Teachers of Influence While There

Teachers of Influence While there are many types of teaching, there seems to be only a few successful teachers that accomplish the goal of helping students learn and appreciate what they are learning. It has been my experience that while we can learn something from even the worst of teachers, what we are learning might not be what we signed up to learn.

In other words, bad teachers, while they have not taught me anything about the courses they were supposed to teach me, taught me something about life and how lo live by not following their examples. One teacher taught me how not to be lazy and one taught me how to be decent when dealing with my fellow human beings. However, the good teachers I have had made me enjoy learning so much that I was not even aware that I was learning anything.

Through these experiences, I learned how important it is that we always strive to be our best because we never know whom we would influence in our daily lives. Some of my teachers have been lousy when it came to the subject they were teaching which made them a fine example of how not to act. For example, one teacher I had taught dance and she had a drinking problem.

While she thought she was being clever and instructive, she was only proving to all of us how dangerous drinking can be. She thought that by having one of the students show a new dance move every week, she was being helpful to the students but actually, she was just trying to get out of doing her job because she couldn't do it. Because she had students showing the moves, I did not learn the way I should have.

I came out of that class with almost as many questions as I had when I entered the class and it was practically a waste of money. Another teacher that taught me how not to behave was a science teacher who had serious anger issues. He would become angry over the smallest things anybody would say in class and would actually throw things such as chairs and bottles at students.

One day, he started choking a student and while he was choking him, as us to call the principal's office because he knew he was out of control and did not know what he might do. This man should have never been in a classroom. Both of these teachers demonstrated how bad teaching goes way beyond the classroom. The drunken teacher and the teacher that could not control his anger were unhappy and they spread that unhappiness to every student that year.

These experiences taught me the importance of having a good attitude. A teacher that taught me through positive experience was a literature teacher. He was an older man that always had a funny story to tell with whatever he happened to be talking about that day. He would make jokes and somehow make them fit into either the story or the writer we were studying. By making us laugh, he made us remember because there was always something quirky or hilarious associated with the topic.

He would also tell anecdotal stories that were seemingly crazy. When I was tested, I found it easy to remember facts by relating them to the things the teacher said. Whether it was a joke or a weird tale, I could remember things because I had these mental images of the story or writer. I was learning without realizing it and I truly enjoyed that class so much that I took the same teacher the following semester.

He taught me that people who really enjoy teaching should enjoy it as much as the students do. He also taught me that we can find jobs that make us happy and that is what I will strive to do. People can teach us by being good examples and bad examples. Some people teach us through negative ways - by being lousy at what they do, show us how not to be when we find.