paper 2:The Role of an Educator- Ebert vs Hobaugh

All through our childhood we have teachers that we remember for different purposes. The ones that we have sweet memories of are the teachers who impact us in a way of making us a person who pursues their dreams.  My example for a great teacher is my eighth grade science teacher Mrs. Ebert and my example for my horrible teacher is my tenth grade math teacher Mr. Hobaugh. The role of an educator is to inspire the students that they teach.

            The way a teaches inspires us is by showing us that they love their job and always care for their students. Mrs. Ebert was the teacher that seemed to be everyone’s favorite for this reason. You would walk into her classroom and how much this teacher loved the subject she taught. There were fun colorful posters everywhere, weird items like sheep eyeballs and a coyote skull sitting on her desk, and a cabinet of animal bones and dried sea creatures on the left wall of her room. When she would stand up to teach she would be full of energy no matter how long the day had seemed. She tried to make sure that we all understood what she was teaching and not moving on until she knew we did. She used different and weird projects to have student’s present information to the class. One of the project was about the planets and a group did something that most students were not comfortable with… they did a remix of “You Belong to Me” by Taylor Swift that was all about Neptune. They came up with this idea after Mrs. Ebert had us listen to about the sun. The way that Mrs. Ebert got excited about this song inspired these students to go the musical route and was one of the best projects in the class. Mrs. Ebert was like Audre Lorde’s kindergarten teacher who always praise audre for her good work when she did something right and didn’t look down on her when she was wrong. Mrs. Ebert has the same mind set that students should mot be looked down upon for the mistakes they make but praised when they do some thing right.

            Mr. Hobaugh on the other hand is the complete opposite. He is the teacher you look back on and you cringe a little bit and feel bad for any of the students he will have in the future. He is a short hobbit looking man with a permanent frown on his face. He is a teacher who rushes through his work and will not slow down when his student tell him that they don’t understand. He tells them that they were not paying attention and that they should try harder. He follows very closely to the banking concept that Friere talks about in his essay “The Banking Concept of Education”. Friere says, “the solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking concept. On the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole: (a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught (b) the teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing (c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about (d) the teacher and the students listen- meekly.” and along with going with the banking concept of teaching sometimes he doesn’t even know what he is teaching. One time he used Wikipedia to teach Pascal’s triangle and still didn’t make sure that we understood after he tried to understand it himself and then gave the class a quiz on it the next day.

            Teachers are also an inspiration when they motivate you. Mr. Hobaugh was a lazy teacher who expected lazy students. His class had no structure and half way into the year some students started having side conversation because they had lost respect for Mr. Hobaugh because of his laziness and the lack of a helping success kind of attitude. He would never motivate us to be better students because he never wanted to motivate himself to be a better teacher.

            Mrs. Ebert’s classroom was fun and chatty but we as the students always knew when it was time to close our mouths and listen because we respected Mrs. Ebert and cared about what she was telling us. The reason for this is because she was motivated to help each student succeed and would go out of her way to help if they were falling behind without losing connection to the rest of the class. She strived to be a better teacher and to help her students do their best in school. Mrs. Ebert shows she is like Mr. Escalante because she is willing to put extra time in her students like Mr. Escalante when he would stay with his students in the evening to help them with their AP calculus test. Mrs. Ebert will do the same after school to help struggling students know that she believes in them and is there to help.

            Another way that teachers inspire us is to tell us to chase our dreams no matter how big. Mrs. Ebert had the mindset that told us that we could do whatever we wanted to do if we put our minds to it no matter what obstacles stood in our way. She told us about what she dream of as a little girl and how she dreamed of being a scientist, when on field studies and worked in a lab before she decided to spread her knowledge with the middle school kids that she teaches today and would tell us that all of our dreams were important, would take the time to learn what our dreams were, and talk to us about how we could reach that dream. Mrs. Ebert is like Mr. Keating when Mr. Keating tells Neil to follow his dreams as an actor because he is great at it and it makes him happy. Mrs. Ebert would always encourage her students to follow their dreams no matter how big.

             Mr. Hobaugh was very much the opposite. Any “inspiration” he tried to give us was a sports analogy that we all couldn’t relate to because we all were not in sports but all his talks seemed to finish with the same basic message that we were all nobodies and could not successful in life unless we got a degree in engineering or sports because everything else was unimportant. He shot down any other views of success and called us all burger flippers even though he never took the time to actually get to know us and learn what our dreams were.  In the movie stand and deliver, the teachers had similar opinions of their students. Mr. Escalante would tease them about the same concept but he would mean it in a joking manner, “you’re good now, but you’re going to end up barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen!” Mr. Hobaugh approach was interpreted very differently because it did not ever seem like he was joking. He would say his beliefs with such conviction that we all knew he meant every word he said and some of us resented him for it.

            Mrs. Ebert is a prime example of an inspiring teacher who loves what she teaches, loves to motivate her students, and tells them to follow their dreams. She is a teacher any student would be lucky to have and is well loved by her past students. She follows the concept of my thesis because she follows the ideal image if an inspiring teacher. As for Mr. Hobaugh… get out of the class while you still can.

Works Cited

Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. By Tom Schulman. Perf. Robin Williams, Rober Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles, Gale Hansen, Dylan Kussman, Allelon Ruggiero. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 1989. DVD.

Freire, Paolo. ""The Banking Concept of Education"" Pedagogy of the Oppressed. N.p.: n.p., 1970. Chapter 2. Print.

Lorde, Audre. "A New Spelling of My Name." Zami. N.p.: n.p., 1982. 65-73. Print.

Stand and Deliver. Dir. Ramon Menendez and Tom Musca. By Ramon Menendez. Perf. Edward James Olmos,Estelle Harris, and Mark Phelan. Warner Bros., 1988. DVD.