Best and worst teachers

During my years as a student at UT, I had some wonderful teachers and I had some that were less than stellar. All of them seemed to know their subjects well, but some were just more motivated to help us understand the material. A few were arrogant, taking the attitude that "I know this because I've taught it for 25 years so why aren't you catching on?" Most were just the opposite: patient and helpful. Some teachers conveyed a joy for living and learning. Others were just waiting out the clock.

Some teachers were open about how they graded, explaining their system in great detail. In those classes, each student knew what he or she had to do to get an A. Several professors went so far as to post our interim grades online, password-protected of course. This way we always knew where we stood. Other teachers were more cryptic, grading subjectively and secretly. This left us with a "huh?" sort of feeling when we got back our papers.

The best teachers encouraged student input. The worst just talked, day after day, lecture after lecture. One eccentric but brilliant teacher took the first half of the first class to go around the room and learn each student's name and a bit about him or her. There were subsequent days when this teacher, just for practice, would look out over the class and name each student in the room, recalling a fact about each aloud. When we spoke in class, he listened intently to every word, treating us as if our thoughts were the wisdom of the ages. He was a colorful character.

Another professor took a "we report, you decide," approach. He presented a number of scholarly approaches to his subject and let the ideas fight it out. I don't think we ever learned his personal opinions, which allowed us to keep our minds open. One English professor believed that his interpretation of authors from Shakespeare to Faulkner was the only correct one. In a field like literature, that seemed a little silly. But hey, he was the expert!

Then there were the required multi-cultural classes, which I must admit, I fought against at first. I had this notion that they were a politically correct waste of time, but I discovered that these courses had some value because they forced those of us who were white and upper middle-class to stare into the center of other cultures and try to learn what life is like for them.

Then there is the teacher I'll call Professor B. This man taught a large and popular lecture course and he was probably the best teacher I had, even though his subject was far outside the scope of my major. He was funny as he walked up and down the steps of the lecture hall, teaching us about how the world works. His demonstrations were riveting and they showed us a universe of brilliant ideas we wanted to know more about. But that's not all.

He set up an advisory group of six students, rotating every few weeks. It was our job to give him feedback and suggestions for improving the course. He made class assignments and deadlines clear, sent us reminders via e-mail, provided lecture notes and even recorded summaries of lectures which were available as downloads from his Web site. Photos of the best of our group projects were displayed on the class Web site. I don't know what he could have done to make this course any easier short of bubbling in our Scantron test forms for us. Even though he had probably taught the same class a dozen times or more, he made each lecture fresh and interesting. Dedicated teachers like that are the difference between getting an education and just taking classes.