Before entering high school, I had dreaded all of my English classes. I resented the grueling assignments, colossal readings, and strenuous essays. When class started on my first day of freshman English, I slouched on the plastic seat, crossed my arms, and braced myself for the beginning of four miserable years of English. But as my teacher Dr. Rogers taught the lesson for the day, my arms loosened, I fixed my posture, and I began to nod approvingly as he spoke. Instead of sitting off to the side and reciting the day’s notes, he stood around the whiteboard and drew diagrams. He even engaged with the class and asked questions while he talked. His excitement was contagious. And for the first time in my life, I found myself enjoying English. I left the class awestruck by his teaching. In one year, Dr. Rogers did the unthinkable – he offset eight years of my bad experiences with English. Being a student in Dr. Rogers’ class made me realize that my frustration had come less from what was being taught, and more from how it was being taught.
After reaching this epiphany, I began to notice a broad variety of teaching strategies across all of my classes. I became aware of my teachers appealing to visual learners when they color coded topics, handed out charts, or drew a flow chart on the whiteboard. I noticed when my teachers implied growth mindsets onto the class by embracing challenging concepts with joy instead of dread, or by adding “yet” to students’ self evaluations. Each time I walked into the classroom, the teacher established rules and routines for the class, the furniture reflected the activities for the day, and the walls contained motivational posters, informative diagrams, and a schedule. If a class was not engaged in a lesson, I found myself troubleshooting what wasn’t working. I even learned that there was a word for the art of teaching: pedagogy. I wasn’t discovering something new; I was opening the door to a vast library of best teaching practices and scholarly research on the art of teaching. With newfound resources available to me, I sought to employ them into my daily life. When I tutored algebra students, I employed visual learning styles by incorporating drawings into my explanations. When my friends struggled with a problem, I turned their passive listening into active thinking by answering them with a thought provoking question instead of supplying them with the answer. When I struggled to learn a new challenging concept, I made my best attempt to appeal to my logical intelligence as I re-taught it to myself. Although I have learned many strong methods in which teachers create more effective learning environments, I realize that hundreds more strategies still exist – strategies to get the thousand other reluctant first day freshmen nodding along.
Given how much I have benefited from my pursuit of pedagogical knowledge these past few years, I know how invaluable it will be in my future academic and professional career. My deconstruction of pedagogical methods will support my academic success and be the basis for me to support the people closest to me. I will use teaching not only to assist me and my peers, but also to express what I love while permitting my peers to reciprocate my passion. My passion for teaching will help me thrive when I create lesson plans, interact with students, and teach my first classes. When I sit down in my decorated classroom, preparing my slides as my first students flood in, I will do so with the confidence of an education molded from the lessons of past educators. Just as Dr. Rogers and my other teachers inspired me, I hope to inspire countless classes of my own.