VERY ROUGH, ROUGH DRAFT OF PAPER #3

I completely lost my first draft, so this is my second attempt written in about ten minutes, please don't judge.

Sydney Mitchell

Sonia Begert

English 101

3 December 2012

            Imagine a room plagued by chaos; swear words vandalizing your ears, children screaming and running throughout, desks and chairs strewn along the floor, the students blissfully oblivious to the fact that they are being utterly disrespectful to the authority figure standing timidly by the door.  Now take a moment and replace that image with an orderly classroom, occupied by students eager to learn, their attention directed solely at the teacher who is standing at the head of the class. What is the difference between these two scenarios, you ask? There is a certain component missing, a key ingredient; mutual respect. Regardless of the age of the students or the subject being taught, the component that is most necessary in a classroom is respect. Respect, as a give-and-take entity, enables the teacher to capture the students’ full attention and interest while still enabling the students to explore their creativity and grow as individuals, learning in a way that speaks to them. Unfortunately respect can be difficult to cultivate in an unruly classroom. If I was given the responsibility to create and maintain respect in a classroom I would get their attention, present myself as an unwavering authority, raise the bar for my students, and strive to teach them material that they would not only enjoy but also use in daily life.

            Methods of cultivating respect will vary depending on the age of the students and the subject at hand, so let us first set the classroom so that we can then mold our tactics around the situation. If I were to teach I would choose to be a tenth grade English Communications teacher, because as C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides, and in this respect it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” As Bryce Boyce said it in his essay A Real Education, attention is one of the greatest challenges for children, and perhaps only more so in a world offering so much distraction so frequently.” Therefore, we must come up with some attention-grabbing, jaw-dropping antic to effectively gain and maintain their intention. (insert crazy, first-day-of-class activity to get attention.)

            Secondly, I would stick to my word and whether I made promises of reward or consequence, I would be sure to implement those actions. By standing my ground and staying true to my pre-discussed arrangements, the students would recognize that I held to my word with the utmost dedication. (Insert source from Banking Education) Granted, there must be a balance somewhere in the middle of the spectrum ranging from dictatorial asshole to complete pushover. Yet if we can achieve that balance with these methods, then we are already well on our way to acquiring the respect of students, because they will respect discipline, just as they will appreciate reward.

            How can we scoff at our students’ plummeting grades and their lack of self-motivation to raise their scores if we as teachers do not expect better of them? Often it seems that teachers allow their students to scrape by in class, putting forth the bare minimum of effort and allowing excuses for what is best described as sheer lack of discipline. If we raise the bar of expectations, the students will quite naturally rise to it, or at least make more of an effort to do so.

            However above all else, I believe that it is of the utmost important to avoid the droning, monotonous materials that are taught solely for the sake of excelling at a standardized test. In my classroom, I would teach my students not only about English and communications, but also about art, integrity, passion, and how these qualities would help them exceed in all areas of life. (I wrote a lot about this inspiration and how a good teacher will make his students love a subject regardless of their predetermined like or dislike for it in my first paper, so I will pull from that.)

            CONCLUSION TBD

           

  “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me, all I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” This brilliant quote was coined by Jackie Robinsons, the first African American baseball player of the modern era. Just as Jackie had to overcome