How to Teach Well and Improve Mankind

As a student in my second year of high school I have had many different teachers, some I've liked, some I've disliked and many more in between. For me, the better teachers, to start with, have a good handle on their subject matter. A teacher who knows more than just specifically what they are told to teach us is great because they can explain the information in many ways, approach it from different angles, connect it to more things, and help us learn our way around the subject in a way that is easiest for us. Sometimes you get teachers who explain things in the one way they know how to and when you ask a question or need it said a different way you end up confusing them and getting even more lost yourself. My best teachers have been the type of people who are very passionate about their job. Teachers who are enthusiastic about what they teach tend to know what they're talking about and try their hardest to make their students interested in it too. However, they have to love the teaching aspect as well because if they only like the subject and hate most behaviors that teenagers are prone to, they end up getting angry or irritable, making us upset and uninterested. It is great when teachers are patient and understand that we, one, don't know nearly as much about the subject as they do, and two, probably have a different learning style from them. Just because it works for one person doesn't mean it works for everyone. What would make this year better is if teachers did not assign as much after school work. We have jobs now, on top of sports, clubs, friends, school, and getting eight hours of sleep while getting up at 6 am. Homework should be used to help us practice or review important concepts and information, not for us to learn on our own or just to keep us busy, because trust me, we're already busy.

I think John Green is right in that we do need to use our education to benefit the world. If we don't do anything new and exciting then there was really no reason for us to be forced into taking math courses in high school that our parents took in college. Humans as a species have been improving since before recorded time. Each generation builds upon the ideas and discoveries of those before them. Obviously we're gonna do the same. However, advancing the evolution of mankind is a bit big for a high school student to strive for so my goals for the year are to simply better myself. I would like to maybe do my homework more often than I did last year, draw more, get stronger, be nicer to people. I can do these things by simply focusing and putting in the effort to try, although it is much easier when the people in charge of teaching me how to do these things teaches well. If I get smarter and work harder then, as a human myself, I am helping to improve people as a whole and the world we live in.