did your teacher's likeability affect how much was learned?

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Spazzergasm
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21 Oct 2009, 12:00 pm

one thing i dont get is how people can say they hate a teacher, and then have their learning unhindered.
i find i cannot learn a subject if i am distracted by a bad teacher. for example: my freshman year maths teacher was wonderful, she was kind and positive, always encouraging, and our class was small (3 people), so we got very individual attention. she would give me hugs and she was very friendly. i got As in that class, and always scored over an 80% on a maths test (once i got 98%! !! !)
my current maths teacher is a young guy. he is incredibly awkward, and not very friendly. he isnt personable at all, and doesnt like me. i really dislike him, he is also very wierd looking. and for some reason he doesnt let me eat in class, but lets others. i actually recently got 18% on a test. i dont understand anything, and i am failing...BAD.

anyone else like this? if i dont like my teacher, i cant learn.



mitharatowen
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21 Oct 2009, 12:06 pm

Absolutely not. My teachers did not affect my learning in the least (unless for example they wrote tests that had nothing to do with what we had been told to study, in which case my learning is still unaffected but it could affect my grades).

I learn on my own. I have no use for teachers. The teachers don't know anything about the subject matter most of the time anyway. I don't see why other people should have anything to do with.. well anything really :lol:



visagrunt
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21 Oct 2009, 12:09 pm

The best investment my parents ever made was to send my brother and me to private school. (My brother is NT, but dyslexic).

I was blessed with very gifted teachers all the way through school, and my learning was encouraged and supported. In contrast, my social disabilities were not identified, and my social development in school was significantly impaired.

My Grade 9 math teacher said to my mother once, "that boy will never amount to anything if he doesn't go into maths," and so I did and I have never regretted that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc :wink:


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srriv345
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21 Oct 2009, 12:19 pm

Oh God yes. It certainly affected my grades, at any rate. I was quite likely to get a C or even a D if I didn't like the teacher. I'm not sure how much this affected my actual learning, per se--since typically my poor grades came from slacking on the work--but I definitely did not do well in classes where I didn't like the teacher. And unfortunately, having been in the public school system for kindergarten through high school, I had a lot of bad teachers.


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Spazzergasm
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21 Oct 2009, 12:23 pm

yeah, i slack off, too. i dont know why i seem to have such a hard time with doing stuff. i literally get depressed if i do too much hw i find unpleasant!


Quote:
My Grade 9 math teacher said to my mother once, "that boy will never amount to anything if he doesn't go into maths," and so I did and I have never regretted that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc


whats that latin bit mean? and what's your job, btw? :)



visagrunt
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21 Oct 2009, 12:36 pm

Literally, it means, "after this, therefore caused by this." It's a logical fallacy.

"He walked down the street, he broke his leg, therefore walking down the street causes broken legs."

In this case, Tom Wright said I wouldn't amount to anything if I didn't go into maths, I went into maths and amounted to something, therefore Tom Wright was correct.

As for my job, I am a treaty negotiator with the Government of Canada, working with First Nations communities to take on self-government. Before this, I was a lawyer in private practice (BAD IDEA!! !), and before that I was in Canada's foreign service as a visa officer.


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Spazzergasm
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21 Oct 2009, 12:51 pm

ooh, ok. all my teachers just say i dont work hard enough.

i admit ive never heard of your job. :oops: where's the maths involved?



visagrunt
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21 Oct 2009, 1:07 pm

Well, no significant maths in being a visa officer (other than quick arithmetic), and similar for being a lawyer.

My current job involves some economic modelling and financial projections, so it gets more mathy. The legal training helps, too, when you are negotiating agreeements.


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Spazzergasm
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21 Oct 2009, 1:13 pm

agreeements? :P

ooh economics. i'm taking that in school. we arent even to the intense maths bits yet, and it's very confusing to grasp. useful subject, though.



outlier
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21 Oct 2009, 2:08 pm

I felt little for most teachers, but automatically really liked those who were excellent ones. My main maths teacher was poor and not very accommodating to students. I disliked her and ceased doing any work in class, instead helping others. When we had a substitute for a few weeks, who was an excellent teacher, I found myself sitting at the front of the class, keenly working away. My grades naturally shot up.



Homer_Bob
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21 Oct 2009, 2:23 pm

What I quickly learned as I've entered college is I do well based on a teacher's teaching and testing format. I've never been very personal with any teachers and I've hardly talked to any. Nevertheless the way my grades end up depends on how the teacher's testing format is. I could take the same subject and get an A from one teacher and a C- from another. One example is I do extremely well on test formats that require thinking and a lot of writing which allows me to use prepared notes and sometimes open book. I do horrible on tests that are multiple choice and are closed notes and book. People claim that multiple choice is easier but I disagree very much; it requires a lot more memory. Being able to write 10 essay questions for a test is so much easier for me because I can touch upon that subject and write with the material in front of me. I suppose I'm a little off the subject here but for me, how I do depends on the whole class structure and testings. It doesn't matter to me how likable a teacher is, if their testing format is multiple choice or not to my learning style, I'm going to do poorly no matter what; that's the way my brain is.



ChangelingGirl
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21 Oct 2009, 3:03 pm

It depends on whether the unlikeability is related to the teacher's teachign style or not. When I didn't like a teacher as a person but his teachign style was fine, I had no problem learning in that class unless I was deliberately defiant, like with my English teacher in 9th grade: his teachign style was good, but I hated the way he treated me like everything he did for me was some kind of special favor that he only did because I'm disabled, and I ought to compesate for. Therefore I purposefully didn't study for English that year and failed it (I did pass English with a very good grade in my senior year, while I had the same teacher,b ecause I didn't have a problem with him then anymore).

However, if a teacher is unlikeable due to poor teachign style, of course it affects learning. I for one learn from the book more than from class, so it wasn't like I failed classes with bad teachers, but it did affect me negatively.



SilverPikmin
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21 Oct 2009, 3:20 pm

What happens in school did not matter much for me. Most of my education came from my own, individual pursuits. Teachers often reinforced that, but they weren't essential. So it didn't really affect me if I had an unlikeable teacher.



RainSong
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21 Oct 2009, 4:45 pm

Not really.

I had three teachers whom I particularly liked in high school. They all had similar styles: over the top, funny, yet still sensitive to individual students' needs (one exempted me from her "everyone sits next to someone they don't know" policy without knowing I was diagnosed with anything; she just told me that she knew I was too quiet and would be very uncomfortable). In two of those classes, I did extremely well; in one, I did poorly. But regardless of what teacher I had, I always did extremely well in those first two subjects and poorly in the last.

Then I had three teachers whom I didn't like. Two weren't so severe (they annoyed me but not to the point of hate), but the other was bordering on so intolerable that I will quit this class (I did end up finishing). I did very well in those two of those subjects (including the intolerable one), but again, I always did. The third was poor, as per usual.

I did however quit one class from the first day just because I couldn't stand the teacher. She informed us first thing that we weren't allowed to be quiet in her class, because quiet had nothing to do with personality, it was from laziness and stupidity (and she was teaching a child development course). I went no way in (guess), and as soon as that class was over, I went straight to the office and changed it. So I guess that time it did affect me.


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21 Oct 2009, 7:29 pm

Funny someone mentioned private school as being a good thing. I absolutely hated most of my teachers at private school and my grades slipped in those classes.
I was only ever good at those subjects I had an interest in. A likable teacher did make the difference. But still my habit of getting distracted easily still meant that my grades were poor in even classes I liked.


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21 Oct 2009, 7:40 pm

mitharatowen wrote:
Absolutely not. My teachers did not affect my learning in the least (unless for example they wrote tests that had nothing to do with what we had been told to study, in which case my learning is still unaffected but it could affect my grades).

I learn on my own. I have no use for teachers. The teachers don't know anything about the subject matter most of the time anyway. I don't see why other people should have anything to do with.. well anything really :lol:



Wow that's an interesting view on teachers I'm beggining to lain towards this for when I go back to College though since I heard "My Psychology teacher didn't know how to answer my questions so she was avioiding me so she didn't have to answer my questions." For me emotionally this is devastating IMO you are a professional and should know your field like the back of your hand. Uh I guess not. :-(