There was one teacher that was different. His name was Mr. Hench. He was a hard and challenging teacher. He didn’t try to be funny, or make friends, or play nice with students in our class.
In fact, quite often he acted like we didn’t know much, and we should be farther along in our understanding of literary analysis. For an 8th grader, this caught my attention. This teacher was no joke!
I learned a lot from Mr. Hench that year, and I actually had him twice more as a teacher when I was in high school. There were a few other teachers like him that caught my attention and made me perk up in my seat as a student.
As I embark on getting my doctorate, I began to reflect on what actually mattered to me as a student, and how that impacted my teaching. Here’s what I learned about teaching from being a student.