Final Draft- Paper #2

Jimmy Sund

Formal Paper #2

     I believe that when someone attends high school, they truly learn more than ever about the world outside of education. Its crazy to think that some of your classmates in high school never really bothered to continue onto college, and their four year high school graduate education is all the education they will ever get for the rest of their lives. It really does kind of make me feel proud of myself, just knowing that I’m going that extra step. Who cares what college degree I get, and what I use it for, it’s just the idea of getting more of an education after you graduate that will really help you in the long run.

     There definitely were certain teachers in high school that really made me want to go to college. Going to college is something that is almost expected in today’s society, and it really kind of bothers me. It really just irritates me that all of a sudden, there is this rush to get everyone educated, and off to college. Our economy is really lacking a middle class. I know a lot of people don’t like hearing this, but our economy needs more laborers, more people that can work with their hands. We need more people who are willing to take a lower pay, and do all of the dirty work.  Unfortunately, there is no American that is willing to take a lower pay to do more work, and it makes complete sense.

     The two teachers I am going to talk about in this essay really changed the way I think about education. A “good” teacher in my opinion must really have a passion for what they are teaching. They must have good relationships with the students and the teacher must have a fair grading system. I think what most teachers fail to understand is that student’s have a life outside of school. When teachers take the life of the student into consideration it really helps form good relationships with the students. Of course in order to be successful in any class you need to work hard, but it makes it much easier if the teachers are cooperative and work with you when you really need it

     The first teacher I want to talk about is Mr. Rittman, my sophomore geometry teacher, and my senior algebra 3 teacher at O’Dea high school. I think the reason Mr. Rittman was my favorite is because he genuinely knew how to teach math. He would assign homework each night, and have a quiz at the end of each week, so I really had to work pretty hard in his classes to get a good grade. If you were ever having any trouble in his class, he would be there every single day after school to help you with whatever you needed. When I was taking Algebra 3 my senior year, I found myself using this service a lot, and then taking the later ferry home from Seattle. Honestly, I think Mr. Rittman was the reason I did as well as I did in math. All I needed was a little support and encouragement to be successful

      The thing about his class is he didn’t make it seem like it was hard at all. All of a sudden, when Mr. Rittman worked a problem out on the board, it all made sense to us. He just had a way of keeping us involved and making us work out the problems on our own. Everyday when I went to class I would always have a good laugh, and I think that is the main thing I enjoyed about that class. Mr. Rittman made something as boring as math into something fun and enjoyable. One of the main things I liked about him as a teacher, is he would use funny, sometime inappropriate examples to explain math, and it kept all of us involved in his class.  When we would be talking to loudly he would sit on his stool in the front of the room, and make the weirdest faces you’ve ever seen in your life. This wasn’t only to make us laugh; it was also to get our full attention. Since I’ve had Mr. Rittman for a teacher, I know math class doesn’t always have to be boring.

     The second teacher I am going to talk about is my senior year government teacher, Mr. Zeigenfuss. Mr. Zeigenfuss had been my history teacher my freshman year of high school, and back then I thought he was a really cool guy. As you can tell, my opinions have obviously changed over the years. Government is one of those classes you can really do a lot with and make really interesting, but he didn’t bother doing anything. Most of the time, he would hand out the worksheet of the day, explain it, and then we were pretty much on our own from there. I think the reason he bothered me so much is because he acted like he worked so hard. Sure, he was a football coach at my school, but it seemed like he would put all of his energy into that, and nothing more. 

    Mr. Zeigenfuss would have us work in groups sometimes, but it was always mostly with the same people all year.  It just really seemed like the whole four years I was there, he didn’t do much of anything besides attempt to teach history, coach football, and pick on the kids that didn’t play football. He was never there after school if you needed help, he couldn’t really answer any questions we had because we knew the material about as well as he did. Honestly, I can’t say I learned anything about government in that class.  Mr. Zeigenfuss had this way of seeming like he was organized. He would line all of the desks up in perfectly straight lines, make us tuck all of our shirts in, and position the blinds so they were perfectly level with each other. In other words, major obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Mr. Z was the type of teacher to stand up there and make whatever he was talking about as dry and boring as possible, and then let us know every little thing we were doing wrong. As you can tell, I wasn’t his biggest fan.

     Over the years I have experienced the teaching styles of many different educators throughout grade school, high school, and college. When I got into Mr. Rittman’s class as a sophomore, I knew that his teaching style would work well for me. He laid everything out and set the ground rules on day one, and that’s something I really liked. He wasn’t ever disorganized or second-guessing himself, he had a lot of confidence when he stood up there and taught us. Mr. Zeigenfuss on the other hand had a major attitude, and didn’t really teach us much of anything. He was young, inexperienced and lazy to say the least. Thankfully, nowadays he is the newest gym teacher at O’Dea high school and they don’t have him teaching anything else.  By having both very good and very bad teachers over the years, I have standards. Although I usually don’t have a choice when it comes to whom I get as a teacher, I usually see what other people have to say about the teacher before I sign up for the class. I usually like to decide for myself whether or not I enjoy the teacher, but asking another student before you waste whole semester is definitely worth it.