High-Need School Teacher Challenge

High-Need School Teacher Challenge

This essay focuses on a greatest challenge I expect to encounter as a teacher in a high-need school in New York City. A student should be given the role of consumer in some respects but the classroom is a very different environment than any other in the business world. In order to have a successful high school atmosphere within the classroom, teachers and students need to share influence over how information is delivered. The Socratic Method is teaching by asking instead of telling and is an effective form of teaching which needs to be reintroduced in high school classrooms. Seeming unlikely, it is possible if students and teachers have consistent dialogue concerning construction of the course and teaching methods throughout each semester.

It is important for students to act as the consumer in the classroom because they are paying for an education and should be able to have input if they feel that they are not getting what they paid for. Also, input helps a student feel as if he has some contribution to his lesson as opposed to just taking in what the teacher thinks is important. This would make a student suppose his education had been lacking, thus giving him reason to look elsewhere. What's more, one cannot forget that the student is on the receiving end of the deal: he is the one that has to absorb the information and apply it to his world. An applied class will be able to help the teacher customize his lesson plans in order to make the material more viable to the students without reducing the quality of the lesson. Although it seems foolish to give students the right to ask the teacher to change his lesson plans, it will not result in total disarray. It ...