teacher's pet

This article hopefully explains why teachers seem to favor some students and thus, those not favored accuse teachers as having "favoritism". I've been teaching for 25 years and I know that teachers do have favorite students in the class. Is this unfair? Why do teachers practice favoritism?

In order to answer this, let me first give you the type of students who are most likely in the teachers' list of favorites. Who are these students?

1. They are students who are always present in the class and always on time.

2. They are attentive. They know how to respect others and know how to listen. (Personally, I dislike students who are inattentive or do not know how to listen---students who distract others' attention by talking while the teacher is talking---grrrr!)

3. They actively participate in class discussions.

4. They submit their work/project on time.

5. They know how to follow instructions because they know how to listen.

6. They score high in quizzes and long exams.

7. They exhibit enthusiasm in all class activities.

There could be more but basically those are the characteristics of students in the teachers' list of favorites.

I am amazed at how anyone can even wonder why. We can't help it. Students who are always late, absent, talking while the class is going on, not submitting projects, and failing in exams just don't make it to the list. A student should work to earn it and we cannot blame teachers entirely for having the tendency to favor those with the above characteristcs.

Do you want to be your teacher's pet? Then go over the list above and start working.

how to optimize learning in English and speech classes

Let us admit it. Much class time is wasted doing things that do not contribute to the improvement of our students' language skills. Mentors oftentimes overlook to see that they are wasting their students' time and money teaching them lessons that they already know. For instance in a Speech or English class, the teacher should give emphasis on lessons that students find most problems and difficulty.

Teachers should know where her students are by giving them a sort of diagnostic test, like a simple essay, or a simple self-introduction to know their weaknesses and work from there. In English language, is it grammar? Which area of grammar? Is it preposition or subject-verb agreement? If it is Speech it is very easy to isolate problem speech sounds and to start working on those. Teachers will be able to save a lot of class time as well as optimize student learning if he or she will only work on the students' problem areas.

In Speech for example, the teacher can first make a comparison of the sounds in our own dialect against the sounds of the English language. You will notice that there are many sounds in our Pilipino language that are also found in the English language. For example are sounds like /m/, /n/, /b/, /g/, /h/, /w/ and many more. However, there are also many sounds in English that are not found in our own native language like the sounds /f/, /sh/, /v/, /th/ etc.

Sounds that we have no problem producing may be reviewed but sounds that give us many problems should be given more time.

Always work on something that students have little or no know-how. This is the only way that schools can have relevance. Otherwise, there is no point in going to school when you already know what the teachers are talking about.