Having a "bad teacher" is just an excuse?

[alexwhy]

Hello,

Recently I have had a number of people asking me if I had any bad teachers this semester. I replied no, and they said I was lucky. I never had a "bad teacher"; is there such thing as a bad teacher, or is it an excuse for other people to have when they receive a bad mark?

[maereth]

I think it may be a bit of both.. I mean, personally I was also always pretty good with every teacher even if my entire class wasn't. Although there are teachers who don't care about good understanding of the syllabus 'cause they think they know better. Also, there are teachers who can't explain things properly but there also will be students who will understand the topic anyway.

I never wanted to go as far as to change the teacher until this year, and it's 12th year of my education! But my English teacher is now driving me crazy, we spend 7h a week with her and she doesn't teach anything so I won't be surprised if I get 4 in English even though it's supposed to be an easy 6 or 7... But with other teachers, I find that even if other students are complaining, when I put some work into the subject I manage to get good grades. You just need to have good study methods, otherwise the best teacher will not be enough.

[Award Winning Boss]

Of course there are good and bad teachers. There's always at least one class that you find much easier because your teacher uses appropriate examples and explains things properly. Which is contrasted by the teacher that is incredibly boring, slow and misses out important parts of the course.

With that being said, I think that the student can do a lot for themselves to improve their grades but I wouldn't say having a bad teacher is 'just an excuse'. Bad teachers can leave the student disorientated with a lot of work to catch up on.

[Emmi]

Half and half. I've had plenty of great teachers, as well as plenty of not so great teachers. Teachers that genuinely cared about their subject and wanted to teach us, but just weren't very effective in their methods, moved at an inappropriate pace, taught extraneous information and skipped parts that were important, etc.

I'll use my 12th grade HL chemistry teacher as an example. She was brand new to teaching and really cared, really knew the material, but didn't really know how to teach it to us in a way that we could remember. We spent a lot of time doing assignments that did not relate to anything we needed to know on the syllabus. This caused most of my class to develop an "Oh she's not teaching me well, so I'm just not going to care" attitude. Most people in the class got 3's and 4's. But even if your teacher is ineffective, and you have to study a lot on your own, it isn't an excuse for poor grades. You can always go read the textbook, use Internet sources, talk to friends that understand the material, get tutoring, talk to another teacher, etc. When they get poor grades and don't do anything about it and just blame the teacher, they're just being lazy and won't take accountability. Recognize you have a teacher that could be a lot better, but put some effort in and you can still do well.

[citizenoftheuniverse]

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have never had what I would consider a truly "bad" teacher. I have had teachers I haven't cared for, but I have never felt like I wouldn't succeed in a course just due to the teacher. Some people have complained about teachers we've had, but often they actually complained about teachers I've actually rather liked. So I am inclined to believe it is just an excuse, at least often. I am sure that there are incompetant teachers out there, but I would hope that they are very few and far between, and eventually get fired. Also, hopefully, IB attracts a better crop of teachers. So, if you consider the teacher to be alright and students complain, it is probably partially the students own fault and they are making excuses. If the large majority of students consider a teacher bad, there probably is something the teacher is doing wrong.

[ChocolateDrop]

I think people often mistaken incompatable teaching style to their particular learning style as having a bad teacher. Although I would consider a teacher who can adapt their teaching styles to accomodate different students learning styles to be a brilliant, i don't automatically class a teachwer who is unable to manipulate this skill as a 'bad teacher'. they probably just need help developing this skill, which comes with experience or is sometimes instinctive. However if said teacher is only there for the paycheck and their teaching skills doesn't grow then this makes them a bad teacher

However when the majority of the students are not getting anything useful from the lesson, and these children are trying to understand, you probably have a bad teacher. Teaching is meant to get the relevant information acroos, regardless of how much the 'knower' or 'teacher' knows. Eg you can get a really intelligent man Sheldon Cooper or if you can't afford Sheldon, Stephen Hawking and say Dee Dee from Dexter's Laboratory to teach two seperate classes of 3-4 year olds with equal potential. Even though Sheldon/ Stephen Hawkin probably have a higher IQ than Dee Dee, this is irrelevant to the task. They might still make for bad teachers as they might overcomplicate the task and in the end, their class exits not knowing any relevant information to the task

The bad teacher does exist, however it depends on your resources and own ability to fight this growing epidemic that is the bad teacher. There's always alternatives, like doing extra work outside outside class. Students who take their own initiative or learn regardless often don't notcie the bad teacher. Just because you don't notice something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!

[unicornication]

Any teacher that does not engage the student is a bad teacher. (My TOK teacher, oh god.) Just my opinion. But no, it's not an excuse. If you have a bad teacher, you should go out of your way to succeed in the course - regardless of your teacher. Google exists, no excuses. :')

[yansari]

I don't think so, the IB bio teacher in my school apparently complicates everything and almost three quarters of his class have a D or an F. Most of these students have A's and B's last year with a different teacher than graduated from Harvard.

[Rosiepose]

I do think bad teachers exist, but I don't think that it is necessarily an excuse. I reckon it's tough if you are not passionate about a subject and you get a bad teacher who you don't really like, as it is a recipe for a lack of attention.

My history (originally HL, dropped to SL) teacher was horrendous. She REALLY knew Stalin and how to write a good essay (so subsequently, so did we) but her time management was really the worst I've ever seen (even comparing some students). She had timed the course so as to START Paper 3 topics for HL after the mock exams... in the end the HL students were expected by her to teach themselves one entire topic. She also messaged me 3 days before my mock exams explaining that she wanted my final IA in during the mocks, but I had to change the enitre question. She wasn't good. Nevertheless, I was passionate about history and got a 7.

My drama teacher was really lovely, and I love Theatre so that was pretty good. However she was new to IB and really had no idea about the course, and I do wonder if my HL 6 was derived from a natural ability to write and some pretty in-depth searching online and from old students' coursework papers as examples that I did fine in the coursework. However, I wouldn't say she was a good teacher. One of my fellow students however was impacted by her inexperience. With his RI her only note on the draft was a spelling correction, and he ended up failing both that component and theatre (I believe). So, while it isn't an excuse, it can be extremely problematic.

[Rahul]

In my opinion, it really depends on the subject and your learning style. As a self-directed learner, I have no problem teaching myself courses, but some of my friends and classmates really need someone to explain the concepts to them. However, if your teacher is just oppressive and rude, I feel that that would completely ruin my chances of performing up to standard. One of my teachers this year is poor - not in terms of the prior problems, but just a poor teacher with a slow teaching style and poor time management, and, honestly, that has sapped all my motivation to do well in that subject. In contrast, with a really good teacher that I respect more I perform above my standard and go above and beyond. These responses are just subconscious for me - I guess I feel that I have more potential to grow with a "good" teacher.

[AnonymousIBer]

There are definitely bad teachers rofl... I never understood anything my maths teacher said in class, and most of the people in my class agreed with that... Same goes with my chemistry teacher, in 2nd year IB he hardly taught us SL people ANYTHING... (our classes were like study periods... lol well that's good in a way...) but since he's a nice person lol... At least we all liked him... And guess what, my language teacher was exactly the same... hehehe.... Oh well, I don't blame them, since I still got 6s for those subjects with my self-study... (But then why did I go to school? I could have just stayed at home and self-studied everything, hehehe..)

Sometimes I happen to think i could have done better if only they could (or can be bothered) to explain things to us better...

Edited January 11, 2013 by AnonymousIBer