There are things that every teacher must do to control their class. The teacher needs to be a leader, a mentor, a counselor, a director, a being with eyes in the back of its head. What a teacher does not need to be is arrogant,indignant,and self righteous,if they wish to earn the respect and attention of their students.
My memory of my great teachers are few (surprisingly), however, I have quite a few memories of the teachers I swore I would never be like. One of those teachers was my spanish teacher in high school. I went to a private parochial high school that had a large population of hispanic students. So bilingual spanish classes were offered to the hispanic students so that their classes could be more challenging. Mrs. Perez was a very stern woman who never smiled and never had a kind word for anyone. She completely lost my respect as well as all of attention in the first two weeks of class. I remember we were working on vocabulary words when she asked if anyone knew the spanish word for "bacon". I raised my hand and responded, "tocino". She called out..."WRONG! There is no word for bacon in spanish because they do not eat bacon". I went home and told my mother what Mrs. Perez had said. My mother wrote a note to her explaining that that she was born in Cuba and had indeed eaten bacon as a child growing up and that "tocino" was definitley the spanish word for bacon. Mrs.Perez, upon reading the note from my mother, snubbed her nose, and still chose to teach the class that there was no such thing as bacon in the hispanic culture. Mrs. Perez could not even bring herself to admit that maybe where she was raised bacon was not prevalent but that it may have been in other regions.
From that moment on, I could not stand my Spanish class. I could not believe that this instructor would rather teach an untruth than admit she may have been mistaken. I chalked up the experience as another example of a teacher I did not want to be anything like.
-- Veronica Paggeot, Florida Atlantic University