“It kind of ruins a subject if you don’t like the teacher. I never liked history at all. But this year I have a really cool teacher, and so even if it’s hard, even if I don’t do well on tests, I ‘m starting to like it more. BOSUNG” (Cushman, 2003, p20)
It is so true that liking a teacher helps with students’ learning, I think not only with learning a certain subject but also with other aspects such as forming a correct and positive attitude towards learning even towards life. Teachers, undoubtedly, play an extremely important role in a person’s life and can have great influence on that person.
I had similar experience as the student Bosung did. Math was always not my strength. Since seventh grade, I always put math homework aside until I was so sleepy to focus, then I finished it in a few minutes. Neither did I have interest in math, nor did I have the confidence to learn it well by making as much effort as possible. Fortunately, when I transferred to another class in 12th grade, I met a wonderful math teacher (Mrs. Chen) who not only helped me improve my math grade but also supported me in many other aspects, and I appreciated her so much. Knowing that I was not familiar with my new learning environment, Mrs. Chen offered to help me. She assigned me to be the math class representative to quickly familiarize with the classmates, and to stimulate and enforce me to work harder on my own math learning since a math representative should be excellent at this subject, modeling for the rest of students. She was not the head-teacher of our class but contributed a lot more than a head-teacher did, caring about every student, helping students’ academic learning and giving suggestions on some of their other personal problems. Since I liked her so much and didn’t want to disappoint her, I studied very hard.
On the contrary, for adolescents, disliking a teacher could actually ruin a subject because they are more easily to get emotionally driven, which means if students don’t trust or like the teacher, they will lose the passion about this subject. Therefore, teachers need to find ways to let themselves be approachable to their students, not necessarily being friends with them, but always being there to provide help and support will definitely make students feel comfortable and safe so that they would put as much effort and passion as possible into their learning.