Compare and Contrast: Two Educators (edited)

 

Compare and Contrast: Two Educators

When I was in high school I had two teachers that stood out, one of them was Mrs. Heart and the other was Mr. Football. Mrs. Heart was a wonderful teacher who cared and loved her students; Mr. Football on the other hand was also a football coach for the school and only cared about his players. These are two very different teachers and how they interacted with and taught their students. They both exhibited very different characteristics. Both of these teachers are ones that I will always remember. They both went to school and had a passion for what they did. The following paper will point of the good teaching habits and bad teaching habits. In high school I felt that I knew it all and never had to listen, I was seventeen and this was my senior year. This was my year; at the end I was free. I had two teachers that stood out above them all in that year of high school.

Mrs. Heart and Mr. Football left me with higher expectations of teaching, and what I truly needed as a student. I remember the first encounters with both teachers, walking up the road from the main school from the admin building to the arts building on Hostmark Street. It was third period after lunch when I first met Mrs. Heart. In Mrs. Heart’s classroom there were six large island sixed workstations and three large pallets of clay. There were four pottery wheels in the back and a large adjoining room to the left of the class, which was the kiln room that was full of fired pottery. When I walked in, I saw a lady wearing a giant yellow hat and bright orange coveralls, standing by the desk handing each student a number. When I received my number she said that I will find my seat with that number and that will be my home. We all piled in, and then found our new homes. The bell rang meaning the class has begun. She turned to the board and writes her name and the class name on the board. When she finished she turned and said in a loud but welcoming voice good afternoon class I am Mrs. Heart and this is pottery. She went on to tell us about pottery and she was so enthusiastic and passionate about what she was saying, the whole room was captivated. As the semester went on she taught us about pottery and making art, making the art that we liked not what was expected from us. She allowed complete free artistic license with each project we did, the only guideline was it needed to serve the project function, for example if it was a candle stick it needed to hold a candle, or a wall mask it needed to be hung on a wall. She was great about inspiring us to complete our work; if we struggled we suffered from what she called artistic farts. If we had an artistic fart she would come to each one who experienced this anomaly and help us find some light. She was a good teacher and a great inspiration to find our creative bone. Mrs. Heart loved coming into class, she was always prepared for the day’s assignment. She was fun and charismatic. She was always encouraging; she never wanted us to struggle with a project. Mrs. Heart made sure we not only learned but that we had fun doing it. Mrs. Heart was bubbly and full of enthusiasm. She felt that we could never fail, she also was not a push over we were all accountable for our work.

 I met Mr. Football fifth period history class; this class was located in the senior hallway of the main building. My first encounter with Mr. Football was not in high school, it was in junior high. It was a miserable failure, not only had I not realized I had him as a teacher before but he never changed. We walked into class and took a seat; Mr. Football was nowhere to be seen. The bell rang and all of the class just sat there wondering if we even had class. As we sat confused and agitated, Mr. Football finally appeared he was twenty minutes late on the first day of school. To make things worse he did not have a syllabus or a plan for the day’s work. He pulled out a DVD and put it on the TV for us to watch. It was a documentary of ancient Egypt. While he tells us about how he will have a syllabus completed by the following day that now will just watch this documentary and have no homework. As the documentary started I knew what would happen next, and it did. Mr. Football grabbed all of the returning football players that happened to be in his class fifth period and brought them to the back of the class by his desk. He then precedes to pull-up last year’s highlights and goes over stats and formation with them. As the rest of the week goes on every day is the same. But now he actually talked to us for the first fifteen minutes of class or the fifteen minutes after he was  ten minutes late. He would give a rough run through of what he wanted us to do that day or a project that that was due by the end of the week and never fully explain. Mr. Football seemed passionate about history when he did talk about it but he let his extra duties step in the way. Just Like every day he grabbed the football players and went to the back of the class and watched last week’s game, sometimes the head coach would join him in class and they would have a full on meeting about football. Our homework was always given back late and sometimes not even corrected. Projects were hard to understand and complicated, and he would never really answer your questions about homework. Like I said this is the second time I had Mr. Football as a teacher, and nothing about his teaching style changed. He was a bad teacher, a great football coach but a horrid teacher. Mr. Football was always late for class and unprepared. He never fully explained projects or homework, but expected it to be perfect to his standard. Mr. Football cared more about football than he did his history students.

In conclusion both teachers worked for the same school, and were great teachers but in very different aspects. Mrs. Heart deeply cared about the success of her students while Mr. Football cared deeply about winning the next football game. If Mr. Football gave the same attention to his history class I would probably write about what a great teacher he was, or if I was a football player I would write about that. I did not find that he was a great teacher at all for me. These teachers both had enthusiasm, passion, and they both loved their students. It’s just only one of them showed it to their actual class and the other did not. Mrs. Heart was a fun and knowledgeable teacher she loved teaching us how to create our own art. She was in my opinion an outstanding teacher, which is why I chose her for my paper. Mr. Football was a horrible teacher, he never answered questions and if he did they did not help. He was always late and ill prepared; it made him seem as if he did not care about his students.  I hope that you take from this paper is the degree of teaching that works for me. I do not expect all my teachers to wear bright colored clothes or big hats and have funny names for not doing your work, but I do expect my teachers to care about what they are teaching and that their actually succeed.