Middle School Student Male First Generation American Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: When we first immigrated to the United States, I was only three-years-old and I had just learned how to speak my primary language--Turkish. At the playground, while the other kids played Bakugan, Pokémon, and Beyblade, I just sat in the corner and watched. When the time came to go to pre-K, I did not know what to do. This was because I had just mastered Turkish, which made it harder to learn a second language without mixing the words up. In addition, it looked like every kid around me was a master at English. Apparently, my teacher was just as I was. She had also just moved to the United States a couple years before. My pre-K teacher knew what I was going through, so she gave me extra support. She taught me almost everything I needed to know. Eventually, by the time I went to Kindergarten, I was the first kid there who learned how to read. On one of my first experiences with the American school system, I learned that having things in common with your teachers is very important. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Of course! It does not matter how many similarities you may have with your teachers. Any similarities can help start a bond between the two. As a student, I think it is very important to have similarities between each other. By having similarities with your teachers, this creates a friendship that is very important to have. Additionally, I think it is much easier to learn from a person who has similarities with you, know or trust versus a person who you have never seen in your life.
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Middle School Student Chinese Male Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: In California, teachers were treated with the utmost respect. Everyone wanted to be a teacher. One day, I was thinking about all the things that were the same and different about California teachers and Washington teachers. I was also thinking about one specific teacher, my favorite teacher, Mrs. Hogan. Mrs. Hogan was my 2nd and 3rd grade teacher. For many years, I had thought Mrs. Hogan and I were really different. But when I really came to think about it, we weren’t that different from each other. When she was small, her last name was also made fun of just like mine. Hogan is a word for an Indian hut. My last name was also made fun of, everyone thought that it was a stupid name and very funny. There are also other things that made us the same too. For example, our families both immigrated to America and we all had relatives that had fought in a war. We both also loved pizza and lasagna because she is Italian. Even her friends were similar to mine. Her friends loved to watch football (even though they support the Packers and I just liked the Patriots). Her friends loved to run and be active rather than play video games and it was the same with my friends. I think that having things alike impacts you no matter what those things are. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Even though I said that being alike impacts you, I don’t think that you need to be alike. Being alike with a teacher can be good in many ways. You can still be very good without being alike with a teacher. Having things in common with a teacher makes you want to come to school to be with your teacher. If you are too alike, than you will start going to school just to see your friends and the teacher and you won't actually try to study or anything. Still, wanting to come to school is better than not coming to school. My mother didn’t really have that much in common with her teachers. Still, she still has a good job. 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 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 |
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