Three Kinds of Teachers(First Version)

Education nowadays in Taiwan merely focuses on textbooks, exams and scores without concerning the benefits of students and their right to be educated. Because of Taiwan's score-trend education, there are few teachers encourage students to express their thoughts, but a lot of teachers only care what kind of grades students receive in class. In general, teachers in Taiwan can be classified into three kinds. Each teacher has different teaching style that may have different influences on their students.

The first kind of teachers are those who always encourage students to take part in class. They ask students to share their ideas and teach them how to support the ideas with valid examples, which helps them develop the ability to think logically and make right decisions. Also, they teach their students to learn how to learn, to sort and evaluate information, and even make judgments about evidence and sources. Finally, they allowed their students to have enough time to practice questioning, debating and researching with them. These teachers really care about their students and never blame them for having different ideas or different perspective towards things. This kind of teaching results in a better classroom discipline and a greater student learning.

The second kind of teachers always urge their student to improve their academic performance. They ask their students to highlight the main point, to summarize and analyze each chapter and even require them to take notes of everything they said. In addition, they often prepare a lot of handouts or pop quiz and force their students to swallow a great number of homework even though their students can’t digest them well. They also ask their students to remember everything from the textbooks for getting better mark. This “duck feeding” teaching doesn’t train students to be creative but makes them working like copy machines without ability to organize ideas.

Finally, there are teachers who care nothing. They tend to be neither support nor demanding and thus often miss the warning signs from their students who are having trouble or under great sufferings. Also, students may feel unimportant and withdraw without emotional support from their teachers. These teachers’ attitudes have negative effect on their students. In addition, they may not even care what kind of grades their students receive in class since they teach nothing except repeat what the textbooks say and read it out loud like a parrot. This kind of teaching often leads to an depressing relationship between teachers and students.

To sum up, I admire the first kind of teachers who have positive influence on their students. Students respect these teachers and know that they can go to them with problems of any kind no matter how big or small. This kind of teachers are the example that the other teachers should learn from.