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Hey everyone!
So I'm just entering my first senior year of high school. I was never really an English kid; I much prefer music, computer science, math, etc. I typically did okay in English though, around a 85% mark for the past few years.
In my junior years, it wasn't that much work. An essay or two, a book or two, a poem or two throughout the course of the semester, with a lot of in-class work done to actually help us learn and understand the language. However, this year all of that has changed. I have one of the worst rated teachers in the country, proof: http://ca.ratemyteachers.com/jean-szeles/83140-t/4. Read the reviews. Almost all of them are 1-star "she's a shit teacher, drop her course" reviews.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the course and have to take it. She took a 12 month vacation last year, and seemed /really/ nice and I had no idea why the reviews/her reputation in the school was so bad. After 2 weeks of school I now understand. It's been about 8 days of class, and we've written 2 essays, read a full novel study, analysed an essay, and presented a 10 minute speech to our class. But it gets better. Every single day in class, we do nothing. Literally shit fuck all. It's all homework, and about 2-3 hours per night at that. Pretty silly considering it's one class out of four that I have this semester.
I really shouldn't be writing a blog on TL right now, but I personally found it interesting how somebody so nice, who has such an understanding of the English language, could be such a shitty teacher.
Do any of you guys have experiences with teachers who give out way too much work and don't actually teach anything? How did you cope with it?
I figure I'm just going to deal with it, work hard, and get help from my friends, but damn it's going to be a hard semester. Goodbye chances of getting into Masters 
If you've made it this far, I guess I'm not as boring as I thought. Thanks for reading everyone!
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Well for me, this one time i had this maths teacher and he was super nice, extremely intelligent. While he had the knowlegde and understood it well but he had trouble explaining it to us, and getting points across to us. There were parts that he assumed we would already know and understand the logic behind it but this is not the case with everyone because everyone learns and thinks differently so sometimes there would be gaps in working out we wouldnt understand how the next step was achieved or how a certain part of the equation worked.
I think its those things that make it seem like the teacher is doing a bad job, ofc there are some teachers who are just plain shit like know nothing, wont accept they are wrong and dont try to improve.
Best advice would be to probably go and talk to her about what u want from the class and what she can do to help u get it.
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Yeah, my lit teacher is the hardest in my school. Whenever someone complains about how much homework there is she just says "it builds character!" But then again she's not really normal to begin with. She has a car named Leroy and a computer named Charles II. She was born in California, spent every summer of her childhood panning for gold in Alaska, moved to Texas and was the only white kid in she school, went to Baylor University, then worked at a reform school in Missouri where they frequently found marijuana growing on school grounds. IDK how in the hell she ended up at my school anyways.
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Can't you still switch around your schedule since it's still early in the year?
It might screw up your current schedule if not already but it's better than having a shitty teacher.
If not, try just getting on the nice side of her and suck up to her. Once you do that, try and ask for more extensions on assignments and stuff.
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Teachers make and break classes in my opinion. Switch teachers or suffer :/
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United States10135 Posts
lol i had this freshman lit teacher. my friend was humming and the teacher was like
Teacher: Manfred (to protect his name ) are you whistling?
Manfred: uh.. yeah?
Teacher: No whistling! Ur not meant to have fun in this class.
xD
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There are two types of teachers that students say are bad teachers.
1) Legitimately bad teachers who are bad at explaining necessary material and providing you with the knowledge you need to pass the course and move on to the next one.
2) Teachers who are much harder than others for the same course and write harder tests, assign more homework, etc but are actually just fine at teaching.
This sounds like #2 definitely. lol. There isn't that much actual teaching in english classes past a VERY basic point. You don't learn to get better at writing by someone telling you stuff. You need to write yourself.
Its a little rough in highschool, but in my opinion a basic college survival skill is the ability to avoid these kinds of teachers.  Especially in general courses and stuff outside your major. That second type of "bad" teacher though is GREAT inside your major if you are serious about stuff.
That said, Some advice would be to just sit in the back and work on what you can during class.
After 2 weeks of school I now understand. It's been about 8 days of class, and we've written 2 essays, read a full novel study, analysed an essay, and presented a 10 minute speech to our class.
P.S. 1 essay a week, plus random smaller stuff sounds perfectly normal to me for a decent senior English class, but I am not sure if you are using the american terminologies for years. If you are in your first year of high school it's kind of a bit much but then I assume they are just like 5 paragraph essays that take like 2 hours max to write. I don't think this stuff should be taking you 10-15 hours a week, but again that's really not that much.
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On September 17 2012 09:34 Soloturtle wrote:
Can't you still switch around your schedule since it's still early in the year?
It might screw up your current schedule if not already but it's better than having a shitty teacher.
If not, try just getting on the nice side of her and suck up to her. Once you do that, try and ask for more extensions on assignments and stuff.
Meh, not really. She seems nice and has positive intent, she just sucks as a teacher So I can't go into guidance and say "I don't like her, I want a different teacher". Also, it would heavily mess with my other courses and probably wouldn't work :/
On September 17 2012 10:05 Atreides wrote:There are two types of teachers that students say are bad teachers. 1) Legitimately bad teachers who are bad at explaining necessary material and providing you with the knowledge you need to pass the course and move on to the next one. 2) Teachers who are much harder than others for the same course and write harder tests, assign more homework, etc but are actually just fine at teaching. This sounds like #2 definitely. lol. There isn't that much actual teaching in english classes past a VERY basic point. You don't learn to get better at writing by someone telling you stuff. You need to write yourself. Its a little rough in highschool, but in my opinion a basic college survival skill is the ability to avoid these kinds of teachers. Especially in general courses and stuff outside your major. That second type of "bad" teacher though is GREAT inside your major if you are serious about stuff. That said, Some advice would be to just sit in the back and work on what you can during class. Show nested quote +After 2 weeks of school I now understand. It's been about 8 days of class, and we've written 2 essays, read a full novel study, analysed an essay, and presented a 10 minute speech to our class. P.S. 1 essay a week, plus random smaller stuff sounds perfectly normal to me for a decent senior English class, but I am not sure if you are using the american terminologies for years. If you are in your first year of high school it's kind of a bit much but then I assume they are just like 5 paragraph essays that take like 2 hours max to write. I don't think this stuff should be taking you 10-15 hours a week, but again that's really not that much.
I can understand why you'd think it's #2, but I don't think this is true. I would love it if she taught us a lot and gave us a lot of work to do at home as well. I would learn a lot of English, and probably do pretty well. I'm not a bad student
In the 8 days of class, we've done nothing in class. She hasn't taught us a single thing. The assignments are her explaining, "Alright guys, we're going to review personal essays! Go write one tonight." and that was it. While I agree that the rest of the work isn't much, it's damn hard to read a 400 page literary work in 5-6 days. Coupled on top with essays and speeches I dare say it's impossible.
Yeah I think the American system is the same. I'm in Grade 11 this year, graduate after next year.
Thanks for the advice though, I'll try to get other stuff done in class I can survive the workload, but it completely eliminates extra-curricular (lol there's a strike anyways so that doesn't matter) and any time for social life/gaming. And I'm nowhere near having the reading 3/4 done for tomorrow (Y)
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Oh my life is saved.
When all hope is lost.... SPARKNOTES! ~~
It's funny because they give me a better idea of characters, plot, and themes/symbols than I do by reading it myself
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2610 Posts
On September 17 2012 10:05 Atreides wrote:There are two types of teachers that students say are bad teachers. 1) Legitimately bad teachers who are bad at explaining necessary material and providing you with the knowledge you need to pass the course and move on to the next one. 2) Teachers who are much harder than others for the same course and write harder tests, assign more homework, etc but are actually just fine at teaching. This sounds like #2 definitely. lol. There isn't that much actual teaching in english classes past a VERY basic point. You don't learn to get better at writing by someone telling you stuff. You need to write yourself. Its a little rough in highschool, but in my opinion a basic college survival skill is the ability to avoid these kinds of teachers. Especially in general courses and stuff outside your major. That second type of "bad" teacher though is GREAT inside your major if you are serious about stuff. That said, Some advice would be to just sit in the back and work on what you can during class. Show nested quote +After 2 weeks of school I now understand. It's been about 8 days of class, and we've written 2 essays, read a full novel study, analysed an essay, and presented a 10 minute speech to our class. P.S. 1 essay a week, plus random smaller stuff sounds perfectly normal to me for a decent senior English class, but I am not sure if you are using the american terminologies for years. If you are in your first year of high school it's kind of a bit much but then I assume they are just like 5 paragraph essays that take like 2 hours max to write. I don't think this stuff should be taking you 10-15 hours a week, but again that's really not that much.
Sorry but I disagree about #2 being acceptable. Yes the teacher in that case is a perfectly fine teacher but due to the design of universities and high school if you teach a course there is a responsibility inherent in it to ensure the grades represent the curriculum determined by the university and their standards, not your own. It's perfectly ok for a teacher to offer more challenging work but a curve should represent the increase in difficulty when it comes to grading. When I finish my 4 year degree and apply to masters programs they aren't going to see "Oh you took ENC 4030 with X and got a C so it's really like an A" there just going to compare it to other applicants who got better marks because it was easier.
Not I know this isn't an all encompassing example (I'm not even an English major so I can't speak in regards to their workloads) but to say a good teacher who just gives more work is perfectly acceptable isn't true. The students might learn more but if it isn't reflected in a tangible way they're being punished for nothing. You could argue it's a flaw in the system, but under the current system being a good teacher doesn't make you a good professor in regards to this.
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What you complain about is basically how you learn to be better at using a language beyond the basics, though. You can't teach someone to write good essays beyond the most silly, 'mechanical' things that people learn in a few years of their school classes. Likewise, you can't really teach someone to analyse or review texts - it's something you have to practice a lot, and listen to feedback a lot to master.
It might seem like it sucks to have so much workload that seems like 'extra' to you, especially if you aren't very interested in the subject, but... it's really not as bad of a thing as you might think. Chances are, you might actually learn a thing or two if you have to work harder than usual.
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your Country52797 Posts
I had this incredibly awesome history teacher in sophomore high school with a great personality that loved history, but his assignments/notes were sometimes, well, strange.
He would assign questions in the book as homework, and we'd basically have to write like 10 sentences on each book question (stuff like, who did this? what 3 countries fought over this?). So I'd have to write 8-9 sentences of complete bull after answering the really simple question, then repeat for all the other questions. Also, half the notes were really hard to read; he wrote them out by hand in small cursive, underlining practically everything with a marker (?), and copying it and distributing it to the class. So, I was therefore unable to read any of the notes -_-.
He was actually my favorite history teacher too.
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On September 17 2012 10:47 Stutters695 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2012 10:05 Atreides wrote:There are two types of teachers that students say are bad teachers. 1) Legitimately bad teachers who are bad at explaining necessary material and providing you with the knowledge you need to pass the course and move on to the next one. 2) Teachers who are much harder than others for the same course and write harder tests, assign more homework, etc but are actually just fine at teaching. This sounds like #2 definitely. lol. There isn't that much actual teaching in english classes past a VERY basic point. You don't learn to get better at writing by someone telling you stuff. You need to write yourself. Its a little rough in highschool, but in my opinion a basic college survival skill is the ability to avoid these kinds of teachers. Especially in general courses and stuff outside your major. That second type of "bad" teacher though is GREAT inside your major if you are serious about stuff. That said, Some advice would be to just sit in the back and work on what you can during class. After 2 weeks of school I now understand. It's been about 8 days of class, and we've written 2 essays, read a full novel study, analysed an essay, and presented a 10 minute speech to our class. P.S. 1 essay a week, plus random smaller stuff sounds perfectly normal to me for a decent senior English class, but I am not sure if you are using the american terminologies for years. If you are in your first year of high school it's kind of a bit much but then I assume they are just like 5 paragraph essays that take like 2 hours max to write. I don't think this stuff should be taking you 10-15 hours a week, but again that's really not that much. Sorry but I disagree about #2 being acceptable. Yes the teacher in that case is a perfectly fine teacher but due to the design of universities and high school if you teach a course there is a responsibility inherent in it to ensure the grades represent the curriculum determined by the university and their standards, not your own. It's perfectly ok for a teacher to offer more challenging work but a curve should represent the increase in difficulty when it comes to grading. When I finish my 4 year degree and apply to masters programs they aren't going to see "Oh you took ENC 4030 with X and got a C so it's really like an A" there just going to compare it to other applicants who got better marks because it was easier. Not I know this isn't an all encompassing example (I'm not even an English major so I can't speak in regards to their workloads) but to say a good teacher who just gives more work is perfectly acceptable isn't true. The students might learn more but if it isn't reflected in a tangible way they're being punished for nothing. You could argue it's a flaw in the system, but under the current system being a good teacher doesn't make you a good professor in regards to this.
I just listed the two type of teachers that students call bad, I didn't say it was perfectly acceptable. lol. I said to dodge them like hell outside your major, its usually pretty easy to find out who these professor are. If its an upper division class within your department, than yeah I think its pretty fine. At that point the different grade you are talking about IS accounted for at least to some extent in that yes grad schools (at least in math) place more value on a B in a class at University X with textbook Y than an A in a class at University W with textbook Z. But yea, if its in your major and you are wanting to go to grad school just suck it up imo.
Which is not the case here anyways, so its quite offtopic. I do agree that being a good teacher is only part of being a good professor. Personally, grading scheme, testing mechanics, etc etc is very very important. PIcking and choosing professors is a big skill in college.
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EE HAN TEACHER! Haha had to say that after remembering the transation of ee han timing
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Freshman biology teacher...omg painful memory...basically if you cannot fill up a 3 in binder, you are close to failing...it was like 200 assignments
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EPT
