Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The time for introspection that I spent yesterday (as mentioned in the student-friendly version of this journal today) made me a bit hesitant at first in airing out my feelings against local personalities, even politicians.

It’s possible that it may make me too critical in the eyes of the students, and they would expect the same harsh inspection to be done on their own work.

But I also believe that a teacher, consciously or subconsciously, influences a student just by the virtue of being a captive audience in his or her classroom for the span of an hour or so at least once a week for several months at a time.

In a positive way, if a teacher has a good sense of humor, is very meticulous or organized in his own preparation for the class, or even as simple as dressing or speaking well, this might inspire some students into pursuing the same in their own lives.

On the other side of the coin, being unbendingly unreasonable with requirements, getting angry at and scolding the class all the time, or putting their own ego (or welfare) over the students’ own – in other words, the trademarks of a bad parent – may cause some students to rebel, or develop low self-esteem at the very least.

So what the teacher is intentionally trying to impart to the students is just half of the equation.

Maybe students taking up psychology can do papers observing how their peers behave before classes start, what their teachers do in class, and how their peers’ behavior may have been modified afterwards, that they know and of which they may not be aware.

It would certainly be a big help for guidance counselors, and for people taking up education, to monitor all aspects of a teacher’s facilitation in the classroom to see how the students are affected on different levels.

On an aside, teachers teaching education would seem to have a difficult job indeed, because at the same time that they are telling their students how to proceed and how not to proceed, they are being judged by the same standards. What if they are found wanting? “Do as I say but not as I do?”

Session 903 does rebel. Class dismissed.