whether or not they want it that way. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: It matters incredibly much. It’s so much harder to learn from someone who doesn’t understand you. There are ways around this barrier, and as students, we often find ourselves spending most of our time meddling with them: watching tutorials online, learning from each other, taking excessive amounts of notes, cheating, but nothing eases the process like having someone who is devoted to finding what makes your brain click. In my experience this has gotten better and better throughout my school years. We have websites designed to be more attractive to us by interweaving the worlds of social media and academics, and programs to help us form healthier relationships with our peers and mentors, but in the end it’s up to the individual to make it all work out, and the reward for both sides is that we want to learn. It feels meaningful. We want to complete the assignments, not just for our GPA’s and scholarships, but for the sake of learning and growing into better people. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong
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High School Student Male White Heterosexual Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: We are all trying to get out of this place as fast as possible. Despite the large initial differences seen between teachers and students including race, age, economic status and upbringings; in my opinion and experience what makes the bond between teachers and students tight ends up being much mores simple than one would think. In my experience, it's the attitude of the teacher and their approach to students that really creates a strong relationship, not a "young, hip, relatable" teacher. Even the oldest teachers, with the right attitude have kept it real, and have made class that much more interesting. There's no petty complaining or nagging, it's reality and they understand that kids will either do work or not, and it is really up to the kids to do their work. This ends up making the whole atmosphere of the class more relaxed and casual. In my opinion, this realization is more important than any knowledge that is taught throughout high school. While younger teachers generally have been easier to work with than the older teachers I have had to work with, I have come to the realization that the way the teacher addresses the students, as equals and real people, not children, adds respect into the classroom and allows the students and teachers to be eye-to-eye and have a greater understanding for each other. This helps both teachers and students achieve what they have set out to while being at school. This respect has increased as I worked my way to higher grades, as one would expect with the students becoming more mature. This has allowed me to have more respect for the teachers and the class, and has therefore allowed me to have greater success in their classes. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Not necessarily. While commonalities make it easier for students and teachers to level, it is not needed in order to make students and teachers relate. In suburban Bellevue, at my school, I don't believe that race or sexual orientation plays a huge role in how people are treated in our classes. Yes, there are issues with some people in some places, and no I wouldn't honestly know about how this feels or really know what happens because I am a white, straight male. However, based on what I've seen my with friends of color, or those of varying sexual orientations, they are treated equally by teachers and others at our school. From what I've seen everyone is treated fairly equally and the only thing that would initiate being treated differently was any attitude or work incompatibility that might cause issues between students and teachers. But these can just as easily be seen with any white straight student as with any student that is part of any minority group. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong High School Student Korean Female Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: At my school, it seems like my teachers and I are all busy. We are all busy with school, our families, our responsibilities. Sometimes, how busy our personal lives get impact our school lives, and it seems to be the same for teachers. But it's weird, we lack a mutual understanding of how busy we may all be, even though it's obvious--we all have our own lives. I don't really know my teachers this year on a personal level, so I can only base our similarities on what I can see, and we all have our hands full with many, many things. However, I can recall times in past years when similarities between students and teachers were truly beneficial to my education. When I used to live in California, my kindergarten class consisted of mainly Spanish-speaking students. Because the target language at my school was English, this language barrier would have been extremely detrimental to all my classmates had our teacher been unable to speak Spanish and English. Unfortunately for me, neither English or Spanish was my first language – I was a native born Korean who had just immigrated to the US. Though I struggled to catch up to the language levels of my friends, I was still able to enjoy school as our teacher, who was bilingual herself, was understanding of all our language barriers. Additionally, I distinctly remember my principal and a 5th grade teacher. They were the only Asian staff, one of them being Korean, which really helped out my mom (who could rarely help me with school as she was also native Korean), which helped with my education there as well. One of my first experiences with the American school system truly showed me the importance of having commonalities with a teacher. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Yes! Regardless of how much a student and a teacher may have in common, any similarities can help start a bond between them. As a student, I know that often times, teachers are held up to certain standards and ideals. When teachers are stereotyped as a general mass of people, it's hard to see them as individuals. When that happens, it's hard to even begin to relate with them, let alone have the WANT to relate with them. Because it's so much easier to understand and learn from someone you relate to, having a connection to a teacher is really important. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong |
ROLL CALLHumanizing the gaps separating teachers and students. Archives
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