write a story on your fear on your teacher
please write about your teacher only...dont copy from anywhere
Answers
Answer:
I spend a good deal of my time as an English professor teaching my students not to be fearful. That is not what I imagined teaching would be like. But it didn’t take me long to discover that the students in my classes had learned how to be experts in how to be afraid. And such fearfulness has become such an accepted practice in college that it now seems to be a natural behavior, so natural it is invisible to them. But not to me. Early in my career, when I first encountered these fears, I thought it reluctance or resistance or lack of knowledge or ability -- even though there was nothing especially difficult in what I was asking my students to learn or write or read.
This fear becomes evident to me at the beginning of each semester when I ask students if they have any questions about the syllabus or an assignment or homework for next time or anything about the upcoming schedule. In response, they look frightened. This fear comes from being asked a question. This fear comes from having a question and being afraid to ask it. Given the commodification, quantification, bureaucratization and decontextualizing of learning that has overrun our educational system, it’s no surprise students feel the oppressive nature of questions and the asking of them. Intolerance of error in school and college will only produce students who run from risk and seek security in silence.
As a consequence, one of the first lessons I have to teach my students is that questions are good things. I tell them that I can’t know what they don’t know and need to know until they tell me what they need to know so I can help them be successful in the class, which, by the way, is what I’m paid to do -- that is, help them be successful. I have to tell them over and over again that questions are valued. And I have to demonstrate that they can trust me that asking questions will not make them vulnerable to ridicule and further shaming. Questions drive the kind of learning college wants from us. And admitting that we don’t know something is the only way to target what we need to learn.
It may be that some people inside higher education think students aren’t ready for college because they don’t know what they should know. Or students don’t come with the abilities we think they should already have. Or they don’t know how to learn. Or they can’t think critically. Or they don’t know correct grammar. Or they don’t know how to manage their time. All that may be true, but I believe none of it is going to be repaired if we don’t help them learn how to stop fearing questions, themselves and others.
I know this is fairly simple stuff. Basic, really. But it’s also not surprising that the most rudimentary ideas and values are the most difficult to appreciate and understand. I tell my students that the questions they have are probably the same question others in the class are sitting on, “So why don’t you be the one who asks the question and demonstrate the kind of bravery we all applaud and admire?” And then we move from there to a point later in the class when students are raising their hands gladly and volunteering to stand in front of the class and read their work and receive the respect and kindness of their fellow students in training.
I’m not surprised that our current political campaign season is swimming in fear. Fear of the major candidates. Fear of the fear the candidates are promoting. Fear of those who are susceptible to the deceptions the candidates are peddling. When I encounter my students’ fears, I understand again how pervasive fear is. I understand the power, the ubiquity and the unconscious embrace of fear our culture so skillfully teaches us. Fears that oppress and often silence us. Political fear. Social fear. Economic fear. Religious fear. Gender fear. Racial fear. Environmental fear. You name it fear.
My first academic publication was a 1998 JAEPL article titled “Attitudes Toward Writing.” It begins with an excerpt from Joy Harjo’s poem “I Give You Back”:
Answer:
I spend a good deal of my time as an English professor teaching my students not to be fearful. That is not what I imagined teaching would be like. But it didn’t take me long to discover that the students in my classes had learned how to be experts in how to be afraid. And such fearfulness has become such an accepted practice in college that it now seems to be a natural behavior, so natural it is invisible to them. But not to me. Early in my career, when I first encountered these fears, I thought it reluctance or resistance or lack of knowledge or ability -- even though there was nothing especially difficult in what I was asking my students to learn or write or read.
This fear becomes evident to me at the beginning of each semester when I ask students if they have any questions about the syllabus or an assignment or homework for next time or anything about the upcoming schedule. In response, they look frightened. This fear comes from being asked a question. This fear comes from having a question and being afraid to ask it. Given the commodification, quantification, bureaucratization and decontextualizing of learning that has overrun our educational system, it’s no surprise students feel the oppressive nature of questions and the asking of them. Intolerance of error in school and college will only produce students who run from risk and seek security in silence.
As a consequence, one of the first lessons I have to teach my students is that questions are good things. I tell them that I can’t know what they don’t know and need to know until they tell me what they need to know so I can help them be successful in the class, which, by the way, is what I’m paid to do -- that is, help them be successful. I have to tell them over and over again that questions are valued. And I have to demonstrate that they can trust me that asking questions will not make them vulnerable to ridicule and further shaming. Questions drive the kind of learning college wants from us. And admitting that we don’t know something is the only way to target what we need to learn.
It may be that some people inside higher education think students aren’t ready for college because they don’t know what they should know. Or students don’t come with the abilities we think they should already have. Or they don’t know how to learn. Or they can’t think critically. Or they don’t know correct grammar. Or they don’t know how to manage their time. All that may be true, but I believe none of it is going to be repaired if we don’t help them learn how to stop fearing questions, themselves and others.
I know this is fairly simple stuff. Basic, really. But it’s also not surprising that the most rudimentary ideas and values are the most difficult to appreciate and understand. I tell my students that the questions they have are probably the same question others in the class are sitting on, “So why don’t you be the one who asks the question and demonstrate the kind of bravery we all applaud and admire?” And then we move from there to a point later in the class when students are raising their hands gladly and volunteering to stand in front of the class and read their work and receive the respect and kindness of their fellow students in training.
I’m not surprised that our current political campaign season is swimming in fear. Fear of the major candidates. Fear of the fear the candidates are promoting. Fear of those who are susceptible to the deceptions the candidates are peddling. When I encounter my students’ fears, I understand again how pervasive fear is. I understand the power, the ubiquity and the unconscious embrace of fear our culture so skillfully teaches us. Fears that oppress and often silence us. Political fear. Social fear. Economic fear. Religious fear. Gender fear. Racial fear. Environmental fear. You name it fear.
My first academic publication was a 1998 JAEPL article titled “Attitudes Toward Writing.” It begins with an excerpt from Joy Harjo’s poem “I Give You Back”: