Voices Columnist Discussion: Bad apples? Are teachers falling short -- or are we?

And here's the Community Voices column that also ran on Saturday: Judy Gaman: Don’t rescue kids from bad teachers

Most of it was positive, but here was one of the more thought-provoking: I would like to ask her to do the following: Take the time, in your own classroom, to study your fellow students and then try to answer the following questions. How many of them have the same enthusiasm for learning that you do? How many of them are only there because they are required by law to be there or because they know they can't go on to college without having a high school diploma? How many of them only go through the motions of learning while complaining about not getting the grade they think they deserve and then blame the teacher, or the school, or anyone else other than themselves for their own lack of enthusiasm? How many will go home and complain to parents, who are all too willing to blame someone other than their child, that the teachers or the schools or both are unable to motivate them?

Thank you very much Ms. Whitman! And yes, there were several readers who suggested a two-sided problem. I'll admit, at the time I wrote this column, I was in a post-Dead Poets Society-misty-eyed stupor. But LeRoy White (adjunct instructor in community colleges and four year colleges) asked me to look around at my fellow students’ faces next time I’m sitting in class to see how many of us were actually engaged. Your answer, Mr. White, is very few. But rather than accepting this as a two-sided problem, an “Us v. Them” situation, we can take into account that perhaps if teachers were more engaging on a personal level, students would be more inclined to listen. Maybe a connection would actually aid the students in learning the subject material.

That teacher's response continues, and echos a bit of what Evan is saying. He wants Michelle to humanize her teachers a bit more: "Most of all, think about the teacher as a fellow human being and not some super being who can move mountains or jump over buildings in a single bound. They may not be perfect but they have opted to tackle one of the most responsible and difficult jobs in our society today and many times are not fully compensated for it regardless of the kind of job they are doing to say nothing of those few who ended up in the field of education because they failed in another field of study.. Remember that the teacher is trying to balance the requirements of two, sometimes completely opposite, sides, the student and the administration, and many times, a third party gets involved, the parent, when the parent is only are trying to protect his or her child and probably really has little knowledge of what is actually going on in the classroom."

Mr. Bybee has a point. He also happened to be my 9th grade English teacher. And for the sake of clarification, and to address his point that we tend to forget the good teachers of the past, he was a very good teacher. He addressed life and the non-existent "real world." And he never accepted anyone's excuses.