49. Teachers.

I feel the need to mention that although you may find it informative, this post is more a teenage rant than it is advice for future educators.

I spent a considerable portion of my day complaining with my classmates about our teachers, and I can’t seem to get my mind off the topic.

Teachers absolutely have to be organised. When the person who’s supposed to be educating us forgets to turn up to our class, doesn’t prepare work for us to do and forgets to give us proper notice about upcoming exams, it’s hard not to get annoyed. In the past, I’ve had teachers who quite plainly made up the class work as they went. They clearly hadn’t planned out any lessons and merely threw an assignment at us everytime report writing day came close.
The organised teachers, on the other hand, were great. They knew exactly what their classes were doing or were going to be doing at any given time, they prepared assignments and assessment tasks to keep us busy and generally put effort in to make sure we actually learned something.

Though my friends may flay me alive for say so, I really don’t mind teachers who are mean as long as they can teach. I’m sure we’ve all had experience with the teachers who seem to scream at people more than they talk. I’ve come across a few who, although I wouldn’t describe them as wonderful people, I can appreciate them because they know their respective subjects thoroughly and make us work hard enough to ensure we know the subject as well.

It hasn’t been all bad, though. I’ve had a fair few nice, laid back teachers as well. These are the ones with a sense of humour, take the time to talk to their students and actually get to know them. These teachers may not have been strict, but we worked hard anyway because we respected them.
This can backfire horribly, though. I’ve had teachers who tried so hard to be nice that they let the class get away with murder. We’d spend every lesson ignoring the work because the teachers wouldn’t dare give us a detention, and as a result we all did shockingly when it came to exams.
Then there are the teachers who try too hard to be funny and try too hard to relate to the students. I really don’t think I need to add anything else to that.

I’ve just realised that everything I said is, in short: You have to be organised, it’s okay to be a *@!#$ if you know your subject, be nice but not too nice and be funny but don’t try too hard.

Sorry, this probably won’t be of much use to anyone.
Sure was fun to type, though.